You cant learn foreign language from a book. Or, very very few people ever succeeded to learn basics of reading and write in foreign language from a book. And you can not possibly learn listening and talking.
Why can't you? As someone else already said, it's a combination. I'm learning french and I'm enjoying A1/A2-specific books and newspapers (Zeit Sprachen, idk if something like this exists in other countries)
But at some point you understand the usual pronunciations. Even if you make mistakes at 5% of the words, learning more vocabulary by reading is probably a positive overall
It feels to me like we're in agreement, so I'm not certain why you're saying my original sentence is nonsense.
> people would still not picked book as replacement
Yes, exactly.
> And book as your only resource have massive drop put rates. People generally give up very soon.
Yes, entirely correct.
That's what something like Duolingo promises to solve and these obstacles (independent of Duolingo) are why people won't pick up a book or do other forms of self-learning instead. They want a service like Duolingo, because it promises to make learning more approachable and accessible and provides mental tricks to keep you engaged regularly and long-term.
Which brings me around to my original argument: The article is framing it in this weirdly malicious way as if it isn't exactly what people wanted from a service like Duolingo. It's like turning a water boiler on and then getting upset that the water is hot. I thought that was the point?
In that case I misunderstood your original sentence. I knee jerked, projecting something that was not present in your writing into it. So I apologize.
For whatever it is worth, I know you did not wrote it, the "pick a textbook for language learning" meme is sort of my pet peeve. I kinda suspect that people saying it never learned foreign language.
That's okay, I'm glad we could clear it up. I won't pretend that I have any idea how one would best learn a language and I don't know if Duolingo is effective at all. I just understand why people want services like it.
