Review on Duolingo

Duolingo: Duolingo is a free language learning platform that includes a language learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam. Duolingo launched their activity on November 30, 2011. Currently Duolingo has 200 million users all over the world.

The ultimate goal of Duolingo is to give everyone access to a private tutor experience through technology. Every learner is different in learning from each other. The main objective of the website is to provide free and effective lessons to the learners of different foreign language. Learners of foreign language can create an account with Duolingo or they can sign in through social media and immediately start web software-based language lessons in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Czech, Welsh, Danish, Greek, Esperanto, Irish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Swahili, Klingon, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese and so on.

Duolingo is a user-friendly website where learners of foreign language can easily understand the instruction given in English. There are no subscription fees for the tutorials. It is easily accessible and has a very intuitive user experience design. By logging into Duolingo, user can learn their desired language step by step. By clicking on “home” tab, user can have access to the main page of Duolingo. Duolingo provides speaking practice for advanced users. Duolingo has two section, one is for the new user and another is for those who are already familiar with the language they want to learn. New learners will start their learning from the basic and those who are already familiar will start with some placement test. It has vocabulary section where words can be practiced. Users can gain points as the learn a language, such as_ when they complete a lesson. Skills are considered learned when users complete all the lessons associated with skill. As the goal of Duolingo is to get people learn the language, each skill has “strength” bar that corresponds to the computers estimate of how strong this certain words or construction still exists in the user’s memory.

Leaning language in Duolingo is totally fun and free. Learners can practice speaking, reading, listening and writing as well as vocabulary and grammar skills by answering questions and completing lessons. Learners can start with basic verbs, phrases, and sentences, and learn new words daily. By clicking on words, learners can know how many words Duolingo introduce them to. By clicking on a word, in the right-side user can see more information about the word and also can listen to the word. By clicking on “more details” user can see more information about the word.

Duolingo also has a discussion board, another useful section of any educational website, that allows learners to communicate with other learners from different country. If users have any questions or suggestions to Duolingo, they can post it on the discussion section. There is a upvote and downvote option so that, important discussions can go on the upper section and irrelevant questions remains on the lower position in discussion page. There is also a “troubleshooting” section which is for general question regarding the website itself. “Duolingo for schools”, which allows educators to track their student’s progress, their specific lessons and activities with listening, speaking and reading.

The daily learning goal of Duolingo encourage the learners to complete the basics with enthusiasm. According to an independent study, 34 hours of Duolingo are equivalent to a full semester of language education at an average U.S university. Learners can practice lessons that includes words they have already learned. Learners can identify their learning progress as well. Duolingo helps learners to learn different language through effective language lessons. Its systematic and step by step activities encourages learners to learn a new language. As we live in a global village, learning some new language is necessary. In study to business or in daily life in abroad such kind of language make life easier.

Though Duolingo is a free language learning platform but it has some limitations. Duolingo website as well the app for android is not ad free. An educational platform should not contain ad; thus, learners may lose their concentration and motivation in learning. Duolingo covers 25 most common languages. But learners may have interest in learning some other language, such as_ Bangla, Hindi, Arabic etc. These are not available yet in Duolingo. In practicing listening part, as a new learner sometimes I cannot clearly understand the utterance of some word as I am not a French native. But there is no option to replay the utterance again. In testing language proficiency there is no option to return to the back question as well. Sometimes learners skip some question unintentionally and they cannot answer the previous question. There are also not much variety of words in some section. Again, the loading speed sometimes demotivate the learners in learning certain language. Some different words from English are similar in French that might create confusion to the learners. There also should some clear instruction for basic grammar and vocabulary features to follow.

As Duolingo is a very effective language learning platform it should be ad free, so that the learners can learn language with more concentration and motivation. Developer should work on its loading speed to make Duolingo more effective in learning to the learners. Again, Duolingo should provide variety of word in different section, as well as more clear instruction for the beginners. English words those are similar with French should have clear explanation about the origin of the word, so that learners will be able to overcome their confusion. Gender based words make learners more confused, Duolingo should clear the differences of male-female in French language, such as_ Le/La, Un/Une etc.

With very few limitations Duolingo is doing a great job in the field of teaching language through technology. In this era of information and technology Duolingo made language learning so easy and effective. It helps in different ways to learn language at home with no cost. Its provides an easy instruction to follow and achieve proficiency and goals in language learning.