Does Duolingo teach you to speak? – level 2

30-09-2026 07:00

A Duolingo user lost a 2,061-day streak and realized she still couldn’t speak Spanish fluently. This showed a big problem with the popular language app.

Duolingo became very rich by using games, daily streaks, and notifications to keep people using the app every day. The company also replaced many human workers with cheap AI to build its courses, which made the lessons worse. Even though the company earned a lot of money, investors started to worry that users were not actually learning anything. The company’s stock price dropped by 80 percent by early 2026. Lawyers also started investigating the company for confusing investors about user growth.

In the end, Duolingo created a great game to keep people clicking, but it failed at its main job: teaching people how to talk to real speakers.

Difficult words: streak (a continuous period or unbroken sequence of doing a specific activity every single day), earn (to get money for work), user growth (the total number of people who use a product or service).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.

News in Levels · Does Duolingo teach you to speak – level 2

How did Duolingo's use of games, daily streaks, notifications and cheap AI lead to worries that users weren't learning and a subsequent 80 percent drop in its stock by early 2026?

LEARN 3000 WORDS with NEWS IN LEVELS

News in Levels is designed to teach you 3000 words in English. Please follow the instructions
below.

How to improve your English with News in Levels:

Test

Do the test at Test Languages.
Go to your level. Go to Level 1 if you know 1-1000 words. Go to Level 2 if you know 1000-2000 words. Go to Level 3 if you know 2000-3000 words.