As a teacher, and polyglot or multingual speaker, I am very happy with this program and the manner it goes about teaching languages. You are not learning by lists or memorization, per se, but by being immersed in the language and learning through association. I used to teach several subjects to gifted and talented children and they learn information best in this manner, as do all children. My husband and best friend are learning Italian for a trip we are all taking to Italy in the further. I learned Italianan as a child much in the way this program teaches, I am working on learning the formal italian so I will not appear rude by giving the familiar when I should be addressing people formally; I am doing this because otherwise Italians think I am just a rude Italian. Italians (and people of other cultures) are very forgiving when they know you are a non-native speaker and are trying to speak their language, so my husband and friend will be treated well when we go. Don’t worry about being perfect, just do your best, and you can always do the lessons over to become more proficient. I’m very happy that I am going to get to improve my language skills and perhaps even learn a bit of a few new languages as we finally travel since we retired. Remember, that you are above the curve of most people, because you are actually trying and working on a language to improve.

My adult daughter purchased a family subscription to DuoLingo so that she, her teenage daughter, and myself could all learn French together. Since I live distantly, this would be a fun way to learn AND have something that just the women of the family did. After almost a year of daily use of the application, I had a book of handwritten notes, three different French-English dictionaries ( one is in order of word most used which is really cool), print outs of verb conjugations….get the picture? I was frustrated that I still did not feel comfortable approaching a fluent speaker of French at work. I had no confidence in spending, writing, or in any way USING the language I was putting so much time and energy into! Then, my wonderful husband, who has been present for the majority of my D.L. Lessons, gave me a subscription to Rosetta Stone for my recent birthday. He lived in LaRochelle, France as a child and I truly believe he had forgotten less of the language than I had up to that point learned. After three weeks with only five days a week classes that are at MY pace, I am using French! I have posted on social media using French. Had a rudementary exchange at work en Français. Have to correct text and typed words for American versus French spelling. I am retaining the phrases because they are applicable to daily life. I hope I am offered the opportunity to leave a review again…I’ll include some of the crazy phases DL had me practice.

With the amount of money that you’re paying for this service, you’d expect that the app would be better built. It’s clunky at best, and unusable at worst. RS touts that it has a unique speech recognition service built in - but it doesn’t always work which can lead to some VERY frustrating experiences. I also dislike that though there are multiple ways to answer questions verbally in a language, RS requires you to answer it their way, or you can’t proceed in the lesson. It’s just not dynamic like they make it seem. Pair that with the other voice recognition issues, it can leave the user scratching their head on what’s causing them to fail. Is it a mic issue again? Am I not saying it the right way? Am I not saying it the RS way? SO FRUSTRATING. Other issues include the terrible user experience/UI. Why is the translation/help button so finicky, especially when I need to review words that we’re learning? Also, why are the playback buttons so small on a mobile device? There were so many times on multiple choice questions where I accidentally selected sentence instead of hitting the replay button, prompting an incorrect answer. You can definitely tell that the product was not created with a mobile-first approach. I just expected better. I suggest everyone looking into purchasing the product, and Rosetta Stone themselves, to look at feedback on Reddit / other forums to see how widespread this situation is. Unfortunate, really.