Community Discussions

Shouldn't this be "didn't lie"?
I'm a bit confused between simple past tense and past continuous tense.
Is Duolingo just an illusion of learning? 🤔
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about whether apps like Duolingo actually help you learn a language or just make you feel like you're learning one. I’ve been using Duolingo for over two years now (700+ day streak 💪), and while I can recognize some vocab and sentence structures, I still freeze up in real conversations. Especially when I’m talking to native speakers. At some point, Duolingo started feeling more like playing a game than actually learning. The dopamine hits are real, but am I really getting better? I don't think so. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun and probably great for total beginners. But as someone who’s more intermediate now, I’m starting to feel like it’s not really helping me move toward fluency. I’ve been digging through language subreddits and saw many recommending italki for real language learning, especially if you want to actually speak and get fluent. I started using it recently and it’s insane how different it is. Just 1-2 sessions a week with a tutor pushed me to speak, make mistakes, and actually improve. I couldn’t hide behind multiple choice anymore. Having to speak face-to-face (even virtually) made a huge difference for me and I’m already feeling more confident. Anyone else go through something like this? Is Duolingo a good way to actually learn a language or just a fun little distraction that deludes us into thinking we're learning?

Confused about bad vs badly
I thought you use adverbs (badly) when the word modified the verb and adjectives (bad) when the word modifird the noun. In this case, I thought we are modifying the word "smells" and should use "badly"
Can someone explain the usage of this/may be NSFW
Don't know if this will be rude, but I was watching Rick and Morty when Rick said to Summer "at least jerking off tracks for my character" and I searched for the usage of track here so I could put it on my flashcards app, but I didn't find it. can someone give me more examples?

what is this phonetic script called
Instead of IPA, Google is using this kind of wacky ad-hoc phonetic script which imo doesn't help at all for the purpose of learning proper pronunciation. Is there even a specific name for this phonetic script?
I learned some other ways to say bye 👋
I'm taking off, I'm stepping out, I'll catch you later, I'll take leave Your turn...📝

Hellooo!!!
I’m sorry if it’s not easy to read D:
I don't learning grammar
While ı learning english ı just learn patterns and some words. I'm not learning grammar. An example ı can write this paragraph to myself and ı don't know it is true or false :D I am just reading english books, watching tv series with eng subtitles, reading something on social media etc. and what do you think ? Is it problem for the future ?

A question about pronoun "it" in this sentence
My teacher told me that the pronoun "it" refers to animals or objects only, but in this sentence, "it" refers to "someone" and someone is a person. Does that statement always hold true? By the way, if I am not sure about the gender of the subject, which pronoun should I use?
Can I say "no temper" to someone who's throwing tantrum?
Is the meaning same as "calm down"?