Duolingo (for iPhone)

Could your learning a new language somehow add value to other people all over the world? It's a strange idea, but one that's playing out when you use the free language learning Web app Duolingo (4 stars), which now has an iPhone app as well. As far as free, mobile apps for language-learning go, the Duolingo iPhone app is easily the best. It's even better in my opinion than a few paid language-learning apps, such as Living Language iPad app (requires $19.99 in-app purchase) and the mobile apps for Babbel (requires a membership from $12.95 per month).

From a user's perspective, Duolingo works like most other language-learning programs. You work through exercises or activities to complete lessons which are part of larger units. The structure is clear, shown on a tree in Duolingo, and the app keeps track of your progress synchronously across both the iPhone app and the Web version. It always remembers where you left off.

Real World Translations
But there's a second component that makes Duolingo different: translation. Once you've successfully completed a number of lessons, you have the option to practice by translating real content from the Web into English. Because you may not have been exposed to every word from this random sample of text, you can always look up the meaning of words while you're translating, without ever leaving the screen. When you finish the translation, Duolingo checks whether other learners have translated the text similarly, and scores you on your agreement. Everyone on Duolingo can also rate one another's translations, which is how Duolingo determines which translation is "best." Duolingo then uses that the translated text to make the Web available in more languages. Translations aren't mandatory to progress in the program, so you can skip them entirely or experiment with them as you feel comfortable. For more experienced speakers of other languages, the translations will likely be the most challenging part.

If you've ever solved a reCAPTCHA (those online test that verify you're a human by having you type two blurry words into a little text box) you've contributed work to a huge and ongoing project, whether you knew it or not. The writing collected by reCAPTCHA is used to correct scanned pages of books and other manuscripts that computers could not read. The same person behind reCAPTCHA is also steering the ship at Duolingo.

Is It Fun? Does It Work?
I've been using Duolingo regularly since it was first released. While using the program to learn German and practice my very-rusty Spanish, I've definitely increased my German vocabulary and have had some success refreshing my memory of verbs and phrases in Spanish. In Spanish, where I moved more quickly to higher levels, I have noticed some inaccuracies here and there in the content, for example, an exercise in which the supposed correct answer didn't necessarily make perfect sense. These instances are not too common, particularly in the lower levels, and when I do see them, I often also see a discussion about them with other community members. Duolingo lets you flag potentially wrong exercise answers and follow the progress as they're discussed and fixed.

The iPhone app is, in several ways, easier to use than the Web app. Typing special characters, like letters with accent marks, takes almost no effort on the iPhone app. Just press and hold the letter you want until other options pop up above it. The Web app handles diacritical marks well (a few options always appear on screen that you can click, so you don't have to learn any difficult keyboard shortcuts), but the iPhone just does it better. Another neat feature: When you see a sentence in the foreign language that you have to translate to English, you can type using voice commands and Siri, thus minimizing the amount of typing you need to do on the tiny screen.

The newest feature is the ability to work on several lessons offline. I got my partner hooked on Duolingo, and with the offline feature, he now uses the app to study while he's commuting underground where there's no Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity. In the app, there's also an option to turn off the microphone-dependent exercises, either temporarily or permanently, in case you don't want to be seen talking to yourself in broken French while riding the New York City subway.

The Duolingo Web app emphasizes writing quite a bit. The iPhone app swaps out about half the writing with an exercise that lets you build a sentence from a group of available words, which you have to put in the right order while also ignoring some words that don't belong at all.

Duolingo paced the activities in the iPhone app superbly. Short sessions work best on mobile devices, and while the content is almost identical to the Web version, enough of it is slightly truncated or tightened up in the iPhone app to let you breeze through the activities just a bit quicker.

Another minor issue for mid-level or experienced speakers of other languages is that Duolingo does not easily let you skip ahead to the point in the program that's right for you. You can test out of sections one at a time, but doing so requires serious time to move far ahead. Some language learning programs, such as Babbel, let you skip around willy-nilly, while others, like TELL ME MORE ($199 for a three-month Web pass, direct) have a thorough adaptive assessment test that makes sure you start at the right point in the program. If you are not a beginner, Duolingo's exercises still work pretty well for practice, but if they're not challenging enough, you'll want to spend more of your time working on translations.

Language and Platform Limitations
Duolingo doesn't support a wide range of languages, and on the iPhone you'll only find Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese for now.

Additionally, the app runs on iPhone only at the moment, although the developers say an Android version is in the works.

Duolingo for Practice
In my months using Duolingo and the Duolingo iPhone app, I can easily say that they are the best free tools for learning a language, outside of moving to a foreign country and hanging out in cafes and parks all day long. The Duolingo iPhone app works simply, handling special characters and some translations with greater ease than even the full Web version. It's an ideal way to practice Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese anywhere you have a few minutes on your hands.

For more recommendations, see The Best Language-Learning Software.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/pq5A64Ocnm8/0,2817,2412322,00.asp

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