https://anchor.fm/hitechpod/embed/episodes/19--How-to-Teach-Language-Online--Duolingo-e14todi


This Week's App: Duolingo


What is Duolingo?

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Duolingo is a language instruction app and website. Their product offers a full suite of learning experiences like reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It's freely available on all of your modern app stores, and you can use it on their website duolingo.com. It's really that easy!

Will's been using this one since before he did his Bachelor's degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (woof, what a title...) and still believes in it even after that.

What can it be used for?

As you heard in the episode, the primary focus of a tool like Duolingo is to help learners improve their literacy. Because the app relies on a lot of text-based engagement (reading/writing) and the speaking portions are helpful but still not conversational, it's not necessarily going to be a replacement for language teachers or full-on language immersion. However, it's definitely good to help as homework and complementary activities to your normal language instruction. In fact, they've been a platform and materials that you can use to help in your learning experiences. We consider it your starting line for teaching a language online.

How do I get started?

We like to keep it simple here: head over to duolingo.com and sign up for a free account! The paid version removes ads and "make(s) faster progress" for learners, but we've used the free account and read over its stipulations so you won't have any problems using it for personal or classroom purposes.

They have a great Help Center that you can use to fill in the gaps but our expectation is that the biggest problem you're going to have is if you teach an unsupported language. The leading American classroom languages (Spanish, German, French) are all supported, but so are many more!

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