LANGUAGE APPS REVIEWS

Duolingo has won many awards in recent years. Its website makes the claim that, according to an independent study, an average of 34 hours of Duolingo is equivalent to a full university semester of language education. Since a one-semester university course usually takes more than 34 hours of work, this suggests that Duolingo is more effective than an average university language course. 

With Duolingo there are different levels which you have to progress through. You can skip through the levels by successfully completing tests (“checkpoints”), but if you fail them, then you are “locked” into completing each level until you reach the end of the course. Normally, you have three or four “hearts” per level, which means that you can make three or four mistakes before you fail the level and have to start it again.

In the Russian app, each level is comprised of learning-themed Russian vocabulary or grammar. There are short, one-line grammar explanations, though most of the learning occurs through making mistakes and correcting them. The levels work your reading, writing, and comprehension skills through translation exercises. There is also voice-recognition software which identifies if you are “correctly” pronouncing a word or expression.

Considering that the app is free to download and addictive to use, I would recommend it as a secondary learning aid. It’s great to use when you have ten or twenty minutes to kill, such as while on a commute, as you will certainly learn something interesting in your target language. However, the Russian app is not yet comprehensive, intuitive, or effective enough to be a primary learning resource in its current form.