Duolingo

3:55:00 PM cc 0 Comments

Wanted to try this out since its free and has lots of reviews. Making an account is required and there is an option to sign in and connect with Facebook.

It has a nice simple design and layout. Its mainly a flat light grey or sky blue interface and colors are used to accent achievements and accessible lessons. So far the only languages they have are French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese as well as English. I chose Fr ench first and it lists quite a lot of skills and lessons. It takes a bit to scroll through them all!

First is the basics that is pictured with a egg that has a small crack. There's four parts and each part has a handful of French words that you'll be learning. When you start the lesson there's a bar near the top with 20 markers. You will go through exercises of translation, speaking, and identifying. Its mostly translations. Along the way you will learn the new words and grammar which are indicated by making the words yellow. They will automatically have a speech box explaining it at first, but afterwords you can tap on it to relearn it.

There are 4 hearts at the top right corner which you lose when you answer incorrectly. You will have to redo the lesson when you run out of hearts. You need to reach the entire 20 questions to proceed to the next lesson. When you complete it you gain XP and heart XP. Both of which I'm not sure are for.

This is my first impression of the app so far. I will update this post as I continue to use it.