My nephew told me about this App, and friends, I am really glad he did. As many of you know I grew up in Germany and I home-school my kiddos. One of my deepest desires is for my kids to converse in German with my family. My success varies among my six children on the spectrum of “he can talk to me about every day things” to “I just get blank stares”, and everywhere in between. I’d say four of my children need to learn from the ground up. Duolingo is perfect for that. With this App you can decide how much time you want to spend each day, and it helps you keep on track, by sending you lovely e-mail messages.

Every lesson teaches by repetition, picture association, and it requires you to translate and speak. You can always redo a lesson. The lessons introduce a little bit of grammar, but it is not grammar heavy. At least not in the beginning, I haven’t gotten very far. I’m currently brushing up on my Spanish as I will be heading to Mexico in November.

So far Duolingo is only offering 6 languages, but they are working on several more. As I have just started I don’t know how deep they get into the language. But it is a great start, and hey, it’s free! Give it a try.

As far as children learning with this app, I would recommend it for age 9 and up, depending on your child’s reading ability. My 10 year old is doing it, and he has no problem reading the instructions and writing in German.

Happy learning!

-Sofija

If you are interested in teaching German to your children, here are some other posts I have done on this topic: German for children (if you like a more traditional book/CD program),  my journey of raising my kids bilingual.