Multilingual Mastery

Online language learning coaching & education

Speech recognition

Pimsleur review: barely keeping with the times

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Back in the days of pre-internet language learning, you had 2 ways to learn a language: attend a class, or buy one of those CD sets that had you go over words and phrases in the language over and over again until you got a hang of it. The CD method is basically this Pimsleur review – yeah, it’s old-school.

This Pimsleur review will talk about what exactly the Pimsleur method is, Pimsleur’s promises, and what to expect if you do choose to buy the course. Is Pimsleur right for you?

Pimsleur review: languages

Right off the bat, Pimsleur boasts a significant number of languages:

  • Albanian
  • Arabic (Eastern)
  • Arabic (Egyptian)
  • Arabic (Modern Standard)
  • Armenian (Western)
  • Armenian (Eastern)
  • Chinese (Cantonese)
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Creole (Haitian)
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Filipino (Tagalog)
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Lithuanian
  • Norwegian
  • Ojibwe
  • Pashto
  • Persian (Dari)
  • Persian (Farsi)
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Portuguese (European)
  • Punjabi
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Spanish (Latin American)
  • Spanish (Castilian)
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Swiss German
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Twi
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu
  • Vietnamese

Pimsleur is an audio-based resource, which means the specific accent of any given language can be very important. So, if a certain “version” of a language is important to you, then Pimsleur may be an excellent match for your needs.

The Pimsleur Method

The Pimsleur Method is based on the research of the late Dr. Paul Pimsleur, whose interest and research were based on memory.

The Pimsleur Method itself is a very strict one: 30 minutes of practice every single day (no more, no less), of pure listening and speaking work. Do not attempt to read or write while you listen.

With this approach, Pimsleur promises you’ll be able to converse at an intermediate level in just 30 days. 30 days of 30 minutes of practice today means Pimsleur promises intermediate-level fluency after just 900 minutes (15 hours) of listening and speaking.

Pimsleur review: lessons

The first 30-minute lesson of every language on Pimsleur is absolutely free. You can work through any language you like, as many times as you like, but it’s only that first lesson. This can give you an idea if the approach is something that you’d like to use, without any financial risk.

For some, this first minute-long snippet is all you need to know about Pimsleur. You’re listening to an audio clip of a man slowly explaining (in English) a basic exchange of basic phrases.

If you find that boring, go to my language app search instead to find something better for you. If the slow pace and the excessive English narration don’t bother you, continue reading this Pimsleur review.

As mentioned early, Pimsleur was designed to be listened to and repeated (a common language learning strategy called “shadowing”) while you’re doing something else, like driving or doing the dishes.

When going through these lessons, you’ll start out with pretty basic, usable phrases: “Excuse me, do you speak English?” and “No, I don’t”, for example. Great for tourist-level learning, and getting a pretty solid background of the language.

Pimsleur will take these phrases apart and really drill you in on each individual aspect of the words and phrases, which is good for absolute beginners. It’s definitely all about training your ear to figure out what you’re listening to and saying. Excellent for listening practice as well as pronunciation – understanding the exact sounds that the language uses, not just the word itself.

Pimsleur’s reading approach

While Pimsleur is primarily focused on practicing speaking conversational phrases, it’s also recommended that you continue on their reading practice (but only after the initial lesson is done).

Here you’ll break down the pronunciation of important words and patterns bit by bit, by preparing you for common pronunciation mistakes as well as comparing the sounds of your target language with the sounds of English.

This is truly a slow, methodical approach to pronunciation via shadowing.

It’s not really reading as much as it is pronunciation, which is confusing. In fact, nothing about Pimsleur’s method could be considered effective reading practice.

Pimsleur review: other activities

The two samples above are really the meat of the Pimsleur app. There are other features (discussed below), however, it should be noted that that is THE Pimsleur Method. The rest of the features mentioned in this Pimsleur review are more of Pimsleur’s attempts to keep up with the times than anything else.

As in, not completely necessary.

For example, here are the practice games Pimsleur uses to help you truly drill the lesson’s vocabulary into your brain.

I do like that they’re trying to make the content just a little more engaging for the 21st century, but remember that Pimsleur is very clear that all these fun and games are after you listen to the initial lesson, not instead of.

While it feels like Pimsleur missed the mark a bit with those games, I do enjoy Pimsleur’s voice coach (it’s a chatbot….anytime you hear a language app talking about chatbots, it’s this).

In the future, I’d really like to see Pimsleur expand this section. Personally, I find this much more engaging than listening to a 30-minute recording that’s mostly in English anyway.

Pimsleur review: price

In the past, Pimsleur was very financially inaccessible – you would plan to spend a few hundred dollars for just a basic language education. Fortunately, time and tech have changed, and Pimsleur has negotiated their prices accordingly.

As aforementioned, you can access the first lesson of any language for free at any time.

If you decide to continue with the Pimsleur Method, you can opt to pay monthly, either for just the language you’re learning or for all languages Pimsleur offers. You can see updated pricing here.

Fortunately, gone are the days of spending $1,000 and waiting for your new CD set to come in the mail (and hoping for the best that you’ll actually use it) – now you can get started instantly!

Pimsleur review: who it’s for

We’ve reached the end of this Pimsleur review, so should you try it?

As I said, if the slow pace, the relaxing cadence, or the heavy English narration are distractions for you, then Pimsleur may not be the best way for you to learn a language. In that case, I would suggest Language Transfer or the LanguagePod101 series.

Or, even simpler, find videos for beginners on YouTube! That free content combined with the Language Reactor Chrome extension…the sky’s the limit.

However, if you enjoyed listening to the videos in this Pimsleur review and are happy to repeat words and phrases until you can have simple conversations, Pimsleur may just be the language app for you. Get your 1-week free trial here!

Mondly vs Duolingo: how to start a language

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Many language learners tend to compare Mondly vs Duolingo, and for good reason! They’re very similar with gamification, tons of languages, and beginner content. So which should you go for, Mondly or Duolingo?

In this Mondly vs Duolingo review, we’ll see the core differences between the two language apps so you can decide which one you should use to start your language learning journey.

Mondly vs Duolingo: how they’re similar

Both platforms function mostly as mobile phone apps but are also available on desktop. They’re both meant for beginners with no or next-to-no knowledge of the language they want to learn. And they both support the following languages:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Latin
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Vietnamese

Both Mondly and Duolingo teach you via short, 5-minute lessons, and also remind you to study every day. Both apps keep track of how many days in a row you’ve studied to help you keep up your motivation, and give you a little map by your username so you can show off how many languages you’re learning.

Both resources also have free and paid options and can be highly addictive.

So, as you can see, both Duolingo and Mondly are very, very similar in a lot of ways. However, this is just about where they each branch off into their own methods of bringing language learning to their audience.

Mondly vs Duolingo: the differences

To start, Mondly also supports the following languages:

  • Afrikaans
  • Bengali
  • Bulgarian
  • Catalan
  • Croatian
  • English (American)
  • English (British)
  • Filipino (Tagalog)
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Persian
  • Slovak
  • Urdu

Duolingo does not cover those languages, however, you can use it to learn:

  • Esperanto
  • Hawaiian
  • High Valyrian
  • Klingon
  • Navajo
  • Russian
  • Swahli
  • Welsh

Using a base language other than English

Besides being able to learn some different languages depending on the app you’re using, there’s a difference in the language you’re learning from as well, which is great for those whose native language is something other than English!

Mondly really excels in this, by offering every language course in each of its 41 languages, which is amazing! You can use Mondly in Hebrew, for example, to learn French, and vice versa. This is not only great for language learners of all backgrounds but is helpful for learning more than one language, as it allows you to immerse yourself in one language while studying another.

Duolingo does offer a similar approach, but not nearly as well. Go to the Duolingo website and select your native language (or the language you want to learn from) and you’ll see which languages are available to you. It’s usually not much, honestly.

Learning foreign language concepts

While Mondly and Duolingo are both primarily a way to get new vocab into your brain, they both teach new vocab by presenting sentences, and you can’t make sentences without grammar! Grammar, though, is another concept entirely that language learners have to set aside time to figure out. Grammar is like the math of language learning.

Duolingo does this pretty well by having forums. Whenever you answer a question, if you get it wrong, you can easily click through to the comment thread on that particular question. There you’ll see all the questions other users have asked, as well as any answers that have been provided.

If your question isn’t answered, ask away! You’ll also find other users sharing resources outside of Duolingo that might be helpful for you, so this is also a good way to expand your tools and find help outside of the app.

Mondly…doesn’t. At least not as well. As you go through your Mondly quizzes, you sometimes have the option to tap a word that you might not understand, and the app will translate it or present you with a conjugation table.

But that’s about as far as Mondly goes. It’s helpful, don’t get me wrong, but I do prefer seeing the conversations that other people have had about sentences on Duolingo. I also like the community aspect of the Duolingo forums. You have other language learners right there with you, trying to figure out the same things that you’re struggling with, as opposed to being all alone.

Syncing between mobile and desktop

Both Mondly and Duolingo are more commonly used as mobile apps, but their content can be accessed on a desktop, too. I know that 99% of you are going to stick to mobile, but I thought I’d touch on this, just for the sake of being thorough.

Going to Duolingo on desktop is pretty much the same thing as mobile, but there are a couple of other features that you won’t find on the app. We’ll talk about those perks in a sec, but for now, just know that you can’t get to them via mobile.

Other than that, your accounts and all your languages will sync seamlessly between desktop and mobile, so you can use whichever device at whatever time you want to work on your Duolingo.

Mondly is also accessible via desktop, and the switch is pretty seamless. However, many of the more special Mondly features, like Augmented Reality, are not available on desktop, for obvious reasons.

Free & paid options

Both Mondly and Duolingo provide you the option to give them your money (surprise, surprise!), but for two completely different reasons.

Duolingo advertises itself as free forever, which is true (technically…there’s a strong theory that Duolingo’s getting money-hungry with the new hearts system). Everything I’m talking about here and what I talked about in my Duolingo review is accessible to everybody for absolutely free.

Fairly recently, Duolingo also introduced a $10-15/month subscription (depending on your commitment) service, called Duolingo Plus, which allows paid users an ad-free experience as well as offline access. There are some other perks as well, but no new content.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: Duolingo is always free

Mondly, on the other hand, is a completely different animal. You can use Mondly for free, but you won’t get a whole lot. You basically get a preview of the app so you can give it a trial run before you invest. It’s definitely not a huge investment – over the long-term, it’s actually cheaper than Duolingo!

Free Mondly members get a few lessons, a few chatbots, and the streak function. After that, you can opt to pay monthly, annually, or just once for life. Plus, you can use my link to get 20% off!

In this context, I’m gonna have to side with the angry Duolingo users who believe Duolingo is using tricky tactics to get everybody to pay. Not to say that I’m getting behind this theory, but in using both Duolingo and Mondly…I’m more of a fan of Mondly being upfront about charging.

Daily reminders

The fact that each app provides daily push notifications to get you practicing your language every day was already mentioned, but they’re not quite equal. If you’re one of the literally millions of language learners that have already used Duolingo, you know you get a quick notification every day to prompt you to open the app and study.

If that works for you, that’s awesome! It never did anything for me, though. Plus, if you just ignore it enough, it gives up on you. Literally. The little Duolingo owl basically says “well, you’re clearly not coming back, so I’m going to stop wasting my time on you”. Ouch! That hurts the ego and is also not very productive to inspire people to get back on the horse.

Mondly is a little different. Yes, it gives you the same kind of reminder, HOWEVER. While Duolingo tells you to do something, anything, Mondly has new lessons every day for you to work on. They might not be new content for you, but you do get a monthly calendar to keep track of every lesson every day.

Once you’ve completed that day’s lesson, you’ll get a little green circle on that day on the calendar. If you complete all the lessons for the week, you get a new weekly quiz. If you complete all the daily and weekly lessons, you’ll also get a new monthly quiz. That is definitely more motivating than a generic message to get back to Duolingo.

Language skill development

While Mondly vs Duolingo have very similar approaches, the meat of the lessons is actually pretty different! Primarily, Duolingo teaches grammar the way we learn languages in school (but more fun, to be fair); Mondly teaches vocabulary and speaking.

Both apps do have other features besides their main lessons to help expand on their users’ educations. For example, Duolingo Stories are very short stories combining reading, listening, a touch of vocab, and even some comprehension questions.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: Duolingo Stories are great for language skills

While Duolingo keeps the approach pretty passive, Mondly is much more effective for your speaking skills. Not only do they offer both chatbots and AR conversations, but you can also opt to say the answers in some of the normal lessons. It’s not a real conversation, but honestly? It’s pretty close.

With the chatbots and the AR (and soon-to-be VR) experiences, it’s really hard to beat Mondly’s approach to conversations with a robot!

Yes, Duolingo does have a speech recognition function in their lessons, but it’s really buggy. It’s totally normal for speech recognition to straight up not work, which is fine, but on Duolingo, you’ll get stuck until it gives up on you. With Mondly, you can just tell it to move on.

With their own directions, I don’t think it reasonable to expect Duolingo to catch up to Mondly; there’s a huge difference between repeating a phrase back once, and contributing to a real conversation!

Besides having conversations in your language with real human beings, I do believe this is the best you can get. The tech isn’t quite 100% just yet (the AR lady isn’t particularly life-like, for example, and the phrases are said by a different robot entirely), but I’m excited to see how Mondly continues to improve on this.

Accessibility

As a language learner (and a human who cares about the ethics and privilege that goes into learning foreign languages), the accessibility of learning a language is an important subject for me.

And when I say accessibility, I don’t mean that free apps are good and expensive apps are bad. Let’s use Mondly and Duolingo as an example.

As I’ve mentioned, while Duolingo is technically free, they are slowly but surely putting all of their users on the heart system. More on this here, but the basic idea is that you’re actively punished for getting questions wrong; if you don’t want that punishment, pay for Plus.

If you’re a Duolingo Plus user (if you pay), you get unlimited hearts and you can focus on learning, without the added pressure of losing hearts (including in the middle of a lesson, at which point you lose your progress and you start over).

Meanwhile, though Mondly is a paid app, it can be cheaper than Duolingo. No trickery, no nothin’.

And don’t even get me started on the non-English base languages: Duolingo offers the ability to learn some languages from non-English languages (though the options aren’t consistent and the content isn’t complete), while Mondly offers the ability to learn all of its languages from all of its languages.

And remember: with Mondly, you can pay for lifetime access once. With Duolingo, the best they can do is annual.

Mondly vs Duolingo: which one is for you?

Whether Duolingo vs Mondly is your preferred app at the moment is a totally personal decision. In my personal opinion, I do think they’re both great starting points for learning languages, though as time goes on Duolingo is getting more restrictive and Mondly is constantly improving.

I’ve used both for long periods of time for different reasons; Duolingo because it’s clearly structured from beginner to intermediate, and Mondly because of the languages available.

Personally? Experiencing both Mondly and Duolingo over the long term, I’d go for Mondly any day (especially considering my 20% off discount!). For one, I’m excited to see their AR blossom and grow into the future tech that all language learners need (while Duolingo seems to consistently become less and less usable without paying).

At the end of the day, I’d recommend you try both out and see what they do for you. Honestly, they both utilize slightly different strategies and methods.

Click here to try Duolingo, or click here for Mondly (including 20% off)!

Duolingo Review: how to use Duolingo in 2023

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Ah, Duolingo. The internet’s most famous place to study foreign languages. It’s cute, it’s bite-sized, and it makes you feel good. All that surface-level stuff aside, does Duolingo work? Is Duolingo good for all types of language learners? We’ll discuss in this Duolingo review.

And if Duolingo is the answer for you, how do you take advantage of everything that it has to offer (which is a lot)? That’s where this Duolingo review comes in.

How to use Duolingo

The first question for this Duolingo review: is Duolingo effective? It can be, as long as you understand what it’s used for. What I mean by that is Duolingo does not offer conversational practice, any independent speaking, reading, or writing. There’s a teeny tiny bit of listening when you’re learning the words, but that’s about it.

1. Overview of Duolingo
2. Lingots
3. Duolingo’s learning path
4. Other features
5. Duolingo Leagues
6. Duolingo Achievements
7. Super Duolingo
8. Duolingo alternatives

That being said, the question of “how effective is Duolingo” is…a mixed bag. For what it does, it can be very effective! Because of the tools it provides (i.e. reminders, gamification, competition), Duolingo is effective for:

  • Learning beginner vocab and beginner-intermediate grammar (in some languages)
  • Forming a daily habit
  • Making language learning fun
  • Creating competition

And, most importantly, making language learning free and accessible to all.

You’re not going to get conversational using just Duolingo, but you can easily get a very solid base in the language, with which you can search elsewhere in the world for more advanced concepts and actually practice your fluency.

Duolingo can be a great start for your language learning in a variety of languages. The languages you can find on Duolingo include:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • Creole
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Esperanto
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hawaiian
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Latin
  • Navajo
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Scottish Gaelic
  • Spanish
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Vietnamese
  • Welsh
  • Yiddish

Duolingo also offers fantasy languages, like Klingon and High Valyrian; suffice to say, you’re more than covered for language learning inspo.

How does Duolingo work?

Duolingo works by providing you with a bunch of little, incremental lessons that are easy to consume, and constantly giving you positive reinforcement via adorable sound effects, awards, and notifications. It absolutely is addicting, and that’s their MO. They get you addicted to coming back and spending even just 5 minutes with them.

On top of that, with Leagues and XP, you can use Duolingo to find motivation via competition against other language learners regardless of target language, goals, and skill level. I’ll go more in-depth about this later.

Lingots

“Lingots”(pronounced ling-guhts) are Duolingo’s currency. You earn lingots by:

  • earning crowns in any skill
  • finishing any skill
  • practicing
  • continuing a streak for a specific number of days
  • finishing a League in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place

When you only have to study on Duolingo for 5 minutes a day, it’s really not hard to see why you’d keep coming back. This is why Duolingo depends heavily on Lingots to keep Duolingo users hooked.

With these lingots, you can buy:

  • streak freezes (if you forget to come back one day, you won’t lose your current streak) (
  • double or nothing (double your wager if you maintain a 7-day streak)
  • extra minutes in timed practices
  • hearts (AKA more practice)

In the past, lingots could be used to buy several other things as well, like outfits for Duo the owl. However, today your options are limited, and this is one of the many updates to Duolingo that users are not happy about.

For free Duolingo users, “hearts” also play a major part in the Duolingo experience; you automatically get 5 hearts; whenever you get a question wrong, you lose a heart.

You can keep learning until you get 5 wrong, and lose all 5 hearts. Once you lose all your hearts, you have three options:

  • quit playing and wait to get 1 heart every 5 hours
  • buy more hearts with lingots
  • earn 1 heart by practicing old skills
  • get Duolingo plus (to be explained later)

Duolingo review: the learning path

Duolingo teaches languages by way of a learning path. These learning paths are made up of bite-sized lessons collected together and organized by skill. Because Duolingo is as gamified as it is, and these lessons are so easy to swallow, it’s not hard to push yourself to learn more and more; not only that, but Duolingo has so many adorable little achievements and reminders that it’s easy to stay in the habit, which is awesome.

Unfortunately, even though these lessons are based on grammatical concepts, they’re not named specifically based on that. For example, the “City” skill doesn’t teach you the name of cities, but words like “store”, “small”, “school”, etc. Kind of confusing. I wish they took the LingoDeer approach of having lesson titles match up with the actual lessons.

Here you can see a lesson about “changes” under the unit about places being…neither of those.

These skills are organized by level, and for the more extensive languages (namely Spanish and French), Duolingo will ease you into a more and more advanced understanding of the language.

For the more extensive languages, there are 5 crowns per skill (on mobile you may have 6 crowns per skill, the last crown, “Legendary”, being a review worth 40 XP). Each of these crowns is broken up into 5 levels, and each of those levels has 10 questions each.

One of the things to keep in mind with Duolingo is that even though there are a ton of languages to learn, not all of them are as complete as some of the more common foreign languages.

That said, more commonly learned languages like Spanish have a significantly longer learning path than something like Finnish.

Regardless of the language, Duolingo is best for language learners with little to no experience in a given language. If you’re an intermediate learner of the more commonly-learned languages, you may also find Duolingo valuable.

This is because of the “Checkpoint” feature of Duolingo. If you’re not a total beginner of the language, you can take and pass Checkpoint Challenges to show Duolingo what you know, and get to the lessons that’ll actually be beneficial to you.

Again, this does depend on the language you’re learning, as well as your abilities. These Checkpoint Challenges are not easy – simple mistakes make a big difference.

Otherwise, Duolingo’s learning path guides you one lesson at a time. Many users complain that they’d like more choices as to what they’re learning at any given time; if you don’t want to take that particular lesson, you’re stuck.

There are other things to do in Duolingo that are not connected to the learning path to give you something else to do, like separate speaking/listening exercises.

Duolingo review: other options

In the past, Duolingo offered users more options: which skills to learn, when to learn them, and how many repetitions they want. With the new learning path, those options are totally gone; users must take the next lesson, or else they can’t move on.

For Super Duolingo users (i.e. paid members) on mobile devices, there are a couple of other options. Timed practice, for example, has users review vocab at breakneck speeds to earn more XP and get to the top of the League leaderboards.

Users might also find timed practice with more advanced content, like translating to transcription (listen to an audio clip and write down what they’re saying).

Suffice to say, Duolingo truly changes things up (albeit inconsistently – they’re known for their A/B testing, so it may take a while for updated exercises to hit your account).

Here’s a tip for you if you want to use Duolingo: try to focus on these kinds of comprehension questions, if you can:

These are excellent because they lead users to use their language skills together with their critical thinking skills to check for understanding.

Simple, brainless, matching exercises will only take you so far, so I’m glad to see these more complex exercises.

As you continue through Duolingo’s learning path, you’ll also work through Duolingo Stories; again, this is one of their better features for genuinely building comprehension skills in an engaging way.

It is worth mentioning that you can commonly get questions wrong because of a typo that isn’t relevant to the actual thing you’re being tested on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten questions wrong because the sentence started with “Julie” and my phone auto-corrected to “Julia”. Super frustrating.

PRO TIP: add the language you’re learning to the keyboard on your phone! This’ll reduce the number of silly autocorrect mistakes.

Duolingo Leagues

Let’s talk about the competition aspect of Duolingo: Duolingo’s leagues exist as yet another level of gamification to keep you coming back to the app.

Everything that you do in Duolingo earns you at least 10 XP. You can earn more by not making any mistakes, reviewing your mistakes, or doing separate speaking/listening exercises (Super Duolingo users only).

This XP is used to pit users in competition with each other for the next week, based on when they started the week.

The purpose of Duolingo’s leagues is to motivate you to practice enough to get to the Diamond League.

Every week, you get pitted against 25 other Duolingo learners (regardless of language, skill level, etc.) who started their Duolingo week at the same time as you. You move forward, backward, or stay in one of 10 leagues from week to week:

  • Bronze
  • Silver
  • Gold
  • Sapphire
  • Ruby
  • Emerald
  • Amethyst
  • Pearl
  • Obsidian
  • Diamond*

Each of these leagues is a week long, which means it’ll take you at least 10 weeks to get to Diamond League. Competing against 25 other language learners, you have a week to:

  • graduate to the next league by finishing in the top 10 (plus earning lingots if you finish in the top 3)
  • stay in your current league by finishing in spots 11-20
  • get demoted to the prior league by finishing in the bottom 5

If you get to the Diamond League, there’s one more challenge for you: stay in that league for 3 weeks to earn all 3 pieces of the Diamond. It won’t be easy, though, especially at the very end. Some users use illegal bots to earn thousands of XP points just to earn the coveted award.

Achievements

As you continue on through Duolingo, you’ll get cute little achievements here and there. Things like following 3 friends, adding a profile picture, maintaining your streak for a varying number of days, etc.

There is one important achievement that really raises the stakes, especially in the Diamond League. This achievement is the Legendary award.

The only way to achieve this is to finish the Diamond League in the #1 position. This means that the Diamond League can get FIERCE! Not to mention stressful.

Sometimes the Diamond League is pretty chill and the winner only had 2,000 XP or so, and sometimes the top 2 players are fighting till the death, and the #1 finishes with something like 10,000 XP.

So yeah, it can get crazy.

How does one land this extra special achievement? I have a couple of tips (that don’t involve the bots that some people absolutely use to cheat) just for this Duolingo review.

  1. Don’t start the league until the last minute
    Leagues are events that restart every week, but timing can be a big deal. Think of others who are lazy or busy, and can’t maintain their streak until the last minute. Try waiting until the very last minute to join the league – you can even use a streak freeze to really put it off and still maintain your streak!
  2. Check out the competition before you get too crazy
    I’ve been in leagues where players have used bots to earn 8,000 XP in the first hour of the league. There’s no point in competing against that. If you find you’re in a league with players who are too competitive, maybe wait til next week.
  3. Work through old lessons or a language you already know
    If your goal is to get as much XP as possible, don’t worry about learning new things. Go through beginner lessons in your language, or if you’re already at an advanced level of another language, go through that tree. Remember, the specific language you’re studying has no weight in Leagues.
  4. Take advantage of your free Duolingo Plus trial
    Duolingo Plus means no ads. Take advantage of the time saved! When you ditch the ads, you save a few seconds each lesson, and that can really add up (or at the very least remove the frustrations of ads when you’re already stressing your XP).

Super Duolingo review

Duolingo’s thing is free education forever. There are no gimmicks, no surprise “if you want to keep learning, pay us!”, nothing, which is great, especially for a large, publicly traded company.

But as time goes on, more and more users have a bad taste in their mouths with Duolingo and believe that they’re trying to focus more on monetizing the site than focusing on providing a great, accessible language learning app.

Whether that’s true or not is not for me to say. With the free app, the only disturbance you’ll get to your language learning is ads. With the hearts system, you’ll also be disrupted if you get 5 questions wrong.

If you really care to get rid of the ads (as well as get a couple of perks), you can opt for Super Duoilingo. If you want to try it out, every account gets free access to Super Duolingo for 14 days. You’ll get to try out:

  • no ads
  • unlimited hearts (i.e. unlimited learning)
  • mistake practice (any exercises you get wrong)
  • unlimited Legendary (do an exercise and your final lesson turns purple)

In my opinion, sticking to the free Duolingo won’t break your language learning experience; however, if you find yourself using it a lot and would benefit from some extra learning tools, there’s no harm in using your free trial.

You can opt for Super Duolingo either in the app or on desktop.

Duolingo alternatives

If after this Duolingo review you’ve decided it doesn’t quite suit your language goals, what are some Duolingo alternatives?

If you like the heavy gamification (easy to use, great colors, and fun sounds/animations), you may prefer Mondly or Drops which are both great for beginners who want to build their foreign language vocabulary.

Or, if you like the usability but want to learn vocabulary that you’ve found or are more relevant to your own personal interests/goals, I’d recommend Lingvist or Quizlet.

Finally, if you’re learning a language from scratch and want a structured path but can’t deal with Duolingo’s heavy gamification, you can try Rosetta Stone or Babbel (this post compares all 3 resources!).

Duolingo review: who it’s for

If you’ve made it this far into this Duolingo review, it’s the moment of truth: will Duolingo help you learn a language?

Duolingo is appropriate if you:

  • want a simple way to practice a language
  • thrive off reminders and happy sounds
  • are just starting out learning a language for the first time
  • know absolutely nothing in the language

However, steer clear if you:

  • are focused on getting conversationally fluent
  • are looking for a high-quality language education
  • get annoyed by constant reminders
  • want to learn sentences you’ll use in real life
  • want explicit grammar instructions (not “figure it out as you go”)

Sold? Click here to get started with Duolingo!

Yabla Review: ugly, but practical

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Yabla is a platform for language learners to find listening practice in all levels of the languages that are currently supported. It’s an awesome way to take in new vocab in context, play games, etc.

What does Yabla do well, and what are its flaws? In this Yabla review, let’s talk about what kind of language learners can really benefit from Yabla and who should give it a shot!

Yabla’s languages

Yabla has a ton of video content at every level imaginable, but it’s not available in many languages, at least not yet. Right now, Yabla is an option for those learning:

  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Spanish

These are all very commonly learned foreign languages, which makes it a great option for many language learners.

Yabla review: getting started

When you first join Yabla, you’ll get a kind of dashboard with a huge list of videos you can watch. It’s kind of overwhelming at first glance, but I suggest you start from the left-hand side, where you can choose things like:

  • collection (not really sure what that means)
  • difficulty
  • region
  • category

I recommend you start with “difficulty” and narrow down your search from there.

Make whatever choices make sense to your language learning and pick a video to watch!

There are a lot of random buttons and options and I don’t know what any of them mean yet (some sort of tutorial would be helpful here) so I just clicked one…and then was overwhelmed by more options!

On this 2000’s era platform, you can immediately see:

  • target language subtitles
  • English subtitles
  • normal options like fast forward, pause, slow down, etc.

From what I can tell, Yabla really wants you to use its platform to learn new vocab using their videos. So we’ll talk about that function before my preferred one: games.

Yabla review: learning vocab

In recent years, it’s been so much easier to learn a language with free videos with resources like Language Reactor and Trancy. Yabla, however, has been around for around 20 years now. So let’s see how Yabla handles things like translations, saving flashcards, etc.

It’s very simple, but it works.

It’s not nearly as pretty as something like Lingopie, and it doesn’t do things like highlight words you’ve selected, but it functions.

It’s also automatically set to autosave your new words as flashcards. There’s no confirmation or anything that it’s happened, so we have to leave the video and actively find the flashcard section to see what that looks like.

Again, this is perfectly functional, but an eyesore.

It’s fine that the flashcards automatically include SO much information, but flashcards are meant to be simple. Especially for beginner vocab like this, do we really need a whole paragraph from the dictionary?

Yabla may want you to use its platform primarily to learn new vocabulary, but it’s not better than (if not significantly worse than) more modern options.

Let’s move on to my favorite part of Yabla: games.

Yabla review: games

The thing that was super confusing to me when I started this Yabla review were the 2 orange buttons under every video: warmup and workout. There doesn’t seem to be a clear explanation as to what those are and when you should use them.

If you click over to the games section of a video, this starts to make more sense.

The warmup is comprised of 3 games: vocab review, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blank.

As you can see, there is a small handful of vocab that Yabla expects you to learn from this particular video, and those words are the focus in these games.

I can see why Yabla has survived the test of time thus far; even if it’s not particularly kind to the eyes, this does keep the vocab interesting, and has you practicing it in a variety of ways (and not just vocab).

Using these words to exercise different language skills is a great approach. So far, I’m a fan.

So let’s see what kind of games are considered a “workout”.

The workout games include scribe (aka dictation), speak (shadowing/voice recognition), and recall.

They’re almost the same premise, but a significant step up in difficulty that is, again, exercising a variety of language skills! Scribe is a combination of listening and writing, speak is speaking, and recall is translating (not a necessary skill in my opinion, but you’re not obligated to play that one).

I told you that my favorite part of Yabla is their games!

And again, the platform itself isn’t great…I think if it was updated to look and feel like a more modern platform, it would most definitely be worth the price (more on that later).

Finally, if you just want to review the transcript (or print it) you can do that, too. There’s no audio linked to it, but you can click any of the vocabulary words to get a translation, which can be helpful.

Yabla review: lessons

While Yabla’s focus is vocabulary, they do have a collection of lessons. These are really just blog posts that connect some grammatical concepts to their already licensed clips.

Great in concept, I just wish they took the extra step to make these grammar points as engaging as their vocabulary. And if they were organized/searchable? Now that would be helpful.

In reality, these topics are random at best. There’s a search function, but I wouldn’t rely on it.

As of now, though, I think you’re probably better off using another website that’s more intentional about teaching you grammar.

For example, if you’re learning Spanish or French, Kwiziq is a much better alternative for grammar. For German grammar, I’d go with German Foundations instead.

Yabla’s prices

Yabla is a paid language learning resource. New users get a 15-day free trial, and then you’ll pay around $10/a month.

You can see updated pricing here.

Despite the aesthetics (or lack thereof) of the platform, if it’s something that you’re motivated to use consistently, I would say the price is worth it.

Yabla review: is it for you?

We’re at the end of this Yabla review, and I do have to say that I approve.

Yabla functions very well, and you will get a quality language education if you can get past the 2000’s era platform (literally, I don’t think it’s changed since they opened for business in 2005).

If you can’t, though, and you want the flexibility of choosing your own videos (Yabla licenses their own videos, so you’re stuck with what they give you), I would keep an eye on Trancy. It’s new, and I can Trancy being better and more accessible as time goes on.

Lingopie is another possible Yabla alternative – it’s not the most stable, but it’s beautiful!

And of course, there’s the crowd favorite, Language Reactor, which is super customizable but it’s missing the games and automatic flashcards that Yabla does so well.

Or if you’ve decided that Yabla is in fact the language learning resource for you, start your 15-day free trial now.

Babbel Review: textbook, but make it modern

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Babbel is a very well-known language learning app that’s been around since 2008. Named after the Tower of Babel (a biblical myth attempting to explain the existence of different languages), Babbel combines educational strategies with real-life conversations to teach users a variety of different languages.

In this Babbel review, let’s talk about how Babbel teaches languages behind-the-scenes, and what kind of language learner can benefit from the Babbel app and Babbel Live.

Babbel is available for learners of the following languages:

  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Indonesian
  • Italian
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Brazilian Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Turkish

So, if you’re learning one of these languages, this Babbel review is right for you!

Babbel review: overview

When starting with Babbel, you can either choose your level yourself, or take Babbel’s assessment. While this isn’t a unique concept, Babbel does take a unique approach.

Now, this is interesting because there’s no objective testing when it comes to specific skills; unlike Busuu (one of Babbel’s direct competitors), you’re not tested on your ability to use grammar correctly, or whether you can fill in the blank. Instead, it’s focused on real-life abilities.

And by real-life abilities, I mean your own perception of your abilities. It’s more of a “would you feel comfortable doing this” than a “how do you appropriately conjugate this verb” kind of thing.

Is this helpful? That’s for you to decide. I appreciate how it reflects how subjective language learning is as a whole, but also respect that some feel the need to be “tested”. 9 times out of 10 I do not trust more objective assessments because languages are simply too complex, so I always suggest taking these things with a grain of salt.

And if you’re not satisfied with this assessment, you’re free to choose your own path anyway.

Babbel’s beginner content starts off with basic vocab, grammar, and pronunciation; the advanced stuff finishes with slang, cultural insights, and more of the subtle aspects of the language. It’s all relevant, real-life stuff, for a variety of different language levels.

And none of it is “required” – you can skip around however you like, whenever you like.

Babbel’s lessons

Starting from Babbel’s dashboard, you’re directed to either learn something new or review your past lessons (assuming you’ve used Babbel in this language in the past).

We’ll start with a new lesson, which is a very quick, bite-sized snack that you can either do real quick when you have 5 minutes to spare, or you can “marathon” as many in a row as you want. Great for the busiest of language learners who want to make good use of their limited time.

As you can see, the interface is very modern and smooth and leads you to use the language in a variety of ways to both keep things interesting and give you a well-rounded education. This approach is a decent reflection of the different ways that language is used, so you’re prepared.

Like anything, there are pros and cons to Babbel’s lesson format.

Pro: you can choose between selecting the provided letters/spaces, or just type them yourself

Con: it automatically turns non-accented letters into the appropriate accents, without even suggesting you make the effort yourself. This causes a lot of bad habits!*

Pro: you’re not using rote memorization: you get context via sentences, imagery, and a native audio recording*

Con: you can’t speed up or skip lessons, or even skip the repeating of phrases after completing them

Honestly, I’d consider the statements with the asterisks to be objectively important; the other two are my own personal preference.

So what about Babbel’s review option? Let’s take a look.

You start by choosing the review style that best meets your goals: flashcards, listening, speaking, or writing.

The review you choose is then powered by spaced repetition, which is a common algorithm across many language learning apps.

Basically, Babbel’s spaced repetition is based on levels; the level that particular word or phrase is on dictates when you’ll see it next, and whether you get it right dictates if it stays on that level or moves around:

  • Level 1: one day
  • Level 2: four days
  • Level 3: seven days
  • Level 4: fourteen days
  • Level 5: sixty days
  • Level 6: six months
  • Correct answer: move up a level
  • Incorrect (first time): maintain level, review again the next day
  • Incorrect (more than once): move down a level, review again the next day

Obviously, this is more useful the more often you use Babbel, but as a whole it’s a great approach. Choose when you want to review, and went you want to learn something new! You’ll theoretically be reviewing more often than you’ll learn, and you also get to choose your method of review each time.

Again, I like the amount of choice involved. Especially in more academic settings, it can feel really stifling when you’re done with a particular topic or lesson, but you have to complete a set number of exercises before you get the option to move on.

Babbel doesn’t put up these obstacles.

Babbel Live

Over recent years, Babbel has grown from just the app and lessons to include live group coaching! This is a separate membership not included with the Babbel app (more on that later), but can really make your Babbel experience more engaging and valuable.

Signing up for a Babbel Live class is just as smooth as the rest of the Babbel experience.

To start, you set the parameters of your level and your schedule. From there, you find a group class on a theme that interests you. Sign up with a couple of clicks, and you’re set! Add this class to your preferred calendar and download the material you’ll be using in class to prepare.

Once you add the class to your calendar, I like that the event includes the link shown in the above video, so you have easy access to all that info.

However, the self-study lessons mentioned in that link don’t seem to relate at all to the theme of the lesson; the theme is the society of the future, but the linked lessons are about professional emails?

I would love to see these themes/topics match up directly with Babbel’s lessons, so you can take the lesson independently, and then actively practice it with a professional tutor and other peers. This would really tie the two options together, as well as help solidify these lessons for language learners who like to practice via conversation.

As of the date on the bottom of this post, Babbel Live is only offered in Spanish, German, French, and Italian.

Babbel’s pricing

Freebie seekers look elsewhere! Babbel is offered exclusively at a monthly membership rate. Depending on your commitment (ranging from monthly to lifetime), the Babbel app is available for $8-15/month. Click here for updated pricing.

As aforementioned, a subscription to the Babbel app does not include Babbel Live – however, a subscription to Babbel Live does include free access to the app; suffice to say, this makes Babbel Live that much more valuable.

At commitments ranging from monthly to annually, Babbel Live offers unlimited group classes! At $50-100/month, it’s honestly a steal. It’s important to note that if you commit to more than a month at a time for a lower per-month rate, you will be paying the full financial commitment at signup.

Click here to learn more about Babbel Live.

At these prices, assuming you will reliably attend a Babbel Live lesson at least once a week, I would absolutely consider the Babbel app and Babbel Live worth the price, even just at the monthly rate.

Of course, whether that’s feasible to you depends on your own lifestyle and your goals.

Babbel review: who it’s for

Babbel is an oldie but a goodie in the language learning industry, and I’m happy to see them growing with the times (i.e. offering live coaching). In general, there’s a lot of potential for language learners of the offered languages, especially those ready to invest both the time and money in Babbel Live. Not to mention Babbel’s recent acquisition of the Toucan Chrome extension.

Because Babbel is still pretty academic, it can feel a little stale if you’re not into the strict, structured approach. If you want to avoid language learning that feels like a textbook, you’ll want to steer clear; maybe try Busuu’s similar approach, or head to the other end of the spectrum with something like Tandem.

However, if you appreciate the structure of a textbook combined with a modern platform and convenient access to conversations with professional tutors, Babbel is a safe bet for your language learning.

Sold? Click here to start with Babbel!