Hello teachers! Today I would like to share with you a really good language-learning website/app that is perfect for students to learn the language by themselves in their spare time. It's called Duolingo.Let's take a look at it together here.
More than 40 different languages are provided on this website, which means that we (or students) can easily find the target language we/they want to learn.
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| From duolingo.com |
To get started, just choose the language you are speaking, and then select the target language you want to learn. Here I choose English as L1 and Spanish as the target language for example.
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| From duolingo.com |
The most impressive thing that I like about Duolingo is that it's a gamified language-learning website/app. It converted the process of language learning into a game. As you can see, the characters are all cartoonish and fun.
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From duolingo.com
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Another good thing about Duolingo is that with every single unit, there is a tip section, which is the 'Guidebook'. Learners can preview and go over the main content in this unit, which is really friendly to learners who are at the beginner level. This also means that students can learn the language by themselves through this website/app, which is a great opportunity to practice students' autonomous learning ability.
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From duolingo.com
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The units also provide different scenarios for the learners to use and practice vocabulary and grammar in different situations. And the difficulty of the unit will increase as the learners' 'level' increases. This is again a good way to increase students' autonomous learning ability since they can pick any units that they want to learn based on their needs. If students think their language proficiency is good enough and this unit is too easy for them, they can just skip the current unit and try any other unit anytime they want. As you can see in the picture below, there are more than 200 units provided.
Ok, so now let's talk about some drawbacks I found during the use of Duolingo. As I said above, this website is really good for learners at the beginner level, this also means that for those advanced learners, the units at the beginning might be too easy and sort of boring to them. The website assumes all learners are beginners and the first 'language test' is unable to skip when you access this website for the first time. I spent about 20-25 mins to do those basic sentence-filling games which makes me feel like a waste of time. And joining the membership (Duolingo plus) also cost money, this is not a drawback but I think you can try the 14-day free trial and decide whether worth to pay for it after. So I suggest you think about these factors before you use it or recommend it to your students.
If you want to know more about Duolingo, check out this website. It contains introductions as well as comments like the pros and cons etc. of Duolingo, you might find it helpful.
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