#duolingoplus

[foreverphantom01]

Learn a language with me for free! Duolingo is fun, and proven to work. Here’s my invite link: https://invite.duolingo.com/BDHTZTB5CWWKSPKSDA4VYLEINM

Learn a language for free

Learn languages by playing a game. It's 100% free, fun, and scientifically proven to work.

I'm tired of the ads and losing hearts on Duolingo, like I would reallyyyyyy appreciate it if anyone would help me out.

[petabytepenguin-blog]

Duolingo Plus - Bad Idea?

The problem with native English speakers is that it’s rarely required of us or we rarely have the desire to, learn another language. This is something that became apparent when I was asked to move unexpectedly to a foreign land. Now, living in Germany, I am forced to speak, read and just generally communicate in a new and foreign tongue. One app that has helped the transition greatly has been Duolingo. But now, the company is adding paid subscriptions to its road-map and while that’s understandable, given the huge amount of people that use the app, I think it’s the wrong move.

My favorite app while adapting to this new way of life has been Google Translate. That’s obviously a very popular tool and with good reason. Google has many years in translation and has some of the best machine learning capabilities of any company on the planet. But their ‘offline’ reliability is patchy at best. Sometimes it’s unable to translate words at all and at other times I wish it had been unable to translate! That goes to show just how hard offline translation is. The simple fact is that there will never be a reliable offline translation platform.

But Duolingo isn’t a translation company. It’s an education company. More specifically, it helps you learn a foreign language. That sounds like a small difference but it’s actually the main reason I think adding paid subscriptions is the wrong move here. Let me explain...

Imagine your going to Spain on holiday. To get into the ‘holiday mood’ you want to learn some Spanish phrases before you go away. Duolingo is the perfect tool for you! Congrats. But when your on your holiday you don’t want to learn the language but rather drink sangria, get a suntan and head to the beach. The only time you’d want to think about language apps is perhaps when you get overcharged at a restaurant or need to explain that you can’t eat peanuts. In those situations you need direct translation and as a result you need something more similar to Google Translate.

The point is; If you need to use language apps so much that you’d be willing to pay for them... You don’t need Duolingo. You want apps that directly translate what you want to say or can help you navigate in the culture. The people that use Duolingo are either learning a language before they go away, in which case their desire to pay monthly for a hobby are slim at best. Or, like myself, they are forced to learn a a language because of circumstances in which case they need to learn the language and will eventually anyway so paying in the meantime makes little to no sense.

Even if somehow paying for Duolingo Plus made learning your chosen language faster, less painful or more fun... which it doesn’t. I just don’t think that the people who want to pay to learn a language need offline access or really care about an add-free experience.

Don’t get me wrong, Duolingo is great. It’s been a massive help for me learning German. But do I need to learn offline? No. Do I care that much about the occasional advert? No. Maybe I’m in the minority and there’s a boatload of people waiting to sign up and begin learning Swedish in a park somewhere. But I don’t think even those guys will be enough to help Duolingo fulfill it’s goal of becoming “ fully self-sustaining”. It’s just a step, sure. But from where I’m sitting it’s a step in the wrong direction.