Gather Around Busy People! I Have a Solution!

Hiya, mates! What have you been up to lately? I am planning my study schedule and I heard some really good news! 

First of all, are you super-busy, like me? You want to learn a language but you have no time? When you have time, you just want sit back and relax, not to sit in front of a table and learn a language? You have a mobile phone? Duolingo is just for you! 

The free language learning app Duolingo offers 14 completed language courses for English speakers, 2 beta languages and 11 languages still "hatching" in their incubator form.

How Does It Work?

It's really simple to use. You set up a profile, choose your target language, set your weekly goals and off you go! Each course in Duolingo is made up of modules which are grouped to form skills.

Duolingo dictates the order in which you need to complete the different modules, with new modules becoming active only once you’ve completed the previous one. This is also the case with individual lessons within each module. You need to complete lesson 1 to be able to progress to lesson 2, and so on. That said, Duolingo allows you to ‘test out of’ individual modules as well as groups of modules(skills).

Pressing the ‘test out’ button lets you take a shortcut if you want to avoid going through the individual lessons or modules that cover material that you’re already familiar with. You need to pass the test to do that, however, because there are no shortcuts in language wearning!

What are the lesson like?

Each lesson in Duolingo is made up of a range of activities, such as translation:

Or this activity where you have to match words to their foreign language equivalents:

New vocabulary is often taught with images, and grammar points are explained in little speech bubbles. There are also listening exercises where you need to type what you hear, and speaking exercises where you say what you hear. This can be quite funny if you use Duolingo on public transport. The app does give you the option to deactivate your microph

one if you’d rather skip the pronunciation exercises.

And there is "Create Classroom" section. You can click there and create a classroom and tell your students its code to join the classroom. You can give them assignments and you can do many classroom activities, like games.

What other apps do you know for language learning? See you in next post! Cheerio!