Duolingo - A great site for learning language

 

A great website for language study is www.duolingo.com . Duolingo is a project created by Carnegie Mellon University that helps a student to learn a new language by asking him or her to help translate the world wide web (Duffy, 2012). The site’s users vote on the best translation and eventually those translations can be published so more internet users can read them in their own languages. The idea behind it is the more you translate the more of the language you will learn.

 

Users can practice their Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian and English (for Spanish speakers) skills. The site exposes users to interesting content and people and it may be the only language learning site that uses crowd sourcing as a tool (Duffy, 2012). An added feature is that the site is free. It is available for computers and has an app for mobile devices.

Users start at the simplest levels of the target language and then progress through levels of difficulty from there. There are tutorials along the way that discuss vocabulary meaning and grammatical concepts.  Another feature that I like is that there is a forum for discussion with other users for each translation exercise.  If a user has a question, he or she can pose the question in the forum and other users will respond.

 

This site is great for learners at all levels because it exposes them to categories of vocabulary and different grammatical concepts. It makes a review for learners that need a little extra practice or it would be great for supplemental practice over summer vacation or as a refresher at the beginning of the school year.

Resource:

Duffy, J. (2012). Duolingo Review. PC Magazine Online. Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402570,00.asp  .