Apps for learning languages promise to teach you how to use a new language just with a computer or phone. They’re similar in concept: daily exercises to teach you an entire language. It’s promising, especially if you’re not already immersed in a language environment that will give you the exposure you need to pick up a second language. The question is, are they effective? I’m sure you are aware that a language is a complex interconnected system of components that build a way to communicate. I’m talking about morphology, syntax, semantics and other language goddesses.

Let’s face it.

Apps help to stay motivated! We live a busy life and we either before or after work. We get a notification and go to the app then choose the simplest way: do exercises on what we know by heart and get our bonuses to feel like ‘mission accomplished’. Do you get it? It's an illusion of progress.

You can learn how to pronounce sounds and phonemes - but there are plenty of exceptions when the same letter combination is pronounced differently in different words. After three(!) years of living in the UK I was able to correctly pronounce vowel sounds without my decent russian accent.

You can learn a basic set of English words - you will successfully do your exercises by clicking on the correct answers. Does this have to do with understanding words in a real situation? In real life we come across a huge number of phrases in a varied context that changes their meaning and connotation. That’s confusing and curious.

You can learn grammar - but will it teach you to use language? Let’s say you are in the middle of conversation and trying to recall the grammar rule of 2 conditionals, then trying to apply to your case and finally saying that, most likely with an error. It takes about 30 seconds or more. A person you are talking to will wait once or twice, if he is British - probably about 5 times, but the situation can hardly be called ‘easy communication’ and most likely the person will start to avoid you.

The last question: Is it possible to learn how to maintain professional dialogues, for example about banking rules, software architecture or astrophysics? It is difficult if your vocab has just a basic set of words like “good”, “nice to meet you”, “how much does it cost”.

Sum up: Using popular language learning applications is the starting point and certainly not the end. If you have completed all levels or got all strikes - it’s time to find options for immersion in the real language: find a live teacher, native speaker or at least start a smooth immersion in real English with eLang.