[EDIT] As Duolingo has dramatically changed in the last so many months, some of this post no longer applies. I am leaving it up, though, for inspiration and ideas.

For some time now, I’ve advocated for a more holistic approach at language learning, one where you learn from a variety of sources in a variety of ways. This typically includes having a language book or class to teach grammatical concepts or provide explanations, while also incorporating reading/writing/listening/speaking through things like reading local news websites or watching TV in the target language, for example. These approaches typically work best since you avoid the “textbook language” dilemma (where anything outside of the standard language you learned in class is unintelligible to you, or you speak in a very robotic/scrapbook way using bits and pieces rather than “chunking”) and potential illiteracy (where you can speak and get your point across– a form of fluency!– but do not use proper grammar or are unable to read/write). We will all come across these moments in our language journey, especially if this is your first time learning a language or if you are learning one with practically no mutual intelligibility, but the goal is to minimize this before mistakes crystallize or, simply put, we waste our precious time.