Free Inquiry: Pimsleur and More Duolingo
The more I use Duolingo, the more curious I become in finding a better app. I have tried Yabla and am enjoying the video learning and the ability to go back and review words and practice them in different ways. I think the ability to go back and practice is essential. Duolingo really seems to favor quantity over quality with the streaks and the 3 lives per day with the free version. Today I got a notification that I could pay to “freeze my streak” to keep the points. Essentially, I can pay to get out of the daily lesson required to earn a new badge or chest with my streak. This is valuing a streak over genuine learning and sends the message that you do not really need to practice or learn the language, as long as you maintain your streak.
Today, I tried a new app called Pimsleur. It is not a free app, but it does give you one completely free lesson or you can sign up for a 7-day free trial. The app really focuses on conversational and practical language learning skills.
I like the structured nature of the lessons. A voice-over takes the time to walk you through the steps and instructions and tell you what is coming next and what you will be asked to do.
As you can see, the lesson also tells you very explicitly what you will learn over the course of the lesson and is broken into several parts: Speak and Understand, Meet and Greet, Survival Skills, etc. Below are the practice options that you go through during a lesson. You can choose which ones you would like to use for practice or go through step by step as the audio instructs.
Outside of lessons, they also offer more catered practice sessions.
They offer enrichment mini lessons where you can choose to learn about one specific concept at a time, like gendered nouns or restaurant vocabulary.
They also offer speaking practice, where you work on pronunciation and listening only.
I did not get a full impression of the app from my free lesson, but it does seem slightly more catered to conversational fluency than Duolingo with the Speak Practice and the audio guide to focus on listening skills.