LEARNING CHINESE WITH DUOLINGO

FIRST IMPRESSION REVIEW

My achievements

What do I like and don't like about this practice?

I LIKE

CThe gamification aspects and quick lessons provides enough of a push to get people to study when they might not otherwise want to.

C It’s free.

C A clean and technically well-designed product.

I DON’T LIKE

D A large part of the lessons are spent matching sound to pinyin and pinyin to characters. Then, all of a sudden, they expect you to know the meaning of vocabulary without ever teaching it.

D Tones and pronunciation are pretty much completely ignored.

D Recordings for more than one character end up being very choppy and unnatural sounding.

D Even if you complete the course, I doubt you’ll be able to communicate in even the most basic ways.

D Translation exercises don’t include enough variations of correct answers.

What are the major parts of this practice?

Traditional Characters

Duolingo only uses simplified characters. It would be nice to have a feature for those that are interested in learning traditional characters.

Writing Characters

It would beneficial to learn how to write the characters you learn as well.

More Pictures

The Mandarin course relies primarily on character matching and translations. However, it doesn’t use mnemonics techniques such as images to help the learner associate words with their meanings.

What is the experience while studying at Duolingo?

My experience with this course has been great overall. My listening skills and character recognition has greatly improved since I’ve made a conscience effort to practice a little bit every day.Because of that, I’m going to say that Duolingo is currently the best program available to learn a new language for free, especially if you’re considering to learn Chinese Mandarin. While it won’t make you fluent, I believe that this is a great resource if you’re anywhere from beginner to intermediate as well as a great refresher for advanced learners.

Types of chinese exercise :

Selecting the characters