Dual Language Learners in Head Start www. 5 Program performance. Dual Language Learning: What does it. Dual Language Program Developing Bilingual, Bicultural. How does it work?Does Dual Language Education Work? Dual language education takes advantage of. Some research does indicate greater., subject-matter-driven language program. Crago (Eds.), Dual language development. Cedar Brook to test a dual language program. LA Unified plans to expand its dual language immersion program next fall. LA Unified to add more dual language. Dual language immersion programs are still. Duolingo Review & Rating . The website and companion mobile apps remain the best free language- learning program you can find, making it our Editors' Choice. The content is so good that Duolingo ranks among the best software for learning a language overall, even when measured against paid programs. School official questions effectiveness of dual. The focus of dual language. The goal of a transitional middle school dual language immersion program is. How does the admissions and application process work? The Dual Language Program offers the full range of academic coursework with a strong emphasis on language and vocabulary development. Resources for Two-Way Immersion and Dual Language Practitioners. Order 'Dual Language Program Planner. Much of Duolingo's course development is crowdsourced, however, and languages that are in beta can sometimes have bugs or minor errors. That said, Duolingo offers 1. If you need a language- learning program for a language Duolingo doesn't support, I recommend looking to Rosetta Stone first, which is our Editors' Choice among paid language- learning software. But if you're looking to pick up a new language that is in the catalog, I highly recommend using Duolingo and its apps a few minutes every day. It's great on its own or in conjunction with a class or another paid program. Languages Offered Duolingo offers a wide array of language- learning courses for people with different native languages (remember, Duolingo is largely crowdsourced). Speakers of, say, French, have a different selection of language- learning programs than what's offered for English speakers. I'll summarize the language options for English speakers here, noting their state of completion. Duolingo has 1. 5 fully developed courses: Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Irish, Italian, Norwegian (Bokm. These programs are considered very stable. There are another four language- learning courses that are in beta: Hebrew, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. All the languages listed so far are available to study on both the Web app and in the mobile apps. There is a Duolingo app for i. Phone, i. Pad, Android, and Windows Phone. Duolingo also offers seven more courses that are . They are Czech, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Romanian, and Swahili. There's also a Klingon course in development (I exclude languages from fictional works in my total count). You can check on a language's state of completion on Duolingo's Courses pages. Each language program has a card, and if the program is still in development, you'll see a note on the bottom right. Rosetta Stone has courses for 2. English or British English. Because Rosetta Stone is a paid product, you won't find any languages that are half- baked, the way some are in Duolingo. If there's a language you need to learn that's hard to find, I recommend looking to three other language- learning programs. They are Pimsleur Comprehensive, Transparent Language, and Mango Languages. Pimsleur has 5. 0 language programs and is excellent, but it's almost all audio- based. I don't mind that it's audio- based, though some people do. Transparent Language has 1. English and not counting transliterated versions separately. Transparent Language is very self- directed, and it takes some discipline to work through the lessons. If you need a hard- to- find language, though, Transparent probably has it. Mango is my least favorite of these three, but it has programs for 6. Plus, many libraries give patrons access to a Mango account at no cost. I don't recommend starting with Mango as it's not very interactive, but it's an option, if you're in a bind. Price As mentioned, Duolingo is completely free to use. The company's business model relies on cutting deals with websites and other companies that need materials translated, and then letting language- learners do the translations. It sounds crazy, but research shows it works better than a single fluent translator alone (Duolingo got its start in an academic project on crowdsourced translation). The translations are an optional part of the course. It's challenging material, and wonderful for seeing real- world examples of the language you're learning in writing. To give you a sense of how much paid language- learning programs typically cost, a 1. Rosetta Stone membership has a list price of $2. Living Language offers a one- year online package for $1. There's also a Living Language Platinum subscription for $1. Transparent Language charges $1. The audio program Pimsleur Comprehensive costs $1. MP3 downloads, and while it's the least interactive of the language- learning programs I've tested, the pedagogy itself is of very high quality. If you ever dreamed of learning a language while you drive to and from work each day, the all- audio Pimsleur is the package to get. Duolingo's Structure To get access to Duolingo, you can sign up with an email address and password, or you can authenticate via Facebook or Twitter. Then you pick which languages you want to learn from the list. You can sign up for as many languages as you want. I've used Duolingo extensively in Spanish and German, and I've dabbled in a few other languages, too. Whenever I test a language- learning program, however, I try to look at a language I've never learned before. This time, I tried Welsh. The Web app is fun to use and gives you real Web content to practice reading and translating. The exercises cover reading, writing, listening, and speaking, although you can optionally turn off the speaking exercises if you're in a place where talking out loud might be embarrassing or rude. Speaking here means talking into a voice- recognition system. There is no live interaction with other students or teachers in Duolingo. Some language- learning programs offer live e- tutoring via video conference. Rosetta Stone and Living Language are two examples. Duolingo keeps track of your progress and participation as you learn. The Duolingo mobile apps let you pick up your learning where you leave off in the Web app, and vice- versa. When you sign in, a home screen shows you a roadmap of what you're going to learn. That kind of outline may sound like a minor feature, but when it's missing from a language- learning program, it really hurts your ability to learn well and study consistently. Duolingo prompts you to enter a goal, such as studying every day and earning, say, 3. Ten points is equivalent to completing one lesson, which takes me around five minutes. Duolingo watches how often you hit or exceed your goals and rewards you with happy messages on screen and lingots, which are in- app credits you can use to unlock additional content or features. For example, you can buy a double- or- nothing perk that gives you twice as many lingot rewards the next time you hit your goal for a certain number of days in a row. If you are an experienced student, you can test out of various sections. If you don't pass the test, you can't jump ahead. Rather, you have to work through units and lessons in order to progress. You can jump around a little bit within a unit for different types of learning content at the same level of difficulty, but you can't skip ahead from, say, learning basic vocabulary to working on verb tenses. I like this rule about not being able to jump ahead. It gives me clear guidance on what to study next. If you prefer more freedom, especially if you're more experienced in the language you're studying, I recommend Transparent Language Online. It has a really hard placement test that puts you at the right point in the program, and it also lets you skip ahead to any lesson you want. The crowdsourced translation aspect I mentioned earlier is optional, and I'll cover it a bit later. Language- Learning Components The core teaching is extremely clear. The exercises are solid and replicate some of the typical drills you might be familiar with from better- known language software such as Rosetta Stone. Exercises build on one another so that you're introduced to words and concepts at the right point in the program. Typical lessons have multiple- choice questions, listen- and- write exercises, translation exercises, and spoken exercises, too. This structure makes Duolingo really suitable for beginners, which isn't always the case with language- learning programs. Living Language and Mango Languages, for example, are much better suited to students who have learned a little bit of the language previously, because they expose you to a lot of new words and phrases quickly without first giving you the chance to build up to them all. Video- based language learning program Yabla is also probably better suited to more advanced students than complete newbies. There are a few notable aspects of Duolingo that make its exercises great. One is that small typos are tolerated. If you accidentally misspell a word, within reason, the exercise might still be marked correct, though Duolingo will point out the typo. Another helpful feature is how Duolingo presents special characters, such as upside- down question marks and accented characters. Options always appear clickable on screen when they might be relevant, letting you choose them with ease instead of having to learn difficult keyboard shortcuts. One very minor yet very helpful feature is that you can press the Enter key to move forward, rather than click on a Next button. If you manage to complete a course (I finished Spanish), you can redo any of the lessons to keep your skills fresh. Each lesson has a curved bar graph around it that shows your strength in the skill it teaches, so you can practice those that are weak. You can also practice by opting into a series of exercises that Duolingo picks for you, based on which skills are your weakest. Finally, there's an assessment test you can take every so often to measure and keep track of how you're doing with the language overall. If you were an early Duolingo user, one change you might notice is that the hearts system is gone. The heart system was a three- strikes style policy, in which you had a heads- up display with three hearts. Every time you got an exercise wrong, you'd lose a heart. If you lost all your hearts, you had to start the section all over again. Now that hearts are gone, you simply keep working on a section until you answer enough questions right to move forward. Any questions that you get wrong cycle back to you, but you're never kicked out and told to start all over again.
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