[ml_giant]

I agree. Duolingo is great for learning vocabulary, but if you really want to learn a language you need to supplement this with listening to the language as well as speaking it.

I've been learning French and have been using Duolingo for vocab, but then I listen to a French-teaching podcast as well as trying to work on reading/speaking it.

[dghughes]

I'm not at the stage where I can listen to it since it's such a fast language. I've been reading LeMonde newspaper and trying to decipher it that way. I live in Canada but the French here is quite different in each region; Quebec, Acadian, Métis. Duolingo French course is France French not Canadian French I think it's standard French aka Parisan.

[ml_giant]

There are podcasts for learning such as "Coffee Break French". Basically they start with very basic french and build up. This can be good for starting to learn to listen to french.

Regarding the differences between Canadian and France French, are there that many differences that it would make it difficult to understand someone from another region?

[irrational]

What if you don't need listening or speaking skills, only reading? In your opinion is Duolingo a good fit for someone who only needs to learn to read the language?

[dyselon]

Not the gp, but I used Duolingo quite a bit, and recently learned Spanish to an upper intermediate level. In my opinion, Duolingo is just as weak with pure reading as with spoken language. You'll learn some vocabulary and be introduced to ideas, and that's valuable, but not enough. Just like spoken, to learn to read, you have to read a bunch of stuff you can understand. I jumped straight from Duolingo to children and young adult books, and it was a difficult transition with lots of intensive looking-up-every-other-word study, but, I mean, you do that long enough, and eventually you're just reading.