The good news is that if you don’t like my, or anyone else’s, definitions, then you can always refer to one of the many language learning proficiency frameworks, which give us some hard and fast definitions. To be able to transfer a wide range of ideas from one mind to another.Įven if you don’t know every word in the dictionary or fully understand every grammatical rule, so long as you are able to express an idea and have another person understand (and vice versa), that, to me, is fluency. Truly, there are many different flavours of fluency. Sarah might argue that fluency simply means that you’re able to hold a conversation.Ībdul might contend that to be fluent means to know a language nearly as well as your mother tongue.Īnd Gertrude might suggest that it all comes down to whether you know how to order a pizza. Jim might have you believe that to be fluent in a language means to comprehend and produce it perfectly. The funny thing is that 99 times out of 100 the person asking doesn’t even know what fluency means.

If Jessica says she knows a bit of Spanish, I can almost guarantee that Bob will respond: “But can you speak it fluently?” But how many of them actually know what ‘fluent’ is?įluency, and what defines it, is an idea that gets batted around more than any other in the language learning community. Everyone wants to know if Duolingo can make you fluent. We’ll also take a look at what’s required in the language acquisition process, before arriving at the all-important conclusion. To do so, we’ll consider a few things, such as the hard-hitting research, Duolingo’s stated objectives and how each course differs from the next. This means that we may receive a commission for any sign-ups or purchases made, but at no extra cost to you. I’d dabbled with Duolingo for other languages previously, and given it had a lot of decent reviews on the App Store, I figured it would be worth a shot.įast forward 5 and a half years, and I finally have an answer - which I’ll share with you shortly! I remember being absolutely determined to learn Italian but I wasn’t 100% sure how to go about it. Given that Duolingo is one of the most popular ways to learn a language, it’s a question that gets asked more times than the owl can tell you “It’s time for Spanish!”.īack in 2016, I was asking this very question. Ah yes, the be-all and end-all question: Can Duolingo make you fluent?

Spanish duolingo reddit