I have only ever used the paid version of Duolingo that my husband got for me. I have no idea if the basic version works, so keep that in mind.
There are three things in Duolingo that really advance language learning. They are the chatbot, the Legendary level, and Match Madness.
Chatbot
You need to have at least one conversation with the chatbot every day. Ideally, you’ll have two. Here’s what’s important: don’t let the chatbot control the conversation because if you do, you’ll end up having the exact same conversation every day. To make it useful, you have to initiate. When the chatbot says, “hi, how are you?” Don’t respond with, “I’m fine, how are you?” You already know how to say it, so what’s the use of doing it again? Instead, start your own conversation on the basis of what you learned in the day’s lesson. For instance, if you learned about birthdays, say “It was my birthday last week. To celebrate, I went to my favorite restaurant with my family. We ate my favorite dish which is fish with vegetables.” It doesn’t matter if it’s true. Your goal is not to provide correct information to the chatbot but to practice.
Legendary level
After you complete each batch of exercises, you can press on it again and have the option to do a sort of a test on them. That option is called Legendary. It’s great because often it asks you to translate sentences into the target language. You get up to 20 sentences that you have to translate on the spot. Specialists in foreign language teaching tell us that translation exercises are bad for beginner and intermediate level students. That is stupid, however. Translation exercises are great. I wish Duolingo had more of them and didn’t limit them to the Legendary level only.
Match Madness
This is a contest-type activity where you have to match words in the target language with their translations. To keep advancing through the levels, you have to find translations at an increasing speed. This is excellent for improving your vocabulary.
The chatbot, the Legendary level, and Match Madness are the hardest activities on the app, and many people avoid them. But these are precisely the activities that move your knowledge of a language from a passive to an active mode. Both modes are crucial for language learning but if you are stuck in passive, you’ll never speak.
Clarissa's Blog 
I think I should go back to Duolingo again, and pay for once. Maybe my experience will be different, because the free version is quite limited. The learning experience may also vary from one language to another. As you know, I had been learning a language (Catalan) for fun using Duolingo. But Catalan on Duolingo is very limited and I completed the course already. To give you an example, Duolingo barely touches the subjunctive mood in Catalan. It also fails to focus on grammatical peculiarities of Catalan in comparison to Spanish. I am pretty sure that the experience is much better in commonly taught languages, such as German, Italian, or French.
Ol.
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“sure that the experience is much better in commonly taught languages”
Yeah, the Hungarian was kind of a train wreck (mitigated in the old days by discussion bords but those were eliminated in order enshittify the site).
I’d make sure of what the pay site does and doesn’t have before spending any money on it.
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Yes, I’m certain that less popular languages get less attention. I heard that their Ukrainian is not impressive either.
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I’ve heard the free version is borderline unusable. Duolingo also really doesn’t guide you towards what’s helpful, which is fine if you know how to learn a language but the average Duolingo user doesn’t.
I’ve just never been interested in using Duolingo, but I’ll be sure to pass on these tips to my friend who loves Duolingo! And if anyone ever generously gifts me premium, I’ll know how to take advantage.
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