About 3 weeks ago I decided to try out Duolingo. I have known about the popular app for a long time now, but never actually gave it a try. My only experience with learning a language was a little bit of French before in school, but I no longer take it as it is not mandatory for me anymore. This year, I decided to take a German class.

That class isn’t until next semester, but I decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to gain some prior knowledge. I remembered Duolingo, and jumped right in.

The good

Duolingo is pretty great for people trying to learn on their own. It’s free, and let’s you move at your own pace. You can also practice as much or as little as you want. This could be both good or bad depending on how good your self control is, but I view it as a good thing. The app is easy to fit into anyone’s schedule being on iOS, Android and web. It has speaking, listening, reading and writing exercises. It also teaches you a variety of topics as you progress down your tree. Everything from spiritual to business can be found there. The gamification is also great. It always you to earn XP, gain levels and keeps track of your practice streak. I find that this helps me quite a lot with maintaining steady practice. The community is also fantastic. Every sentence on the program has a discussion thread, and there is also a discussion section on the site for general discussion (about your target language and Duolingo, of course).

The bad

While I really do like Duolingo, it certainly has it’s weak points. Little to no grammar tips is a big one. On the web, they have tips that you can view optionally at the beginning of every lesson, but the mobile version lacks this. The discussion often has the answers you need, but they can be scattered between many different sentences. The mobile version also lacks the general discussion. I also find that sometimes it has me repeating the same things over and over in practice mode while it never shows me the things I really need to practice on. Additionally I think it would be nice to be able to skip some of the less important lessons that you aren’t really interested in, such as nature or spiritual.

Overall

At the end of the day, I’m pretty happy with Duolingo. From what people have said, it doesn’t look like it will make you fluent, but will give you a good basis for getting there. Should be great if you want to go on a trip, or just have a basic conversation in the language. The gamification is a great motivator and the app is fun to use. I will keep using it.