Jacko079 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 04, 2022 10:41 am
See AlsoCan Duolingo Make You Fluent In 2024? - duoplanetHow Duolingo English Test is reinventing high stakes testing with AI - Express ComputerDuolingo Vs. Babbel: A Detailed Comparison | SpeechifyHow Long Does It Take To Learn French?I looked up what the CEFR level was for the Duolingo Spanish course, (which it seems you’re doing) and the level was supposedly a B1.
Yes, that is true, and I believe Duolingo should provide you with all the vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structures you might need in the real world (at least in the Spanish course). However, knowing B1 language content doesn't necessarily mean you have a B1 level. Remember that there are four different skills that you need to master in order to achieve a certain CEFR level: listening, reading, writing, and speaking.
Assuming you use ONLY Duolingo in the most effective way possible, you should achieve a B1 (or maybe even B2) level in reading as reading is all about knowing vocabulary and grammatical structures. However, you will probably not get as high of a level in your other proficiency areas.
With listening, Duolingo does play audio throughout the lessons and incorporates a fair number of listening exercises throughout the lessons, but you will probably only have an A2 level in listening upon finishing the course. The rate of speech with Duolingo's voices is slow compared to real-world Spanish (which is the second-fastest spoken human language known to linguists). I'm not saying that's bad (it would be worse for learners just getting familiar with vocabulary to listen to rapid speech), but you should practice some listening skills on your own as well.
With writing, Duolingo only provides about two English-to-Spanish translation exercises per lesson on average, which means that you would not be practicing writing a lot. Therefore, upon completing the course, you should have an A1 level in writing.
With speaking, there are very few speaking exercises in each lesson, and the speaking exercises only merely prompt you to speak a sentence word-for-word. There is no feedback given for speaking exercises, nor is it easy to figure out your own mistakes in pronunciation. Besides, most language proficiency tests focus more on whether you can deliver a well-organized and original speech and come up with spontaneous responses in conversation than the pronunciation aspect of speaking. Therefore, you should not get very far with speaking upon finishing the Duolingo Spanish course, so you should get an A1 level in speaking (at BEST), but probably not even that (in other words, an A0 level).
I'm not saying that Duolingo is bad in any way; it's definitely a good resource for language learning, but as with any resource, using it by itself is not enough. You should use other resources, and by "other resources", I don't necessarily mean you need to sign up for other language learning platforms as well. Coming up with your own ways to practice your skills (talking to native speakers, doing daily speaking prompts, doing writing prompts, and even listening to songs or watching videos) is just as good. In fact, many of us are using other resources without even knowing we are.
