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Duolingo: a free language learning game!

Duolingo: a free language learning game!
30 May 2016

Duolingo: a free language learning game!

Привет ребята!

Today, I want to share with you a very useful website and mobile app for learning Russian and many other languages: Duolingo, a free language learning game!

It is absolutely (ad) free and at the moment it features courses for English speakers in 18 languages. Other language combinations are also available or are work in progress.
To test out its quality I went through the Italian course and didn’t find any mistakes or strange or unnatural grammar constructions, and, going through the earlier levels of the Russian version, I wasn’t able to find faults either. If you do find mistakes, though, you can signal them in the comments and someone will get back to you and explain what you don’t understand, or even correct the exercise if there is, indeed, a mistake!

Duolingo operates on the simple principle of repetition, but it combines reading, listening, writing and, if you wish, also speaking, into a game-like exercise guaranteed to keep you coming back regularly to learn more. By default Duolingo also sends you regular push notifications reminding you to keep at it – coming back every day and completing at least one section leads to “streaks” which let you rack up points exponentially for every day you play. Because, of course, language learning requires everyday practice.

The course is organized in stages starting from the most basic, need-to-know phrases and expressions, and step by step gradually rising to the more complicated grammatical constructions and sophisticated language use.
For every section you complete (usually an entire section takes about 15 to 20 minutes, with each subsection taking no longer than 5) you earn experience points and lingots you can use to add features to your home screen, collect bonus points or test your overall learning progress (this feature is not available on the Android OS app, though).
You can also find your friends and compete with them in a race to the top! (Or, well, actually the bottom. Of the page.)

If, like me, you’re studying Russian at Liden & Denz, by the end of the day your brain is overloaded with everything you’ve learned in the course – but Duolingo is a great way to strengthen your vocabulary and increase your level of comfort with all those pesky declinations, tenses and declensions. Also, it’s a much better use of your time than those other games – you know which – and you can compete with your classmates! So give it a whirl! https://www.duolingo.com/

[My username is Tardarius, by the way – feel free to add me]

 

Удачи 🙂

 

This blog was brought to you by Esther, currently studying Russian at Liden and Denz

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