Why do some learners find success with Duolingo while others give up after a few weeks?

The answer often comes down to how the brain actually acquires language.

We interview language learners at Parrot all the time. A surprising number had 365+ day streaks on Duolingo… but still couldn’t hold a conversation in their target language.

Duolingo is built around gamified repetition - multiple choice quizzes, matching, and translations. That can be motivating at first. But many users notice a disconnect between their app progress and their actual ability to understand or speak.

Language acquisition isn’t just about memorization. It’s about comprehensible input - material that’s slightly above your level, but still understandable. That’s how children learn - by absorbing language in context, not by translating it back and forth.

Another challenge is that Duolingo follows a very linear path. But language learning isn’t linear. People have different paces, interests, and ways of staying curious. Without adaptive content or immersion, the experience can start to feel mechanical.

Duolingo is a decent place to start. But for real-world fluency, most learners eventually realize they need something more intuitive, more human, and more contextual.