Duolingo: everyone's favorite, faulty language learning tool

What's not to like about a friendly owl, an intuitive app, and an orderly learning sequence?  Duolingo does pack a lot of positives, which is one reason it's so popular.  Short, bite sized lessons with plenty of variety.  

    

Pleasant feedback sounds.  The ability to choose - to some extent - which topic to learn next.  

Lots of affirmation that you're doing great.  Duolingo tries really hard to motivate you with all kinds of carrots.  

    

And it's free to boot!  

But yet, somehow after you've done it for a few weeks, it starts becoming rather boring (even Memrise retains its freshness longer, despite the fact that it works worse).  You find that things you've learned don't stick in your memory.  

What's wrong?  

Two main things.

First, Duolingo usually teaches you by having you select from a given set of options.  Your memory doesn't have to work as hard, because the options prompt you.  It's like riding a bicycle with electric assist.  Your legs go around really fast, but you aren't sore the next day.  Your muscles didn't get a real workout.  Duolingo doesn't give your memory muscles a workout either - and without a workout, you don't retain.  

Second, you do relatively little speaking.  When you do speak, it's usually just parroting an audio recording that has just been played.  In your ear, out your mouth, and mostly forgotten.  

Since it's free, by all means, use Duolingo to add some variety to your Mandarin practice.  But don't rely on it for your primary learning tool.  

Want to know what tools really do work?