Transparent Language VS Duolingo? Are you looking for the most useful language learning app? Then get ready for this app review and comparison of these two utterly great applications.
We hope that this post will help you find the best language learning software! Let’s get started!
Transparent Languages: First Look
Transparent Language is a common language learning app that uses interactive activities to improve the level of language learners. It has a rather basic design, but it consists of 101 foreign languages, which is something that many other language apps can’t compete with it in terms of variety.
Transparent Language allows you to create your learning path by choosing your own lessons and activities. The embedded dashboard at the bottom lays out all of the units and lessons in a specific order for you to follow.
The topics of the content change depending on the language you’re learning. Popular languages have more topics than other languages. You can count common topics as “asking for directions,” “at the school,” “travel,” “family,” “shopping,” and more.
Transparent Language touches upon all four aspects of language learning: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Each unit is divided into lessons. To complete each lesson, you have to finish various interesting activities. These activities differ depending on the language, but they have a similar pattern.
Features Of Transparent Language
Recognition Exercises
At the beginning of the lesson, you listen to and watch a short preview of the new vocabulary you will learn. This feature has an auto-play function, which allows learners to sit back and soak in the new vocabulary for the first time. The lessons start by recognizing the new vocabulary and phrases through traditional flashcard exercises like any other language app.
But there was little or no grammar explanation at all. It includes a tiny pop-up that shows a structured pattern, making it too similar to a flashcard app. More features of the app are included in our updated Transparent review.
Pronunciation
Most lessons include a separate section where you can practice your speaking skill by repeating after a native speaker. I found it extremely helpful to learn the correct pronunciation of new vocabulary. There is also a “slo-mo” button to listen to the native audio. Although, it sounds distorted and slowed down, which is an important detail to be fixed.
Writing System
You’ll be asked to write down some words you’ve learned in each lesson. Writing is always a useful way of remembering the words with their correct spelling. You will even have to write diacritic marks in this interface when required.
Assessment
At the end of every unit, you’ll be evaluated on the subject you’ve learned throughout that lesson. Then you get a score based on how many questions you could answer correctly and how many you got wrong. The interesting point is that regardless of your score, you can always continue to the next unit.
Downloadable Material
A real upside to Transparent Language lessons is the ability to download the audio material. Downloading allows you to take the content on the go with you and study with it whenever you want. You can get a list of all the terms you learned in a lesson into a tidy PDF!
Tutoring
Transparent Language offers you an additional tutoring service with Transparent Connect Tutoring. Priced at $79 for 2 sessions and $299 for 8 tutor sessions (includes 3-month access to Transparent Language Online), where you can enjoy 30 minutes of live and personalized tutoring.
- Arabic
- Chinese (Mandarin)
- Farsi
- French
- German
- Italian
- Japanese
- Portuguese (Brazilian)
- Russian
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Vietnamese
Pros & Cons
Pros
- User-friendly for all age groups.
- Opportunity to learn via your native language.
- Includes 100 different languages.
Cons
- No grammar explanations are given.
- Lessons are repetitive.
- Has a high price tag.
Duolingo: First Look
As you know, Duolingo is a free language-learning app, and it is known as the best language learning software, let’s see if it is true.
Duolingo has a great number of language courses. In my opinion, Duolingo is perfect for learning the basics of a new language and having general knowledge of that language.
This famous app is based on the grammar-translation method, a highly criticized language teaching method by language teachers and experts for years. But still, it had a place in every learner’s language journey.
A Duolingo course will teach you many things like sentence structure and new vocabulary if you are a total beginner. Moreover, learning grammar is pretty simple with Duolingo.
But is this app enough to master your language skills, especially speaking? Let’s go through this quick and concise Duolingo review together! If you like, you can also check out this detailed Duolingo review.
Features Of Duolingo
Gamified Approach
Every language course consists of a tree system in Duolingo. As you finish lessons one by one, you reach a checkpoint. As you complete lessons, they turn into gold, but they may crack after some time, so it means you should revise those lessons.
To pass a language course, you must complete all checkpoints. Unfortunately, every time you make a mistake, a heart goes down, and when you have no hearts anymore, you will have to wait until they are filled again.
Motivational Competition
What I like about Duolingo is that you can compete with your friends and 50 random Duolingo users on the leaderboard. The leaderboard is updated every Monday, so you always have a chance to get first place. In Duolingo, there are ten leagues in total.
Only the first 10 learners level up to the next league. In contrast, the last ten learners are demoted back to the previous league.
Lesson Design
In Duolingo, you can practice writing, reading, speaking, and listening in each lesson. The lessons follow the same plan no matter how many checkpoints you have finished. All activities are focused on translating between two languages.
Personally, I am not a fan of this teaching method because there can be grammatical and contextual differences between those languages. In addition, making a translation word by word is not a healthy approach.
Short Stories
On Duolingo, you can read short stories according to your proficiency level. There are various sets of stories that have different topics. The more you read, the more difficult they become. Each story turns into gold after you finish them, but you can reread them anytime.
Podcasts
Podcasts are a free feature of Duolingo. Unfortunately, they are not available in every language. As far as I know, they are available in English, Spanish, and French. If you are studying one of these languages, why don’t you try it?
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Great start for beginners
- Huge language repertoire
- Long-lasting motivation
- Provides language materials
- All the languages are free
Cons
- No topical categorization
- Not suitable for advanced learners
- Repetitive lessons
- Unuseful phrases
- Distracting ads
Transparent Language VS Duolingo: Which App Is Better?
Duolingo has all the features of Transparent Language, even for free! Its game-based teaching approach made the content more fun and somehow less repetitive than its competition. However, the pronunciation or speaking skills may not be as advanced as in Transparent Language.
Learn With The Ling App!
Still not sure which you can choose? If you are still feeling indecisive about which app is the best for you, here is another great language app: The Ling App!
The Ling App is an effective language learning software offering more than 60 language courses. Many platforms have already featured Ling App, and it has been scored 4.8 by thousands of users on Play Store.
It has a gamified teaching method with interactive language practices and activities. You can master your new language with all aspects such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking by using the Ling App for only 10 minutes a day. Thanks to this app, I guarantee that you will become much more motivated to learn a new language. You can get the Ling App from both the App Store and Play Store. What’s more, is that you can try it out for free!
What are you waiting for? Download the Ling App and start learning right now!