This week, I tried out Duolingo Super to practice learning French. Every time I was practicing, the app kept asking me to try out a free trial of Duolingo Super for fourteen days, so I decided to try it to see if it would be any different than the regular, ordinary Duolingo. There are a few differences that I have noticed.
For starters, with Duolingo Pro, you have an unlimited number of “hearts,” which means you can make as many mistakes as you want, and still be able to continue with the lesson. I like this feature because it doesn’t boot you from the lesson and make you wait longer to continue practicing.
With Duolingo Pro, you also have “ranks,” which means you can compete against other app users and earn “XP” (or experience points) to level up in your rank from completing lessons. There is a bronze league, a silver league and a gold league. I think this is pretty cool because it makes me motivated to continue learning more French and to see if I can level up higher against other participants.
I noticed myself skipping around different units this week because the “introducing myself” unit seemed too easy for me. I learned a few new things from that unit, but most of the other things I knew. I skipped to the “use the present tense” unit and it seemed to be at the right difficulty level for me. I learned how to say where I live, that I’m a student studying in a certain place, how to ask others where they’re from where they’re studying, where I work, where I live, what languages I speak, and even commands for my dog!
All and all, Duolingo Super is nice but I don’t think it’s worth $119/year. The few differences such as having unlimited “hearts” and ranks is not worth it to me. I’m okay with waiting if I run out of “hearts” for a little while to complete a lesson and not to see my position in ranks, although it does make learning more motivational. In the end, I won’t be using Duolingo Super but it was nice to try it out for a bit.