Onward! 6 Ways to Keep Learning After Your Duolingo Course

Onward! 6 Ways to Keep Learning After Your Duolingo Course Onward! 6 Ways to Keep Learning After Your Duolingo Course There are always a few cool kids at school.You know the ones.They wear the latest sneakers,  watch R-rated movies and enjoy a steady diet of the finest Lunchables.And among language students, Duolingo certainly has a reputation as being one of the cool kids.Practically any language learner you meet knows the name, and many learners have at least tried Duolingo, if not completed a whole course.Using  spaced repetition, Duolingo presents students with material in an organized manner designed to maximize learning while minimizing time and effort.While there may be some similar apps  out there, theres nothing quite like Duolingo.But theres just one problem with Duolingo: Eventually, youll complete the course youre working on, and what then?Even cool kids have to finish school and go out into the real world.So youll definitely need a plan for what to do after Duolingo.But dont worry! With a little effort, you can keep your learning on a roll. Why Is It Important to Have a Plan for What to Do After Duolingo?First of all, youll want to have a plan for what to do after Duolingo because without the structure of the lessons, your skills might fade. Duolingo courses offer a clear structure that allows you to study for as little as five minutes a day. This structure is important in that it encourages consistent studying, which you might miss once your course is over. And without this structure, your skills could fade, so you need to figure out some way to prevent this. After all, its easier to never forget the language in the first place than to try to remember it later.Plus, without additional study past Duolingo, you wont progress any further. Duolingo is terrific, but it has its limits. If you stop studying after you complete a Duolingo course, youll miss out on valuable grammar, vocabulary and listening practice, and your skills wont progress past the level Duolingo left you at.Without a clear course of action for what to do after Duolingo, it might be too easy to qu it studying altogether. The only surefire way to never become fluent in your target language is to quit studying. And without Duolingos fun, game-ified learning to keep you focused, this could definitely happen if you dont have a plan in place.Onward! 6 Ways to Keep Learning After Your Duolingo CourseKeep using Duolingo anyway.If you love Duolingo so much that you just cant bear the thought of leaving it behind, theres good news: You dont have to.Even if youve finished a Duolingo course, Duolingo can still help you continue learning.There are two ways you can make this happen.One way is to go back and redo all the lessons until you earn perfect scores in all areas. Your scores will fade over time, so getting them to all be perfect at the same time will require a lot of time and effort. However, the only thing as rewarding as having a perfect score in each category simultaneously may be knowing that perfect score reflects your wealth of knowledge.Another way to keep using Duolingo to study your target language is to use the practice feature on the right-hand side of the page. This feature presents you with familiar Duolingo questions in order to strengthen key words and skills, so its a good way to reinforce what Duolingo taught you and to prevent backsliding.Dive into authentic media to see what you learned in a more authentic context.Authentic media is one of the best ways to put what youve learned from Duolingo into context.Since Duolingos main focus is helping you learn vocabulary and grammar quickly, one thing its lacking is more extended activities. If you want to use your target language in real life, youll need to be able to understand much more than one sentence at a time. Youll also need to understand your language as its actually spoken. Authentic media can help you acquire the necessary skills for this. But dont worry, you dont have to dive in with no help.You can start learning through real-world internet videos on  FluentU.With FluentU, you learn real languagesâ€"the same way that natives  speak them. FluentU has a wide variety of videos, including movie trailers, funny commercials and web series, as you can see here:FluentU App Browse Screen.FluentU has interactive captions that let you tap on any word to see an image, definition, audio and useful examples. Now native language content is within reach with interactive transcripts.Didnt catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? Hover over or tap on the subtitles to instantly view definitions.FluentU Interactive Transcripts You can learn all the vocabulary in any video with FluentUs Quiz Mode. Swipe left or right to see  more examples for the word you’re learning.FluentU Has Quizzes for Every VideoAnd FluentU always keeps track of vocabulary that you’re learning. It uses that vocab to give you a 100% personalized experience by recommending videos and examples.Access the full FluentU library on your web browser or, better yet, learn on the go when you downlo ad the app at the iTunes or Google Play store!You can also go right to the source and find limitless authentic material on  YouTube. YouTubers speak a huge variety of languages, so its easy to find content in your target language.One way to find great YouTubers is to use Socialbakers, which allows you to filter YouTube channels by country. While the top channels may not use the local language, they often do, so you can find some fun study material this way.Read real materials in your target language to see the vocabulary and grammar you learned in a more immersive context.Just like youll need to immerse yourself in authentic audio and video, its important to continue your education by reading longer texts.Most Duolingo texts are quite brief, so if you rely on Duolingo alone, you might not have the skills you need for more in-depth reading.One way to improve your reading is to read online content in your target language. For instance, you might read a magazines website or a news site in your target language. BBC News offers coverage in a delightful array of languages that will suit most language learners.If that seems too daunting, check out  Readlang. Readlang is an excellent tool to transition to reading longer texts in your target language. It allows you to click on words or phrases as youre reading to get a quick translation. You can even turn the words you look up into flashcards.Regardless of what content youre reading and how youre reading it, pay careful attention to what youre struggling with. If you notice youre struggling with a particular rule or theme, go back to the corresponding lesson in Duolingo and do it again. Also, pay attention for words or rules that werent addressed by Duolingo andResearch grammar and vocabulary that werent covered much in your Duolingo course.Duolingo cant possibly cover everything about your target language, so to continue your education past Duolingo, try researching key areas that Duolingo didnt cover as much.For inst ance, what grammar rules were barely touched on that you could stand to learn in more depth? What specialized terminology could you learn? For instance, would you like to learn more regional slang? Would some business vocabulary broaden your horizons?There are resources available that can help you with virtually any content. All you need to do is find the weak points you want to work on.If you want to work on slang, there are plenty of slang dictionaries out there.If you want to work more on grammar, you might try a handy language textbook, like one of many  offered by Barrons.Connect with others in the Duolingo forums.The Duolingo forums  may be your go-to destination when you have questions about the material youve learned on Duolingo, but can they help you keep learning when youve completed a Duolingo course? Absolutely!One way to keep learning your target language through the Duolingo forums is to find native speakers of your target language. People around the world use Duolingo , so you might be able to find a speaker of your target language in the forums who would gladly help you practice your target language in exchange for some help with your native language.This language exchange can give you valuable reading, writing, speaking and/or listening practice, depending on your preferences. Plus, making a friend who speaks your target language can increase your motivation to improve your language skills.Another option for using Duolingo forums to continue learning is to connect with other alumni of your language course. Every day, more students are completing Duolingo courses and are probably in the exact same spot you are, wondering what to do next. If you connect with these students in the forums, you can work together to find the best course of action to continue studying your target language. And best of all, having a study buddy can improve your motivation and keep you accountable. No quitters here!Try a more conventional course to reinforce your skills in a different context and fill in any gaps.Since Duolingo has given you the foundation you need to approach studying your target language confidently, you might now try taking a more conventional course. Conventional courses can help you understand the underlying rules of the language in more depth while reinforcing your skills and filling in any missing material.Oregon State University  is one terrific source for courses that are offered online. Through OSU, language learners can study American Sign Language, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish.If one of your favorite features of Duolingo is its affordability, you might like MIT Open Courseware. MIT Open Courseware offers free online course materials to help students study an array of languages and language-related topics. Languages offered include Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.So once you finish your Duolingo course, keep going with these easy ways to keep your language lear ning on a roll.