Duolingo

[watervole]

 I've been  playing around with Duolingo  this week to refresh my O-level German.

I'm quite enjoying it, and it is a good way of learning, but I take serious exception to its claim that I'm now 11% fluent in German.   

I've only covered 54 words with it and the coverage of plurals and cases only relates to a small subset of those words.

Have other people used it much?

Does it actually take you to a level where you get genuine language skills, or is it really just a game that teaches you a good set of stock phrases (which are admittedly useful).

Comments

[matgb]

Jennie's been using it a lot, she's learning Welsh, and seems to be enjoying it/making progress. Plus, Nicholas Whyte and a few others have been (I forget his DW name), he seems to rate it and given the number of languages he's conversant in plus his general world travelling job thing I'll take his opinion as a vote in favour generally.

I keep meaning to install it to practice/relearn French, the worst it can do is make me remember some basic stuff but it might even move me forward.

[watervole]

I'm sure I ought to know Nichola's DW journal, I used to read him on LJ, but I can't remember what name he used.

I'm enjoying it, but I do not believe that I am, even remotely, 12% fluent in German.

I always used to fancy learning Welsh...

[kotturinn]

I'm using it (and a couple of others, slightly more intermittently) to learn German from scratch. For me it seems to depend on how much you think round the exercises/games. I've found that when I actually think and join the dots I'm learning a reasonable amount about how the language uses building blocks. But I don't know how far it goes - I think I've reached the "22% fluent" flag but I don't yet feel confident enough to try anything in public (except the odd phrase on a friend who is still pretty fluent in what I think I'd call day-to-day transactional German)