But does it improve your ability to speak, read, write and understand French in the real world? I found it made no difference to mine.
It is the Strava of the language-learning world.
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Albeit that it is quite often boring and competitive, I do feel it has improved my confidence to speak French. In fact I remarked to OH after having my hair cut last week that I felt I had a much improved general conversation with the hairdresser this time. My French conversation and vocabulary over the last 5 years has been mainly concerned with health matters rather than general conversation and chit-chat!
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for which (as the OH in question) I am eternally grateful 
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Salon’s are a wonderful place for vocabulary. My haircutter is a Dr Who fan, which makes for surreal conversations as she tells me latest Whovian gossip, and has finally got me to watch the last few years’ of programmes. She loves the fact that we get her bumper sticker “my other car’s a Tardis”. Not sure Duolingo covers Dr Who vocabulary!
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Steve Kaufman (of LingQ) talks of the importance of having material you’re interested in (and of the “sweet spot” of ~15% unknown words in a piece of text), so conversations about something you’re interested in is a great idea.
I love watching on YouTube the sort of TV programmes in French that I wouldn’t dream of watching in English. There’s an amazing amount of material available.
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Yes I do speak it better and understand more but I needed someone to tell me why my answer was wrong as it wasn’t always clear. It doesn’t explain the Grammar rules which is what I need so I went back to having lessons once a fortnight with a teacher in addition to using Duolingo.
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I think F2F lessons are the best. i was very lucky in that two of our best French friends were language teachers!
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Try kwiziq that someone mentioned earlier, I’ve been doing it the last few days and I love it! At the end of each 10 question quiz it lists your incorrect answers with a link yo very clear explanations of the grammar rule you’ve not got right.
I like kwiziq too, but my sole reservation to date is that the answers have mainly been drop-down boxes, which after forty years in HE, I don’t think is a very useful educational tool . One may be able to recognise the right answer when it’s presented on the screen, but would you be able to type it correctly if it wasn’t?
I suspect the problem is that - in software engineering terms - recognising the correct response for a 1-of-n drop down is a heck of a lot easier than recognising that a free form expression is correct.
Exactly! But, unfortunately that has fed into so many exam systems in the lower echelons of UK education
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That’s slightly different though - a well written MCQ can present choices which are very difficult for the candidate to discriminate unless they have a good understanding of the subject matter.
And much easier to mark, as noted above 
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I think that in the UK multiple choice exam questions originated on low level DATEC (later BTEC) courses in technical subjects for apprentice electricians and plumbers, and where answers to multiple choice questions about the wiring of a three-pin plug are clearly either right or wrong.
By contrast, in humanities subjects, written answers should provide a better indication of a candidate’s grasp of more nuanced, less binary issues, as even well-crafted multiple choice questions will inevitably foreground the skill or expertise of the question writer. Also, a multiple choice question can be successfully answered with a guess, so one learns far more about a candidate’s abilities with a written answer.
Lastly, if you care about educational quality, being '‘easier to mark’ isn’t necessarily a plus.
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Hence the dreaded “negative marking” schemes
Yes, umm. I suspect a big difference between our outlook is that my background is scientific, yours is humanities and while it’s not “never the twain shall meet” there is a different approach to prose or essay style answers vs MCQ.
True.
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Ok,ok….I will do it tomorrow!
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Bravo !!
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