Learn to Read - Duolingo ABC 4+

I have homeschooled all 4 of our kids. (Oldest 16 youngest 7) we use DUOLINGO for teaching our two older boys Spanish. (We tried Rosetta Stone which was an absolute waste of money!) Duo Lingo is engaging and does an excellent job teaching to speak, read and write in Spanish. I saw the add for Duo abc and instantly thought of our 7 year old son who has Down Syndrome. His disability has made it a challenge to get him interested in learning. I have tried many different programs and apps, this is by far THE BEST app we have ever found!! I absolutely love it!!! The first time we opened he loved it!! It keeps his attention, and he’s finally learning his letters and sounds! The first time it asked him to say a word, I was nervous. He sees a speech therapist for his language. There are many times I (his mom) can’t even understand him. So when he repeated the word and it chimed because he got it right, I teared up a bit! I was ecstatic!! I can’t tell you how excited I am!! I have been telling all my homeschool friends!! Thank you Duo abc!!!! I am so grateful!!!

We absolutely love the app for our 3.5 year old. Using this app in addition to our other letter and language studies - and with adult supervision and conversation throughout - has been an excellent tool that she’s excited about. The only complaint I have is that there is a ton of content about sugar, snacks, and cookies. We don’t talk about these things or use these words in our home; so now for our daughter to be demanding cookies and lollipops every time we leave the house is a bit disheartening. I would also love an option to choose how many sounds/celebrations there are for correct answers. I use the DuoLingo app as an adult for learning a language, and have turned off the sounds for correct answers. I would love this option for my toddler….. we’re living in a time when it’s already so difficult to combat the overwhelming advertising and misinformation about what is healthy food for our bodies, and also combating social media addiction and dopamine addiction and overload. I do love the app and and our child does too, but I worry about the constant snack and sugar references and too many dopamine hits along the way. It’s all quite addictive.

I am a Senior at Graceland University (GU) and am close to graduating in the school of Education there.
I greatly approve of what you have created. Repetition of letter names and speaking to the child who’s playing the “games” lines up perfectly with what I have learned at GU. As does the fact there is close to no distractions from the learning even between the game stages.
That said, what I would change in the app is create a way to control the settings to a greater extent, such as see the statistics and get progress monitoring by accessing the app in some way. I would say this to better keep parents, and maybe even teachers, better informed. If you were to do so, maybe also add a way to specify which as well so that it could better integrate into classroom use.
The other change I would make would be to allow for different languages to speak the instruction and for the verbal components when learning English. This would also be a means of introducing English to ESL, ELL and maybe even bilingual children.