5/24/2023 0 Comments Sign in duolingoThe article, titled ‘How silly sentences can help you learn’, argues that although many sentences on the app are weird this is a good thing because it helps lodge them in your memory. DuoLingo has been mercilessly mocked on language forums with many users posting bizarre, nonsensical sentences they have encountered while using the app. I recently reflected on this experience after a friend who is a beginner learner in Spanish and enthusiastic DuoLingo user sent me an article by the app’s producers defending it from critics. Yet by the end of the summer I not only wasn’t fluent, my spoken Chinese was no higher than a lower elementary level or A1 – the lowest rung on the European framework. This emotional blackmail usually had the desired effect, spurring me into action whenever I had a spare moment. On days when I neglected my studies the owl (DuoLingo’s mascot) would email me to express his disapproval and sadness, adding that his mood wouldn’t improve until I took another lesson. Each day the app sent me a message reminding me that my friend had completed more courses and accumulated more points than me. That summer I spent so much time using the app that I actually completed the DuoLingo Chinese tree. The end goal is to unlock an entire ‘tree’ of hundreds of courses. These include placing words in the right order to form sentences and translating Chinese sentences into English. You are also set various challenges which you must pass in order to unlock the next course. Each course exposes you to words and random short sentences related to the topic covered. The app lets you take courses which are split by topics, starting with basic introductions and progressing to more complex themes like business and travel. Out of curiosity I downloaded it and was soon hooked.įor the uninitiated, DuoLingo is an app which turns language learning into a simple and addictive game. A friend who I had met on a trip to China and whose Chinese was more advanced than mine told me he had been using an app which helped him build vocabulary and learn sentence structures. I was a complete beginner in Chinese having spent the previous year attending a few scattered elementary classes and, like many people in my situation, was searching for a magic app that could transport me to fluency. Three summers ago I became addicted to the language learning app DuoLingo.
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