Review on Duolingo

Couple of weeks ago, I get to know about the language learning app Duolingo. Duolingo is the world’s largest online language learning platform. It is a multilingual website where learners can learn Russian, Dutch, German, Irish, French, Greek and many other foreign languages. I have used Duolingo to learn French. French is pretty easy to learn using Duolingo. Now let’s have a look how the app works and support the learners to learn a language.

The learning objective of this software is to provide free lesson and effective learning to acquire learner’s target language. Learners can easily use this app by set up a profile, select target language and set their goals. Duolingo is designed by different modules such as basic, phrases, food, animals, weather, and color and so on. Learners can’t access the new module without completing the previous one.

Duolingo is a user friendly website. We can use it in our computer and also in our mobile devices. It is not necessary to creating an account for using this app. Duolingo has taken English language as a translator for learning the target language.   In the begging it doesn’t focus on grammar, only focus on vocabulary which help the learners to learn and remember those easily. Another important thing is audio pronunciation and it helps the learners to learn accent of French language as well. Each lesson in Duolingo is made up of a range of activities such as translation, pair works, sentence making, correct the sentence etc. vocabulary is taught though images, so it helps the learners easily remember those vocabulary. The instruction is very simple that’s why new learners can easily understand. Duolingo also gives you the option to redo all your lessons, even if you got everything right first time around.

Duolingo has different methods which can easily hook the learner’s attention to this app. It has goal setting tool. The goal you can choose vary from ‘casual’ to ‘insane’, depending on how serious you are about learning and how quickly you want to progress. I have picked ‘regular’ goal and it reminds me everyday whether or not I am on track to reach my goal. At the first lesson learners start learning with some vocabulary such as boy, girl, apple, woman etc. So learners can easily done this and feel good and motivate to move the next lesson. Another thing for motivate the learners is its slow pronunciation button of any word or phrase. This slow voice is a very useful feature to exercise the words perfectly. The process of visual learning is also seek learner’s attention to use it regularly. They play it like a game and keep learning everyday.

After learning the target language from this website learners may able to speak, write and identify the language easily. They learn a lot of vocabulary and able to make sentence by those vocabulary. Although Duolingo is a loveable website, but it has also some limitations. It is very essential to interact with the person when learning a language. But Duolingo has lack of interaction. Here learners learn the language only by clicking the task. It doesn’t teach learners interactive communicative skills to communicate in a real context. It is very natural that learners make mistake. In Duolingo there is no option to back the previous question when learners click any wrong answer. A few selected words are provide here and learners need to practice only those words. It has limited vocabulary store that’s why learners can’t learn another vocabulary whatever they want. A few French words are similar to the English words which may confuse the learners such as rich, orange, calm etc. Sometimes the instruction create puzzle among the learners to understand the lesson clearly. Although Duolingo is a toy effect software, but its effect doesn’t work last longer.

The developer should focus on learners need and make a lit bit change to this website. The developer should works on the interaction part as well as the instruction. It can’t be used offline, needs net connection. Sometimes we are in trouble due to data connection and we need to wait for the correct answer and for the next question. So it’s make the learners too much bother. If it is an offline mode, it will be easier for the learners to practice. Apart from some limitations, Duolingo is a great website for those who wants to learn foreign languages easily without any cost. Before knowing about this app, French is an unknown language for me. Now it is easier for me than the previous days to listen, write even speak the French language. I want to conclude by saying one important thing that, we should practice lots of times and do it often otherwise we might forget some French.