Hey there! It's been a long time!
Today I'm going to share with you my experience with Duolingo, a language learning app, for more than a year!
I've started learning Korean at Duolingo back in June,2021. At that time, I was already a master in Hangeul, but lacked practice. So, I somehow got to know about this app in the internet.
Honestly speaking, I extremely loved this app's interface and the way it makes us learn new things. The initial chapters were related to Hangeul. That's where I started noticing problems. The 으(eu) vowel sounded like 'pup', and I was confused. I went through the internet and got that the above vowel never sounded like that!
They presented some others too. But they too were extremely problematic. 갓,갇,갔,밝,닭,맛,샤,etc. They never stated the reason why they sounded that way.
Back in June, 2021 there was nothing called any 'Hangeul Alphabet Chart' in the app, but luckily they have it now. They even teach the correct stroke order, and I like that thing a lot!
This app, is never boring and sometimes makes you get addicted to learning, as this app behave like a game. I have never found any bugs in this app, and I guess this is the biggest advantage. Moreover this app is completely free of cost! They even don't show ads (atleast in India).
But, never use this app as a primary source of knowledge, because this app doesn't explain you concepts enough. They do give brief explanation to some topics, but doesn't include some selected topics essential for Korean language learning.
Follow a book or some sort of curriculum, so that you don't get tangled in some mess. I personally use TOPIK levels to learn, and it feels like following an uniform school syllabus. If you're just starting learning Korean, I strongly discourage you to use this application. If you do so, it might make learning Korean even harder. The minimum requirement to use this app is to master Hangeul and pronounciation rules.
After you master Hangeul, it doesn't matter you follow a curriculum or not, but try to learn the pronounciation rules first and then proceed with the curriculum.
This application will prove to be the most useful thing if you do some extra study and can become a burden if you just rely on it.
If you're interested,as of now I have scored 22,738 XP in Korean language in Duolingo. I'm also learning Chinese and Japanese with the respective scores of 4219 XP and 2697 XP.
Thank You for reading until here! If you appreciate it, just drop a heart!