Is Duolingo a Waste of Time?
Yes.
My mother once called me to inform me that she was learning a third language: Spanish.
“I’ll finally be able to speak to Mariana and her family!” she exclaimed. I was excited. The day had come.
“Awesome,” I said. “How are you going to do it?”
“You’ll never believe this, but it’s with a free language learning program.” I could tell by her tone that she was absolutely beaming.
I closed my eyes. Don’t say it, don’t say it, I thought.
“It’s called Duoling— ” she said. Before she finished uttering the last phoneme, all the birds in my neighborhood stopped chirping. The air in the room rushed out. The world stopped rotating on its axis. A vortex appeared in the sky, and an enormous emerald green bird emerged. It cackled viciously, knowing it had my boomer mother in its grasp.
Well, that’s what I felt happened. What really happened is that I clenched my teeth together and said, “That’s great. Keep at it, mom.”
Why was I so conflicted about my mother using this free resource to “learn” Spanish? Let’s just say that I have a long and tumultuous history with Duolingo. Duo and I go way back, but we’re hardly friends. Duolingo can do more harm than good, and you’re much better off using other resources, whether free or…
