An excelent language learning platform
There are a bunch of apps out there to learn Spanish. However, you will love Duolingo. Duolingo is an excelent language learning platform. Furthermore, it claimed that it is free to use, forever.
It is really fun to use Duolingo, just like playing games. This app’s beautiful yet simple design doesn’t distract our attention from the lessons.
Duolingo doesn’t give you explanation on grammar or the translation of Spanish words in English. There are questions with optional answers with pictures on it if you take the course from the very beginning. There are questions like: Which of these is “the boy”?, with four pictures and Spanish word in each of them.
That’s how Duolingo introduces us to Spanish words. However, you would not found that kind of question in further courses. There will be optional answer. However, you have to guess it.
Duolingo is not only offers Spanish course but it also offers other language courses like Germany, Italy, French, and many more. You only need internet connection and you can have fun playing it without any disturbing from annoying advertisement.
It has listening and speaking course too
The advantage of using Duolingo is that we could exercise our listening and speaking too. By the way, you can disable those options if you are unable to work on those kind of question, for example if you are in a crowded place.
How to get started
You need to download and install this application in an iOS, Android or Windows phone. Choose the language that you want to learn and the language of the user interface.
There are a lot of new languages to choose, especially if you know English. There are Spanish, French, Italian, Turkish, Hebrew, Vietnamese and many more for English speakers.
Add Spanish course for English speaker to learn Spanish. You may take other courses as well.
Pick your daily goal. Allocate your time everyday to use this application effectively. It could be 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes a day. Then, you could set a practice reminder time.
You could start the course from the basic. For those who already know some Spanish, a placement test is available. Take this test for about 5 minutes. Duolingo will determine where you start based on this test.
Set your preference to study. Tap the three vertical dots in the right top corner of the application and open Settings.
It has options to enable the speaking exercise and listening exercise.
You could change your daily goal too. You could compete with your friends by inviting them or adding their duolingo account.
The score do not reflect how competent you are in one language. If you take more than one language course, it will accumulate your scores. Duolingo rate your progress by percentage.
Keep the egg’s color gold
Found the courses in the main screen. The courses divided to some topics like basic, family, food, adjective, and many more.
Notice that it has different color based on your progress. Review the lessons to keep the egg’s color gold. Duolingo will prepare your weakest words. You just have to practice regularly to get fast improvement in Spanish.
You may find that not all of the Spanish topic courses available for you. Do not worry, you could have it after finishing the earlier levels. Just start opening the lessons and do the tasks. If you already know the topic, there are option to test out your ability in that course. Find ‘TEST OUT’ on the right top corner of your screen. If you pass, you could skip these lessons.
The courses
Do not expect to be given the list of the words in English and Spanish. Duolingo will ask you to translate English words to Spanish and vice versa.
However, you will find that in the earlier levels, it lets you choose the right word from some given words. In the beginning of the course, there are pictures with Spanish words below them that you should guess the meaning in English.
You will be given another fun tasks like translate an English sentence to Spanish, translate a Spanish sentence to English, and match words in both languages.
The course has options to enable listening and speaking lessons. The listening lessons consist of writing what you hear. If you can’t hear it for the first time, you could repeat what it said. The slower voice is also available. Just tap the small blue circle with turtle in it.
Enable the speaking exercise so you could get the lessons where the application ask you to read a sentence, if you have no idea how to pronounce it, you could touch the blue button and repeating what it said. Your voice will be graded so you know the progress of your pronunciation.
It is not a one stop application
Duolingo is a great application to learn Spanish. It make you want to know more about the language like why different subjects need different verbs.
Unfortunately, Duolingo doesn’t cover that kind of lessons. It seems that duolingo was designed like that so users feel like they are playing games. This easy to use application familiarize Spanish words and grammar without us feeling like learning Spanish by ourselves is difficult.