There was a time when students who wished to learn any new language had to search for coaching classes near them. Those who weren't learning a language in the classroom had to depend on CDs and cassette tapes. Most of these traditional methods of language learning are damn time consuming and limited.
Even these solutions didn't offer much engagement. But nowadays, we are blessed with the digital platform which also provides several language learning apps. These apps have grabbed significant attention from the mainstream audience. Language apps act as a complementary way of learning a language to in-person classrooms or private language lessons. Learning new languages can benefit in a number of ways, whether that's in terms of career, personal, or educational goals. But the main problem is most of us don't have time to take in-class courses, nor the budget.
According to the resources, Nowadays, The two most notable ones that people are familiar with are Duolingo and Babbel. Both apps offer flexibility and are available at many affordable prices. So, you are in the absolute right place where our agenda for today is to break down what these language learning apps are all about, what are their strengths and weaknesses in every single perspective and how they actually work. So, let's begin with a comparison of Babble Vs Duolingo. This overview speaks about the major highlights that we should know.
Babbel Vs Duolingo2020: In-Dept Comparison | Which one is Best?
Babbel-Overview
Babbel is a paid language online platform that offers 14 different and in-demand languages. Inside this, you will find all vocabulary lessons, grammar courses, and basic phrases for conversations that are specifically designed for new learners, beginners, and intermediates.
Even though this platform is paid, when it gets compared with Rosetta Stone then Babble is always preferable and cheaper. Basically Rosetta Stone costs $295+ a year while the $80-150 cost for Babbel. The company is based in Berlin, Germany.
Babbel Review: My Personal Experience With Babbel [MUST READ]- The pricing strategy is $12.95/month to $83.40/year
- The structure mainly focuses on the use of words and some conversation.
- There are a total of 14 languages options are available
- The platform is much interactive
- The main aim is to help beginners to learn conversation phrases
Duolingo-Overview
Duolingo is a free language learning app. These platforms offer over 31 different language options for new learners and English speakers. Likewise, the learner will find vocabulary cards, grammar lessons, multiple-choice questions, and many more interesting options in this learning process.
The main agenda of this language learning app is building a strong foundation, especially for beginners, like for their vocabulary and grammar skills, while Babbel also plays a significant role by helping with all the basic conversation. According to the count of 2019, the company has over 150MM+ registered learners and is headquartered in San Francisco, USA.
- It's available for free of cost
- Structure: Learning new vocabulary and grammar
- Language options: 31 languages available for English speakers
- Interactive: Low-Medium
- Focuses mainly on grammar and vocabulary
Babbel Vs Duolingo- How they work?
With Babble, users get started by choosing which language they want to learn, as you'll be directed to the appropriate language course. There are limited languages available over this app. The app also requires you to pay per each language, so if you want to learn Spanish and English, you'll have to pay twice.
To determine what language proficiency you have, Babbel designed a test in which the system asks five different questions to better judge at what level you are now as a beginner. This has an appearance in the same format as the lessons inside the language course, but they're strategically and intentionally selected to determine your language skills. It's quite difficult to determine whether these questions are actually designed for a proper understanding of your proficiency or whether it's just Babbel trying to gather more and more information from you. Whatever the reason but the outcomes are useful for a learner for their betterment.
When learners finish the first trial fundamental lesson, the user will get an option so they can select a paid plan to continue further lessons. From 2019 onwards, Babbel offers four different options, which include things like a monthly plan, another one which is a 3-month plan, a 6-month plan, and a 12-month plan. The basic rule for this platform is learners have to pay upfront if the payment plan is not one month.
Before jumping into language lessons Duolingo provides you a test of few questions. This test determines your interest and proficiency in the selected language. This test is optional. If a learner is just going to start to learn a new language, this is not compulsory and the learner can just skip this section of testing proficiency. The user interface is so responsive that the user can connect with it easily.
As mentioned earlier, its main focus on helping language learners for developing basic vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structures. The learner will begin this process by understanding the words and their meanings. It helps in the development of a strong foundation for the further learning process.
After attending many series of vocabulary lessons for your decided language, Duolingo will now specifically focus on sentence formations and fundamentals of grammar. They provide fill-in-the-blank questions and achieve this target. direct sentence translations, and matching words together are involved in this series. Step by step learning process avoids the confusion of learners.
One of the key differences between Babbel and Duolingo is that Duolingo offers a gamification experience. Amazing! Isn't it? Some have stated that this is the exact reason why people enjoy learning more on Duolingo compared to others because it feels fun and interactive. This interactive feature of this platform helps to create more enthusiasm among learners.
Babbel Vs Duolingo- Features
Features of products and services play a super vital role while choosing the best option. Let's have a glance at the Features of Babble and Duolingo.
The lessons in this app are designed in such a way that users can relate it in day to day life. Babbel helps the learner to perfect their grammar skills and offers lessons that users can start to practice right away in day to day conversations. Babbel starts with practically used action words and phrases so one can understand it quickly. By starting with learning how to order food or ask for directions, one can build their fundamentals of language skills around real-life interactions.
Babbel provides opportunities through different offers to practice pronouncing words and understanding their meanings from the very beginning. This app offered learners some audio tracks which can be the stepping stone in this learning process. These tracks prove so helpful for understanding the correct pronunciation as they avoid the robotic voice recordings and artificial audio tracks. This is a unique feature of this app.
You will constantly be using what you have already learned in future lessons, so you won't forget any material that you learn early on. Also, the app is able to analyze your strengths and weaknesses as you go, so it won't repeat the things you have already mastered over and over again. This format allows you to use the words that you have previously learned in the right context and practice with them in future lessons. Babbel also helps in breaking down difficult grammatical concepts that use tips in your native language. It also includes pop-ups alongside each lesson which in turn helps you understand the content and context of the words.
The section of tips and tricks is so different and amazing. One can also be accessed separately on a different page for their sec of convenience. Because our brains are wired to analyze new languages as we learn them, Babbel's section of tips and tricks help you comprehend important concepts that may be found as difficult to grasp in immersion programs.
Duolingo
This puts less pressure on you to learn a language in a specific amount of time and one can schedule it according to there convenience as you aren't charged month-to-month. Also, if you start learning a language online and find that you don't like it, you haven't lost anything. Over 80 language choices (and counting), including fun ones like High Valyrian and Klingon.
Duolingo prefers crowdsourcing which keeps the app up to date by keeping the opinions of various users in mind so they can continuously improve upon their lesson plans. Duolingo is constantly having some surveys which lead to improving and adding in languages that other apps don't offer any lessons on.
When a user opens this app, you can see the page displaying the number of points you have received so far, the streak of days that you have used the app, and how much of the course you have completed by clicking on the "course progress" button on your sidebar. Whether you are using Duolingo PC setup or you're on the app, your home page will provide you information regarding where you are in your learning journey and how many lessons you have completed like how far you have to go in this journey. As you enter into the advance section by completing the lessons in series, you can track your progress with shiny achievement notifications which generates another level of satisfaction and happiness for the learner.
The learning process of Duolingo is very interactive and similar to playing games. This made the learner stick to the learning process. A new learner has three hearts at the beginning of each exercise, each of which stands for a mistake that you can make leads to incorrect options. The exercises are made up of translations to and from the language you're learning, listening to words, and then writing them down, matching exercises, and speaking exercises. If you make two or more mistakes (or lose two or more hearts) then as a punishment, you should restart the exercise from the beginning.
Because Duolingo is free, you can study multiple languages through lessons at the same time at no additional cost. You can even opt to learn multiple languages at a time simultaneously and also save your progress while you switch between them.
Babbel Vs Duolingo: The Pricing Battle
Babbel is a paid online language learning platform. And this can cost you anywhere from $6.95 to $12.95 per month (per language), with costs going down if you pay for several months at once. It has a 20-day money-back guarantee, several free introductory lessons, and over a dozen languages.
Duolingo Plus costs $9.99 per month, with a discount if you pay for a year upfront. The Plus membership removes ads, lets you download lessons to do offline in the mobile app, and allows you to use the mobile app to an unlimited degree.
Babble Vs Duolingo- Pros and Cons
Babble Cons-
Duolingo Pros-
Duolingo Cons-
- The lessons provided are much useful in day to day life
- Provides learner a great quality of audio tracks
- Every lesson follow a sequential pattern
- Provision of Tips & Tricks
- Availability of a limited number of language courses
- A learner has to pay for each and every language course
- Not an ideal solution for higher intermediate or even for advanced learners who want to master in that
Frequently asked questions- FAQs
This section is very important as it always gives you that important piece of information which you are looking for. Let's have a look on The most frequently asked questions before leading towards the result-
- Courses are available free of cost
- Duolingo grabs users' opinions and contributions while adding new languages to its library
- It allows a user to maintain study time
- Gamified lessons serve as a motivation and attract learners who are interested in a gaming format
- It allows you to take free different language lessons simultaneously.
👉Can you really learn a language with Babbel or Duolingo?
The best answer for this is, It's understandable to be skeptical of online courses, but the key is both doing your research in accordance with your requirements and understanding your unique learning, grasping style, and needs. In order for an online language learning platform or app to be truly effective, it's helpful to have a few factors in play: interactive content, repetition and review, and real engagement where you get to actually practice speaking as well as reading and writing. But something we can change is, understanding that even the best apps or online platforms are not a substitute for real-world engagement. You will get an option to avoid the traditional time-consuming ways of learning. Instead, think of platforms like Babbel and Duolingo as tools to start learning a new language, and or as complementary to getting out and practicing leads you to utilize your valuable time grasp from more than fix resources.
👉Is Duolingo better than Babble?
There is no but yes. Despite all of the similarities and limitations, these apps both face some limitations as well as unique features, they're also very different. From pricing structure, instructional focus, and language options. When it comes to third party reviews of Duolingo and Babbel, Duolingo ranks comparatively higher than babble by many linguists, learners, writers, and language experts. However, several users have strong opinions and commented that you will always get what you have pay for and undoubtedly anyone can agree that certain features of Babbel are always better than the free of cost version that Duolingo offers. Certain lessons provide unexpectedly unique tricks and learning methods that no free course can provide.
Babble Customer Reviews
- Learning is not based on practical situations.
- Sometimes Progress quizzes contain the questions not covered in the session.
Conclusion- Babbel Vs Duolingo 2020
Now, after studying a detailed comparison, we must say that Both Babbel and Duolingo are part of an emerging trend of learning languages online, which in many ways are more accessible and easily available compared with in-class courses. Although both languages learning online platforms provide you with a basic introduction and fundamentals to a foreign language, Duolingo has a certain kind of appeal for its attractive style and user interface which helps to connect with the language quickly. This motivates the user to stick to the lessons and memorizes effortlessly.
On the same side, Babbel takes quite a lot of time to provide in-depth explanations of each foreign language's different aspects, including the grammar rules and cultural contexts of phrases and sentences, allowing for a better understanding regarding the learning material.
The major difference between Babbel vs Duolingo is that I feel Babbel offers lessons with practice and culture, whereas Duolingo offers adaptive learning lessons. Babbel offers four subscription plans with monthly fees, whereas Duolingo offers a free version with ads and a monthly subscription without ads.
So basically the concluding statement for this article states that, if anyone is looking for something simple, interested, quick, and easy to start with, give Duolingo a try. But if you want to go in-depth with much seriousness then try Babble.
I hope this article will help you in choosing your style and platform for language learning. Thank you!
