When learning languages the things you should learn first are food, health and shelter.
Just by knowing a few key phrases in the main categories and the probable answers to those in a language will help you get by a lot better than "I like to ride my bicycle in the rain on the weekends" :D
Thanks - that's not a perspective which had ever occurred to me. I just assumed that learning a new language would require a long period of steady practice, and that's what Duolingo seems to be built for; but if people are often approaching it looking for something more like a glorified tourist phrasebook, I can see why they might complain about the abstract nature of the practice sentences.
Just by knowing a few key phrases in the main categories and the probable answers to those in a language will help you get by a lot better than "I like to ride my bicycle in the rain on the weekends" :D
Functional fluency over grammatical competence.