Perhaps the most popular app among those who want to learn a foreign language. About 150 million people have downloaded Duolingo. Aren’t you among them yet? It’s a good time to start.
What is Duolingo?
It’s an app that helps you learn a language in a fun way. Each lesson consists of exercises on listening, translation, speaking and grammar practice. Exercises are accompanied by theoretical material. All of this together will help to tighten your grammar, increase vocabulary and improve pronunciation.
Pros of
Free access. Access to absolutely all of the training, materials and tasks is absolutely free. Given that other applications of this kind are rarely free, this is an undeniable advantage. Auditioning. First of all, it is good that it is there. Secondly, it’s great that the audio can be listened to both at normal pace and in slow motion, which is invaluable for beginners or for those who have difficulty hearing speech.
Pronunciation. Repeat the phrases you hear and the app will analyze whether you’re doing it right.
Learning materials. Each lesson is accompanied by theory, whether it’s the gender of nouns or the subjunctive mood.
Constant repetition of vocabulary in different lessons. Words will be repeated throughout different levels, which increases the chance of memorizing them.
Minuses
There are disadvantages to even the good stuff and probably the biggest disadvantage of Duolingo is that its value is overrated. On the official website, in the description on Google Market, and in the application itself, you can find the information that 34 hours of practice in Duolingo can replace an entire semester of study at university. Of course, different universities teach differently, but by and large this information is from the series “how to lose weight in a month by 10 kilograms without diets and exercises”. Remember that no app, even the most wonderful, will not replace systematic lessons with a teacher.
Well, a few lesser disadvantages
Not all suggestions make sense and therefore have little applicability in practice. Here is in what life situation can be useful phrase “Your bear drinks beer”? They even made t-shirts like that.
The lessons are not systematic. Even though there are reference materials, you won’t get a clear picture in your head.
There is no practice of the productive skills: writing and speaking. The former is only present as a translation of short sentences, and the latter is essentially pronunciation practice. Too easy for high levels. There isn’t much new vocabulary, so something else is worth trying at levels above Intermediate.
Bottom line
Duolingo is a great app for vocabulary training and it will help you get into the habit of learning every day in an easy and fun way, but don’t expect miracles from it.
