What Do I Do After Duolingo? Tips to Keep Learning!

With more than 500 million users around the globe, Duolingo is the world’s most downloaded education app. It offers free courses at different levels in more than 40 languages both for casual and more intensive learners, and it has become a language-learning sensation. Whether you’ve just discovered the app or you’ve just finished a course and you’re wondering “What do I do after Duolingo?”, you’ve come to the right place.

→Find a Native Tutor Now!←

How does Duolingo work?

If you commute to work by bus and you notice the number of children with their noses glued to their phones is going up these days, don’t rush to make a rant on Facebook about the dangers of modern technology. It turns out they may be learning languages.

Conceived and designed like a game, Duolingo has an attractive interface that encourages learners to keep going. The game is set up like a tree in which every node consists of three lessons. As you work through the game, you get nice trophies with each completed lesson which help you bring the score bar up and build your language tree.

Duolingo presents simple but varied types of activities, including picture matching, listening transcription, translation, and diction exercises. As you advance through the game, you will see that the nodes you’ve already completed start to “decay” and turn to a pale color, which means that the owl (the game’s mascot) is urging you to review old contents. In addition, you can hit the “Practice Weak Skills” button at the bottom of the screen for it to get further practice in your weakest areas.

Advantages and disadvantages of using Duolingo

Duolingo may be the most widely used language app in the world, but this doesn’t mean that it should replace language courses. Below, we’ll delve deep into the pros and cons of using Duolingo, and then we will tell you what you can do to capitalize on what you’ve learned with this app.

Advantages

1. You can play the game whenever you have a spare moment. You don’t need a lot of time to play Duolingo. In fact, completing a couple of lessons is a great way to feel productive as you commute to work or you wait for a medical appointment.

2. Its fun and encouraging reward system will keep you going. The visual appeal of the app, as well as the urge to win, help you keep up your motivation even when you encounter difficult topics.

3. Duolingo’s repertoire of languages is ever-growing. The app offers instruction in widely-spoken languages such as French, German and Spanish, but also lesser-known ones like Esperanto and Ukrainian.

Disadvantages

1. The ‘decaying lessons’ system can be discouraging for some learners. As you work through the game, completed lessons keep ‘decaying’, forcing you to review old contents. While some learners may appreciate the opportunity for revision, others may find it frustrating.

2. The speech recognition software could use some improvement. Many learners have recently complained that the app will often mark your sentences as correct before you’ve finished speaking or even opened your mouth. Indeed, the voice recognition tool has a long way to go.

3. There’s no real feedback. While the device automatically marks your answers as correct or incorrect, there’s no personalized feedback. For example, if there is one specific sound that you find particularly hard to articulate, you will need more personalized help as the app will not recognize what the problem with your diction is.

What to do after Duolingo

Perhaps, the biggest drawback of Duolingo is that since most of the learning you will do on the app comes in decontextualized pieces (e.g. you will learn how to say “The men like cats and the children like horses”), learners will most likely start to naturally forget most of what they’ve learned once they’ve completed their lessons. For this reason, we are going to tell you what you can do to keep your language learning on a roll after Duolingo.

How to consolidate your knowledge of grammar after Duolingo

Finishing a Duolingo course will surely elevate your knowledge of key vocabulary and common phrases. However, since this app is conceived as a game for casual learners, it doesn’t really teach you grammar in an explicit way. If you want to go your intuitive grasp of grammatical concepts and structures after Duolingo, try the following options:

1. Use grammar books. Reading about grammatical rules and exceptions may not be the most exciting thing to do in the world, but when it comes to mastering complex topics, it may be the best thing to do. Besides, it doesn’t have to be an all-text grammar book! General English coursepacks such as Navigate and English File, for example, bring comprehensive grammar sections which are divided into short units that are visually attractive and easy to understand. What’s more, most of these books bring two or three concise exercises for every topic that you can do to check your understanding of the theory you’ve just read.

2. Keep track of your progress. Every time you learn a new topic, make notes in a grammar journal. Whenever possible, simplify highly technical words and provide examples to illustrate every rule and exception. Your notes should be clear and concise, as if you were helping a friend revise for a test. Every once in a while, come back to your notes and expand on them with new insights or advanced uses of specific structures that you may have acquired throughout your learning process.

Improve your Reading and Listening skills after Duolingo

If you want to boost your reading and listening skills (which will in turn expand your vocabulary and grammar skills!), there’s no better thing to do than read, read, read; listen, listen, listen. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Read books. Reading frequently will greatly enhance your understanding of how the target language works, but it’s very important to read things that you find truly interesting and that you would read in your own language. If you don’t find pleasure in the activity, the challenges of reading in a foreign language will probably bring you more frustration than satisfaction. Besides buying print or electronic books in the target language, you can try Readlang, an app that gives you instant translations of words and expressions you don’t know so that you don’t have to stop your reading to look up unknown vocabulary. If you love books but you are mainly interested in practicing your Listening skills, you can subscribe to Audible and find thousands of audiobooks (many of which are narrated by Hollywood stars!).

2. Start with easy texts and progress to more challenging ones. Whether you choose to read or listen, it is important to start with texts that will be just a bit above your current level. If you still consider yourself to be a beginner learner, you can try books for children, comics, adapted books for learners, Young Adult literature, or even cartoon TV channels. You don’t know where to start? Then you can rewatch or reread your favorite stories (whether we are talking about Little House on the Prairie or The Simpsons) but in the target language. This way, you won’t have to stress over not being able to get plot details, and you’ll be able to just focus on the language (and the fun!.)

Improve your Speaking skills with the help of a native teacher

If you don’t want your pronunciation and conversational skills to get rusty after completing a course on Duolingo, the best thing you can do is seek interactions with native speakers. As they say, practice makes perfect. Here’s how taking a personalized course with a native tutor can help you consolidate your speaking abilities:

1. You will learn the real language, not a textbook version of it. Very often, language textbooks present a geographically neutral, unnaturally formal variety of a language that is not really spoken by anyone. By speaking regularly with a native tutor, you’ll be able to familiarize yourself with idiomatic expressions, slang terms, and informal phrases that you wouldn’t find in a traditional coursebook. What is more, you will get lots of exposure to the language from an actual speaker, which will make you much more aware of the sounds and rhythm of said language.

2. You will get expert, personalized feedback. Just like a singing teacher is able to know if someone is out of tune, a native teacher will be able to spot your pronunciation mistakes, tell you if you’re using phrases that don’t sound very natural in their language, and provide extra practice so that you can work on your weaknesses. What is more, since they provide one-to-one or small group sessions (depending on every client’s preferences), you won’t have to wait to get feedback. Our teachers will be able to assess your progress every class and provide relevant insights on your performance to help you improve fast.

→Find a Native Tutor Now!←

If you are about to complete your Duolingo course or just want to boost your level in any language, send us a message now and we’ll pair you up with one of our native teachers for a tailored trial lesson, at no cost. All you have to do is tell us what your learning goals are and we’ll find you the best match to make sure you want to come back for more after your first class.