Duolingo Review 2024: Is It Good? Does It Work To Learn Language?

How Much Does Duolingo Cost?

Duolingo Price 2024: Free to use with ads

Duolingo Plus Price 2024: $12.99 per month, $47.99 for a half year upfront, or $79.99 if you pay per year upfront

What to know about Duolingo billing:

Will Duolingo bill monthly or yearly for a subscription to its enhanced program?

You can decide your own billing schedule for Duolingo Plus. There is an option to pay monthly, but you will save money if you pay for several months, or an entire year, upfront.

Is it worth paying for Duolingo Plus?

If you use Duolingo frequently and often find yourself having time to study, but no access to the internet, Duolingo Plus could be a good investment. Compared to other language learning apps, it is cheaper and more mobile friendly, so you will have more opportunities to take advantage of all of Duolingo lessons as well as additional features.

What you get with Duolingo Plus:

Duolingo Plus is ad-free and features the convenience of being able to access learning materials while you’re offline. That means you can study while you’re on the go, or somewhere with a bad internet connection.

It also has a more intuitive progress tracker, so you can understand how quickly you are learning.

Plus, paid Duolingo Plus subscriptions make it possible for other people to use Duolingo for free, so you can know your helping countless others have access to language learning for a few dollars every month.

Can Duolingo plus be shared?

If you are learning a language with a friend or family member, you may be tempted to share a Duolingo Plus Account. This can be problematic since Duolingo tracks your individual progress and skill level. So, your progress is automatically updated across all of the devices you’re logged into through your account. While you can still access the same learning materials, you will have a harder time knowing when and where to start and stop your lessons.

Duolingo Languages:

Duolingo has more than 30 different languages you can learn: Spanish, French, Japanese, German, Korean, Italian, Chinese, Hindi, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch, Latin, Swedish, Irish, Greek, Polish, Norwegian, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Hawaiian, Danish, Indonesian, High Valyrian, Welsh, Finnish, Scottish Gaelic, Romanian, Czech, Swahili, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Klingon, Navajo, Esperanto, and Yiddish.

Part of the reason Duolingo has so many languages to offer is because of the Duolingo Incubator, which allows people who are fluent in another language to build lessons.

That also means that the quality of learning materials from language to language may be different depending on who created them.

Quality of Duolingo courses:

Duolingo teaches you a new language with immediate sentence-building exercises. Although it does offer conversation preparation exercises, the program is not that great in terms of accuracy and usefulness.

Duolingo does teach grammar in a non-structured way. Learners are exposed to different grammar rules as they go as opposed to specific lessons focusing on grammar rules. 

Duolingo stories are also pretty good, and free to access.

One of the most motivating aspects of learning a new language with Duolingo is its “gamification” system, which makes learning feel like you’re playing a video game and earning points. As learners progress and devote time to learning, they earn gems that unlock more features. It can get addictive trying to earn as many gems as you can by completing your Duolingo exercises regularly. However, you can earn gems pretty easily, which is probably not enough time to actually get good language learning practice in.

Duolingo lessons also don’t feel overwhelming. They are broken down into small chunks that you can complete in a few minutes. It’s easy to complete several lessons in one sitting, or just clock a few minutes in and call it a day.

Although five minutes of practice every day can reinforce your knowledge and keep you in the habit of studying, it’s not going to help you become fluent in a foreign language any time soon.

What level of fluency can you get with Duolingo?

It takes a lot to become fluent in a new language. Duolingo is a good introduction to learning another language, however it can likely only get you to an intermediate level of language comprehension and speaking.

Duolingo lessons start off very basic and become progressively harder as you go. So, your skills will improve over time, but there are limits to how well you’ll understand the full language since lessons focus on specific topics and there is no real one-on-one conversation happening between you and another speaker. However, Duolingo does its best to create a well-rounded learning experience that will help give you skills in vocabulary, reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

It does help that Duolingo frequently pulls in material from earlier lessons, so you won’t forget vocabulary words or certain grammar rules that you may have learned months before. There is also a practice option that allows you to go back to specific lessons and review the material. You can also “level up” certain skills you may have completed in the past by going back to the lesson and redoing it without making too many errors.

Read relevant Do Language Learning Apps Truly work? 

User reviews

Here is a breakdown of common pros and cons that regular Duolingo users on Trustpilot report having with the program:

 Duolingo Pros:

• Duolingo makes language learning very accessible

•  It’s free to use

• It’s a good tool to use to review languages you’ve learned previously

•  Lessons go by quickly

• It automatically helps you review material you already learned

• Duolingo makes it easy to stay motivated and keep learning

Duolingo Cons:

•  Learning progress can feel slow

• Ads in the free version can get annoying

• Bugs or glitches with the program can be frustrating

• It does not include straightforward grammar lessons

• The tips or explanations are not always helpful for learners who are having trouble understanding the content

• Typos or different answers are marked as incorrect, which can slow you down

Overall, the Duolingo program has 2.4 out of 5 stars among 497 reviews on Trustpilot, which places it in a poor ranking category, according to the website.

FAQ:

How can I make Duolingo more effective?

The first key is to commit yourself to regular language learning. It is much more effective to practice a new language every day than once a week. Spending a few minutes each day will help you build skills faster and remember more of the material. Read also: How To Learn A New Language Fast To Become Fluent In 3 to 6 Months  

Duolingo also has a few additional features you can use to practice instead of completing lessons. The Duolingo Stories feature allows you to practice reading and listening comprehension, Tinycards are used to drill vocabulary words, and Duolingo Podcasts help you build listening skills. So, even if you’re too busy to sit down and complete a few lessons, you can pop on a podcast and go for a walk, or drill a few vocabulary cards while you wait in line at the store.

You may be wondering how much Duolingo should I do a day?

That largely depends on your learning style, your goals, and which language you’re trying to learn. The U.S. Foreign Service Institute divides languages into learning difficulty, with more difficult languages requiring more time to learn.

For example, if you want to learn French - a relatively easy language to learn, according to the FSI - you should devote about 480 total hours of learning. However you divide up that time in your schedule will depend on what works best for you and how quickly you want to learn the language.

On the other end, more difficult languages require up to 720 hours to learn. It’s up to you how you want to pace yourself, but it is important to maintain a consistent learning schedule to retain the most information possible.

Has anyone actually learned a language with Duolingo?

Most likely no. Duolingo is a good tool to learn a language, but complete fluency comes with more practice and speaking than what Duolingo is capable of providing users. The most critical component it doesn’t have is authentic input and output, meaning you don’t actually communicate with other speakers, just through the Duolingo lessons.

Is Duolingo kid friendly?

The material on Duolingo is bright, colorful, and kid friendly. The lessons are often pretty silly, which is a strategy to help you remember certain language cues, so kids can really enjoy the time they spend on it. Plus, since lessons are relatively short, it’s easy for kids to sit through an entire lesson without getting distracted by something more fun.

Is Duolingo worth the money?

It’s hard to claim that Duolingo is a waste of money since most people can use it for free. It’s certainly a good way to spend a few minutes of your day as you learn a new language, and get more used to hearing the language spoken. If you’re serious about becoming fluent in a new language quickly, consider using a paid program or finding a tutor for more in-depth help.

Duolingo would be a great and fun supplement to other language lessons you may be taking. Whether you’re learning a foreign language in school or through another paid program, Duolingo’s user-friendly interface and gamification features make studying a little more enjoyable at the very least.

Can you get to a certain level with Duolingo?

You can build your language skills up to at least an intermediate level with Duolingo, though other tools may be required in addition to the app. The material gets progressively harder, and you’ll need to depend more on your knowledge of your new language than instructions in your original language in time.

Duolingo’s extra free features, like stories and its podcast, can help take your learning to the next level since they require intermediate to advanced understanding of the language to complete.

How does Duolingo help you stay motivated?

Duolingo uses a points system that rewards you for regular study sessions and the progress you make. It also prompts you with messages and emails to remind you to study that day

In the beginning, you can set a learning goal with Duolingo, and it will track to make sure you practice when you say you will, or remind you to if you don’t.

Also, the lessons are relatively short and easy to complete in one sitting, so learning feels a little easier to accomplish knowing you won’t need to be devoting hours of your day on the app.

In conclusion: Does Duolingo Work?

Duolingo is certainly worth downloading if you’re trying to learn a new language, but you shouldn’t depend on it to make you fluent. Duolingo can be a convenient resource to use since it creates flashcards and lesson reviews for you, instead of you needing to spend time doing that work yourself.

All in all, Duolingo is a good program and makes language learning accessible for anyone. Definitely consider investing in another program, class, or textbook to really get your language learning on track.

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