What really bothers me about Duolingo is its Rosetta Stone approach to language learning. For adults, learning by osmosis is not a thing for languages. The creator has said that the reason the grammar notes (as bare bones as they are) are not available in the apps, is, that he wants, users to pick up the grammar through the exercises.
I study French, German and Russian at uni, and for doing translations, or even just writing letters or speaking, this is not good enough. You want to be comfortable in a language, and that comes with a rock solid grammar foundation, as 'dull' as it seems.
As many have said, Duolingo should be a tool amongst many. It has actually been really helpful for drilling through particular problem areas where I get a case wrong here or there.
What they really need to do is get listening and reading comprehension out there; working alongside some people who really never understand grammar explanations, they can often work it out in their head after reading through a passage with a few examples, it makes it personal to them and they can see the 'point' of the rule.
Also they need to get a better vocab tool, memrise/anki style. Sometimes I just wanna practice shopping items because I'm on the bus to get 'groceries' and I wanna make sure im all sured up.
I have found that a combination of Duolingo / Rosetta Stone in combination with the FSI Courses ( https://www.livelingua.com/fsi-language-courses.php ) gives a good combination of Grammar + Speaking material to learn a language.
I study French, German and Russian at uni, and for doing translations, or even just writing letters or speaking, this is not good enough. You want to be comfortable in a language, and that comes with a rock solid grammar foundation, as 'dull' as it seems.
As many have said, Duolingo should be a tool amongst many. It has actually been really helpful for drilling through particular problem areas where I get a case wrong here or there.
What they really need to do is get listening and reading comprehension out there; working alongside some people who really never understand grammar explanations, they can often work it out in their head after reading through a passage with a few examples, it makes it personal to them and they can see the 'point' of the rule.
Also they need to get a better vocab tool, memrise/anki style. Sometimes I just wanna practice shopping items because I'm on the bus to get 'groceries' and I wanna make sure im all sured up.