Thursday 3 July 2014

How to improve your Duolingo experience


Duolingo is amazing and loved by so many. It is no secret that we love it, too. It is accessible, fun, and it gives you the confidence that you need when you see you are making progress. It simply works. But if you include Lexicum into the mix, then you’ve hit the jackpot! A few of our users have discovered that Duolingo is even better when combined with Lexicum.

At Lexicum, we meet many people that love to learn languages. And very often these people, like us, use Duolingo and really like it. Yet on numerous occasions, we hear that it would be nice if the app had a way to collect words. Of course, we understand this. Many people say they want to be able to review the words they have learned. So enter Lexicum! It's nice to have a single place where you can remind yourself how your vocabulary has grown. After all, this is an encouraging way to see how much you have achieved without even noticing it.

Well, actually not having such a feature integrated in Duolingo might not be so bad after all. Sometimes putting a bit of effort is actually to your benefit. Rewriting the word again to add it to your collection makes sure of that. Once again, it shows that you pay attention to how it is spelled, which includes your muscle memory working into the process of learning vocabulary. There is no golden rule of how many times you need to write a word to be able to remember its spelling. Yet surely once more, on top of the times you write it in Duolingo itself, is not too bad.

And your personal Lexicum cloud is the ideal spot to maintain your digital vocabulary book. It is optimised to make learning transparent. You can easily test your vocabulary and see where you stand with it.

This is how it could work. It’s pretty simple. When you use DuoLingo, just make sure you have Lexicum open in the background. When you encounter a word that you feel is worth your attention, just switch over and type and search it in Lexicum's dictionary. The multiple meanings that you get in return let you further explore how exactly you have used it in DuoLingo. Did you understand various possible interpretations and subtleties? Did you make the mental connections that are so widely accepted to find place in the dictionary?

Try it! See if it works for you. Let us know what you think about it. We'd be more than happy to hear that we've helped you improve your learning experience.

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