Duolingo, a good tool for progressing in language?

Duolingo, a good tool for progressing in language?

Duolingo is a language learning app that offers courses in many languages, including English. It uses a fun and interactive approach to help users learn and practice a new language.

English courses on Duolingo are designed for beginners as well as those who want to improve their English skills.

Here are some features and highlights of English courses on Duolingo:

1. Adaptive Levels: Courses are designed to adapt to each user's skill level. Whether you're a beginner or already have some knowledge of English, Duolingo can help you progress at your own pace.
2. Varied exercises: Duolingo offers a variety of interactive exercises, including translation, pronunciation, reading comprehension, and sentence construction exercises. This allows users to practice different language skills in a diverse way.
3. Rewards system: Users earn points and virtual rewards when they successfully complete lessons and exercises. This makes learning more engaging and encourages users to stay motivated.
4. Progress Tracking: Duolingo offers tools to track your progress in learning English. You can see your stats, your time spent on the app, and track the lessons you've completed.
5. Active community: Duolingo also offers an online community where users can interact with each other, ask questions, share tips, and participate in discussions about language learning.

Duolingo: is the application really effective?

Today, learning software is becoming more and more popular. Duolingo allows you to study a language quickly and in a fun way. The question is: does it really offer good language learning? La Route des Langues invites you to analyze the characteristics of the platform, its mode of operation, its advantages and disadvantages to discover its real advantages.

Understand and master a language in just a few minutes a day

Duolingo is an online language learning solution. This is an application that can be used on mobile phones and web browsers. This software has the advantage of being free, but also offers additional paid content.

The software is available in different versions. In the French version you can learn 5 languages. This includes Italian, English, German, Portuguese and Spanish. Concerning the English version, the choice of languages is more diverse. You can learn classic languages and more specific languages (Swahili, Navajo, etc.).

Language learning is structured into different levels (for example, there are 25 levels for English). In each level, different units will be offered to you on specific grammar or vocabulary themes, each composed of different lessons. It also allows you to benefit from fun and short sessions for your writing exercises.

When starting the application, the learner commits to working a certain amount of time per day – between 5 and 20 minutes. After a level test, he is told the number of daily progress in “experience points” to be made to achieve his objective.

Duolingo uses a very fun pedagogy to help learners progress, and uses the same “triggers” as video games to retain participants (we earn points, rewards, etc.)

Operation based on human calculation

Originally, Duolingo was paid for by the contribution of its users via the translation of websites. Despite the paid features that currently exist, the software still offers the same operation.

Designed by engineer Luis von Ahn, Duolingo works similarly to the reCAPTCHA project he developed himself. The application uses the principle of “human calculation”. Concretely, it offers you sentences to translate, which come from content sent by different companies, such as BuzzFeed and CNN. Duolingo is then paid to translate this content. Registering on the platform is therefore equivalent to working for your publishing house.

Course on Duolinguo

Duolingo uses the concept of gamification (in English) or gamification (in French) to offer its modern language courses. Different game mechanics are used depending on the learning situations you face. Your level of human predisposition to gaming will then influence your possibilities of accessing the content offered. These become more relevant as you intensify your practice and increase your level.

As a Duolingo user, you earn points each time you level up in skill after a series of lessons. This is also the case when you perform exercises. Note that you can freely choose the objective you wish to achieve.

There is a wide variety of lessons on the app. Some concern a linguistic domain (conjugation, grammar, expressions, etc.) while others are more semantic (family, sensations, food, etc.). The courses adapt to your learning pedagogy.

On Duolingo, each lesson includes a series of 20 questions. You can find there:

• Translate sentences,
• Image identification,
• Access to dictated sentences (in your target language),
• Access to several multiple choice questionnaires.

The pros and cons of Duolingo

Duolingo has several benefits for people wanting to start learning a foreign language, such as:

• A free basic version,
• Short interactive lessons,
• A fun mode of operation,
• Different features (user clubs, competitions between friends, gems, etc.),
• Daily practice of a target language,
• Pleasant visuals.

However, the application has some disadvantages:

• The software does not offer explanations of the courses (in the form of series of exercises),
• Some sentences may be poorly translated,
• Additional paid features.

In summary, Duolingo is a valuable resource for those looking to learn or improve their English. With its fun approach, its varied exercises and its progress monitoring, it offers an effective and fun way to acquire new language skills.