Duolingo is a scam and most people shouldn’t learn grammar.

I’m hardly an expert on the topic of language learning, but at this point in my life I’ve done enough of it that I feel comfortable giving some advice. I’ve learned Polish to a native level from my parents while growing up in the States, which doesn’t seem like an achievement until you meet a thousand immigrants who don’t speak their native tongue. I spoke Norwegian at a conversational level, I’m currently learning Russian with a lot of success. I failed to learn French through school which is an important data point on what not to do.

Language learning is about learning a language and not learning rules or scripts or writing systems. The fundamental point is to communicate. This is what comprehensible input, moving to your target language’s country, watching a lot of movies, talking to tutors, finding a bf / gf who speaks a different language achieve. You have a pressing need to communicate which leads you to learn.

What’s interesting is that when I tell people that the best way to learn a language is to get a tutor and then go and do something you like anyways in your target language, they invariably don’t do that. The reasons, I assume, are manifold. Fear is a big part of it, I hear often that they’re not ready to speak to someone else yet. You’ll never be ready! It’s impossible to speak perfectly on your first try, unfortunately your ego must suffer through being bad at things in order to become better. People also create prerequisites such as learning to read kanji in Japanese before speaking a word of it. Just talking to someone feels both too easy and too embarrassing – it feels harder to stare at a textbook and psychologically safer.

The language learning method that works is the one that is effective (are you improving at communication?) and engaging (will you continue doing this?). That’s why I suggest Italki to everyone, because it’s tough to beat 1-1 speaking for effectiveness and (for me at least) the social relationship you develop with your teacher is enough motivation to continue scheduling lessons. You can add on top of that some more practice, like watching movies, reading books you enjoy, or playing games. Don’t do fake stuff, like reading books for language learners. Do stuff that’s interesting to you.

So why are schools so bad at teaching language? I think part of it is that there’s a lack of 1-1 instruction in the target language, since there’s only one teacher per class. The instruction is also ineffective. Schools teach language as a set of rules and words to be memorized explicitly, rather than as a system of communication that your brain can naturally absorb. My assumption is that modern language learning techniques come from the the way Greek & Latin were taught. From what I gathered, Latin was used as a way to teach grammar, linguistics, and Latin reading all rolled into one. In that context, it makes sense to begin with grammar, especially since most people aren’t looking to go around chatting in Latin (I would love to though, sounds cool af). My guess is that the instructional method for Latin was adapted to other live languages some time in the 20th Century. My assumption is that if students were more focused on comprehension and communication than studying textbooks they’d have better results, predicated on their desire to learn of course. Language learning in American public schools is a remarkable failure – I don’t know a single person who learned a language from classes in school.

Quick history of how I came to these conclusions if you’re interested. From here on out, it’s just context.

I learned Polish from my parents because they apparently refused to speak to me unless I spoke Polish to them when I was a kid. I think this is necessary because I heard there’s a pruning phase in a kid’s like ~5 years of age where kids try to stop speaking “unnecessary” languages. If you make it past that age, it’s likely that the parent language will survive. I’ve also heard that school teachers inform immigrant parents to stop speaking their native tongue to assist in English acquisition which is frankly an insane thing to say. Kids will learn English any way you cut it since they spend 8 hours in school a day.

I learned Norwegian when I lived in Norway for a year. I spent a few months at a school for immigrants where I perfected my Polish, since every immigrant group clustered together and spoke exclusively their native tongue. I learned just enough Norwegian to pass a test before the deadline for transferring out. I was lucky enough to escape to a real Norwegian school, where I proceeded to actually learn Norwegian. I had to communicate to people, which is the best motivation you could have.

As an interesting note, most Norwegians speak perfect English because TV has American shows subbed and not dubbed. Countries that have dubbed shows have much lower levels of fluency in English.

I finally learned Polish grammar explicitly when I went to school in Poland. Let it not be said that I think grammar is useless! I just think grammar is useless if you can’t yet communicate.

I took like 7 years of French or something like that and I could ask for directions to the bathroom when I visited Montreal. Great success.

Right now I’m learning Russian. It’s easy for me since I speak Polish, but regardless I’m still certain that the principles I laid out here are correct. I do Italki once a week, I play Cyberpunk 2077 in Russian a few hours a week, and I say dumb shit to my gf a few times a day.

Special mention of Anki. Spaced memorization is indeed a fantastic hack. Michael Nielsen has the canonical article on it, which you should totally go read. My only note is that you should go do it. Feel free to do it in whichever way makes you actually stick with it.

If you want more

AJATT – some guy learns Japanese through full immersion

Stephen Krashen – Says you can learn language exclusively through comprehensible input. While I think the general idea is sound, I don’t know if I’d take his word as dogma.

Kato Lomb – She’s clearly some flavor of genius, but I really like the way she frames language learning. (Time * Motivation)/Inhibition = Result

Steve Kaufmann – He makes interesting youtube videos that are a good way to dip your toe into the theory behind language acquisition

Benny Lewis – Preeminent language hacker. The take away should be that you should seek to use your language as much as possible without inhibition.