I thought I'd highlight a cool new app I stumbled across today that I think a lot of you will want to download. Now I don't know about you, but I've always been jealous of those friends and relatives of mine that were multilingual. So much so that I've actually plunked down a nice piece of change on Rosetta Stone and other language aids in an attempt to learn both Spanish and Chinese. While they can be effective if you put the time in, the problem with most language software is the expense...they can be pricey, sometimes in the hundreds of dollars. Wouldn't it be great if there were a free app and website that let you learn a language up to at least an intermediate level without having to make a huge investment? Introducing Duolingo. The free language learning app and website.
Duolingo is changing the way people learn languages.
• It's free, for real. No fees, no ads, no gimmicks. A college-quality education without the price tag.
• It's fun. Lose hearts for answering incorrectly, advance by completing bite-sized lessons, and track your progress with shiny achievements.
• It's constantly improving. We bust out the lab coats regularly and measure how well you learn on Duolingo. Your learning experience only gets better over time.
Now I'm not going to lie to you. Duolingo is not going to be quite as comprehensive as Rosetta Stone. But frankly, for the price...free...it's terrific. It uses the popular method of matching pictures of objects with their matching words and as you progress it ratchets up the difficulty as well as sentence construction. The Duolingo App let's you learn anywhere...and if you really want to go further you can then go to the Duolingo.com website and move up to even more difficulty levels. Duolingo is constantly being updated and improved...it's a constant work in progress...and frankly it's a great tool and resource for everyone to get a taste of learning a foreign language. Right now the offerings are limited to Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and English but more are promised in the future. Link is below.
