Which Online language learning platform is better? Duolingo or Pimsleur?
Duolingo is a free mobile app that helps you learn languages through interactive games.
The app was created by two former Google employees who wanted to create something fun and educational.
They also wanted to make sure their students had access to quality materials.
Pimsleur is a classic language learning experience that uses audio tapes and books.
Let’s look at complete article on Duolingo Vs Pimsleur!
This method has been around since the 1960s and is considered effective because it focuses on pronunciation rather than grammar.
It can take months for someone to become fluent in a new language, compared to weeks with Duolingo.
What Exactly Is Pimsleur?
The Pimsleur program offers extensive services of teaching vocabulary coverage, real-world conversations, and interactive exercises designed to help you build language fluently.
Beginners will benefit from clear explanations and step-by-step instructions.
Intermediate language learners will enjoy the variety of topics covered and the flexibility of the Pimsleur language programs.
Advanced students will find plenty of proper speaking practice opportunities and useful tools to improve their pronunciation. You’ll learn over 2,500 words and phrases in just 30 hours.
How Does It Work?
The most common description of the Pimsleur method is simply listening and repeating.
This is similar to how people learn languages; you listen to native speakers talk and repeat what they say. But there are some key differences.
For example, while you might hear someone speaking French, you don’t actually understand what they’re saying. You can’t speak French. So you just repeat what you’ve heard.
With the Pimsleur approach, however, you do understand what you’re hearing. And you repeat those words over and over again until you can remember them yourself.
This isn’t the only difference between the Pimsleur and “traditional” approaches to language learning.
There’s also the fact that the Pimsleur Approach doesn’t require a computer. Instead, it uses a tape recorder to record the audio course files.
In addition, the Pimsleur system allows learners to practice vocabulary without having to memorize lists of words.
In fact, the Pimsleur’s themselves didn’t even know exactly how many words there were in each Pimsleur course until later. They had to figure out how to count them on their own.
The Pimsleur Method was developed in the early 1960s by Dr. Paul Pimsleur. He wanted to help people learn foreign languages quickly, but he couldn’t find anything like it anywhere else.
So he designed his own unique Pimsleur language programs. And today, the Pimsleur Method is still used around the world.
What’s Important To Know About Pimsleur?
Pros & Cons
The Pimsleur Method is one of the most popular methods out there. It’s been around since 1953, and it’s still being used today. It costs $200 per month.
Unlike some of the other methods, Pimsleur doesn’t use a textbook.
Instead, it uses audio recordings of native speakers speaking English and teaching you how to pronounce words correctly. You learn phrases and sentences, too.
High Price
This is where things start getting expensive. If you want to take advantage of all the features, like language learning platforms software, books, and even video language courses, you’ll end up spending over $1,500 per year.
Beginner-Friendly Approach
While the Pimsleur Method does teach you basic grammar, it doesn’t teach much else.
There are plenty of other methods out there that do offer a lot more structure and help you build vocabulary.
What Exactly Is Duolingo?
Duolingo is one of the most popular language-learning apps out there.
With over 200 million downloads, it is used by people around the world to learn languages. This app uses a gamification approach to teach languages.
The language courses consist of multiple levels. At each level, you must pass checkpoints along the way. If you fail to do so, you cannot advance to the next level.
You can choose to take a free trial lesson or purchase a subscription.
There are three different types of subscriptions. A monthly subscription costs $5 per month, while a yearly subscription costs $50 per year.
What’s Important To Know About Duolingo?
The language learning app Duolingo recently announced it had raised $70 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.
This makes it one of the biggest startups ever funded by a venture capital firm. But what does this mean for you?
There are already thousands of apps out there that promise to teach you a foreign language — but none of them offer anything like Duolingo.
In fact, the closest competitor is probably Rosetta Stone, which offers language courses that are similar to Duolingo’s.
But while Duolingo might look familiar, it isn’t really just like other language learning courses.
Instead, it uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to help people learn how to speak Spanish — and English.
And unlike some other online language learning platforms, Duolingo doesn’t require you to take classes or pay money upfront. You simply start by choosing a few words you want to learn and watch videos about those words.
Then, every day, Duolingo gives you a set of vocabulary to practice. If you’re struggling, Duolingo provides tips to help you along.
You’ll find plenty of other features, too. For example, Duolingo’s lessons automatically pairs up learners based on common interests, and it keeps track of how much you’ve learned over time.
And since Duolingo focuses on spoken language rather than written language, it won’t make you memorize long lists of grammar rules.
In short, Duolingo lessons focus and teach you a lot faster than traditional methods without sacrificing quality. Plus, Duolingo is completely free. So why haven’t we heard more about it?
Well, Duolingo hasn’t been around for very long. It launched in 2011 and has grown into a huge success. However, it still faces competition from companies such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, Apple iMessage, and others.
What Are The Differences Between The Two Learning Apps?
Duolingo is a popular app that teaches people how to speak foreign languages. But it’s not the only game in town. There are plenty of apps that do the same thing.
And while some of those apps are free, others charge money for the higher quality lessons.
On one hand, you have Duolingo, which is completely free. On the other hand, there’s Pimsleur, which charges $5 per month for access to its online classes.
The two companies are very different. Duolingo is based on teaching languages via games, whereas Pimsleur focuses on online language learning platforms by exposing students to real-world situations.
Duolingo also offers a free version, but it limits what you can learn to just 20 words per day. Pimsleur offers unlimited word lists and allows you to study up to 50 hours per week.
Starting Sentences
Duolingo is one of the most popular apps for learning languages online.
Its founder says that his app doesn’t use the same methods as Pimsleur because he wants to make sure that people are actually learning something more useful with immediate effect.
He explains that while Pimsleur uses the same basic exercises approach, it does so differently, starting off with a simple task like ordering food, rather than having someone speak directly to you.
In addition to giving you a chance to practice speaking, Duolingo presents you with three options for how to complete a task.
You might choose to listen to a recording, read a translation, or write out the words yourself.
What Are The Similarities Between The Two Learning Apps?
Fundamentally, Pimsleur and Duolingo share a lot in common. Both offers higher quality lessons to help people learn languages quickly and easily.
They are both based on the same method: you learn a complete sentence in many different ways, breaking it down into smaller parts and reassembling it again.
In addition, both apps use the same approach: you memorize a sentence in different ways, take it apart, and put it back together.
While Duolingo offers its courses via an application, Pimsleur makes use of mp3 audio files. However, the basic concept behind both approaches is very similar: you learn how to construct the easiest sentences possible.
You will learn how to build up simple phrases, such as asking for directions or ordering food.
In addition, you will learn how to form longer sentences, such as asking about the weather or making an appointment.
Comparing The User Experiences of Both Apps
Duolingo and Pimsleur are both great learning tools, but one might be better suited for certain learners than the other.
This article compares the two language learning programs, highlighting some of the differences between each program.
The main difference between Duolingo and Pimsleur is how much emphasis each places on speaking versus reading.
With Duolingo, you learn mostly by listening and repeating what you hear; however, with Pimsleur, you’re expected to speak out loud every few minutes.
Another big difference between the two programs is where they fall in terms of difficulty. Duolingo tends to make things easy for beginners, while Pimsleur makes things harder.
For example, Duolingo allows you to choose whether you want to practice grammar rules or vocabulary. On the other hand, Pimsleur forces you to start with the grammar.
As far as pronunciation goes, Duolingo focuses on teaching you how to pronounce words correctly, whereas Pimsleur emphasizes correct pronunciation over fluency.
Personal Experiences With Pimsleur
The Pimsleur method was developed over 50 years ago.
The inventor wanted to make it easier for people to learn foreign languages without having to spend years studying at university. His solution was to teach languages via audio recordings.
Each language course contains 30 lessons, each lasting about half an hour.
To help you keep track of what you’ve learned, each lesson includes a quiz. If you fail the quiz, you’ll receive feedback on how to improve.
Each lesson begins with a short introduction to the topic covered in the lesson. There’s no formal grammar teaching here; rather, the emphasis is on pronunciation and vocabulary.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll move on to more complex subjects like reading and writing.
When we first heard about Pimsleur, it sounded like a great idea — a course where you could learn another language without having to spend hours memorizing vocabulary lists and grammar rules.
But as we learned more about the program, we realized that it wasn’t what it seemed. After spending around $200 on the course, we found ourselves frustrated because there was no real explanation of how to speak Japanese.
In the beginning, efforts will likely be made to explain basic grammatical concepts, such as “in a sentence, you need to use words with ‘wa’”.
However, the explanations are often overly simplistic. For example, in one lesson, you’re told “In a sentence, you need to use words that start with ga.”
This is a very basic method of telling you that the particle “wa” indicates the object.
It’s particularly bad luck if you happen to know Japanese already and realize that “wa” actually does the exact same thing.
At some point, Pimsleur will give up explaining the usage of particles altogether and just provide you with fixed expressions.
This isn’t even really teaching you anything; it’s just giving you a list of phrases that you can use whenever you want.
Personal Experiences With Duolingo
Duolingo is one of the most popular apps for learning a foreign language. Its lessons are bite-sized, short, and gamified — offering a convenient, gaming approach to learning a language that makes it easier to stick to.
From first impressions, you know that you’re going to have a fun, less academic experience on the app. You select your preferred language, and then you can either take a test or start off as a beginner.
As you complete lessons, you’ll earn points, which you can use to unlock rewards like stickers and virtual currency.
You’ll progress in communication skills in what seems like a natural way, though sometimes a little stunted. The quality of the lessons depends on the language you chose.
What About The Language Availabilities?
Pimsleur’s courses primarily focus in 51 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Irish Gaelic, Korean, Latin, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and Welsh.
Duolingo offers courses in over 35 languages, including Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Galician, Georgian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Romani, Samoan, Scottish Gaelic, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Welsh, Yiddish, Yoruba, and Zulu.
How Do They Differ In Price?
Duolingo’s main courses are totally free. You don’t even have to register to use it. But if you do want to learn Spanish, French, or Portuguese, there are some extra options.
For example, you can choose to pay $3 per course for Duolingo Plus. This gives you an ad-free experience and allows you an offline lesson downloading option.
The paid version of Duolingo Plus will cost you $9.99 a year, $7.99 a year, or $6.99 every three months. The price is based on how long you subscribe.
If you’re looking for something cheaper, Pimsleur offers both a basic plan and a premium one. Both plans offer 30 hours of audio lessons per week, plus a PDF transcript.
The basic package costs $8.95 a month, while the premium package costs $11.95 a month.