Learn to Read - Duolingo ABC Ratings and Reviews

4.3 out of 5
2.4K Ratings

2.4K Ratings

just2lame ,

Best early learning app!!!

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!!!

Sarah_smyle ,

Excellent App - The only tweaks could be in content

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.

samuelhenson12 ,

Changes I Recomend

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.

donutsat7 ,

5 Star +

My son has struggled so much in school. He has learning disabilities and most apps frustrated him and I’ve tried so many. I have used Duolingo for a year now for learning Korean and he would look over my shoulders and play along. One day I saw Duolingo had children's apps and I downloaded them and I can’t tell you how much he loves these apps!

The stories are cute and entertaining. They go over sight words and letters (I hope there are more times that bd, pq, mw are put together because he also has trouble seeing the difference.)I can’t wait to see what the higher levels will teach him. I love the fact that he’s not frustrated but learning. He’s 9 and we began at level 1 and are going to keep moving forward. Already he’s seen great progress. Please keep updating it.

I have watched a kid who hates to learn to begin to have pride in himself and look forward to learning. You guys rock! If it was possible to rate higher than 5 stars, I would do it!!!!!

chair3000 ,

My little brother has struggled...

He’s been struggling to learn his letters for years, we tried teaching him, using videos, and apps and he just would not sit down and was not interested. With this app (and the help of his teachers) he has finally started understanding letters and sounds. He actually WANTS to sit down and open this app. With the iPad and the Apple pencil, he has been learning how to WRITE and I am so amazed at how fast this app has helped him. My only suggestion would be allowing other languages on here. We are in a hispanic household and the primary language he speaks is spanish, his teachers and parents talk to him in this language, I see him struggling a bit to switch from spanish to english, especially in the first couple minutes on the app. It would be nice if he could learn the alphabet in spanish with this app. It’s still an amazing app, definitely 5 stars!!!

gamerkitty3467 ,

WOW!!! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

So I got this game yesterday and it has been so awesome! I love that unlike most other games I get this has NO things you have to buy. I’m trying to get my little brother started on this, he is a great little brother so I want to try and get him on this. I read a review that said that there kid got stuck on “Tiny Turtles? or “Hello Turtles “ but I just got on that, hopefully I won’t go threw a loop like her kid did. But this game has been great for me!!! I love how it looks so cute and how that it’s not like “ To get more lessons you can try a free trail and pay us 20 dollars a month. “ but this game has no things like that! I’m also so happy that there is speaking exercising, my brother has speech and some people can barley tell what he is saying. So I will let him start them, this game has been the best learning game for kids I’ve ever played that you don’t have to buy stuff on.

VideoVillain ,

Improvements removed great features!

Amazing app that my kids have been using for nearly a year now. It does a fantastic job teaching recognition by sight and sound and writing as well, but the updates -while great- removed some wonderful features. Two of which were extremely important to my kids’ usage.

1) Removed stars that tracked daily usage, which was fantastic for keeping the kids engaged daily.

2) Removed the ability to see what each level’s focus is. This is the biggest issue because now it’s impossible to go back and redo specific lessons like writing or a sight-word or just the sounds of a letter, etc. Now if you want to relearn an alphabet or sight-word or practice writing, you have to check each levels’s contents till you find what you want, then go into that level and keep checking each lesson till you find what you’re looking for… really??? That’s so lame guys, please fix it.

123456 fine! ,

Great! Especially for those who are just starting out

I got this app because it was an add on Duo lingo. I thought that it was going to teach me how to read in another language, preferably franchement the language I’ve been learning for about a year. As anyone would know it is very difficult to wrote on another language with the correct grammar and spelling. So I thought this would be a great opportunity. Well once I realized that this was only for English reading and writing I knew the perfect use. I gave it to my 5 year old who just started with letters. He really enjoys it. The one thing i ask for is an app that focuses primarily on reading and writing in another language. And that it would start with basics, so that kids and beginners aren’t overwhelmed. Like it teaches you to write the accent marks properly. I really have no problem with this app so far though.

tanzeelareeb ,

Want to give 5 star

It is a very awesome app I love it and I feel like this is the app that can teach kids how to read. The only problem is the kids can read the challenging numbers and write the numbers to to enter the parent section there should be a multiplication or some difficult challenges. These are very simple for the kids to open and increase the levels or add a person. This problem leads to the next problem that is kids can open the advance levels without solving previous levels and they get frustrated when they can’t solve the new difficult levels and they stop using the app and this makes this app less useful for the kids. I would love to give five stars to this app if the small problem can be solved.

APELFU ,

Ehh.

I’ve let two little ones use this (5 & 7), and I’m a bit mixed on how I feel about it.

The speaking exercises are incredibly inconsistent. For the 5 y/o, it’s expected that he should be able to immediately read and say a word that appears on the screen. The app immediately begins to listen for a response instead of allowing time to sound it out. It also accepts whatever noise it detects, even if it’s completely wrong. For the 7 y/o, it reads a sentence to him and wants him to repeat it. Not only is this not practicing reading AT ALL, but it again can’t properly depict what he’s saying and often proceeds halfway through a sentence. I tried to turn the volume down and let him actually sound it out, but since it expects immediate and perfect response, it kept marking it wrong and proceeding before he could get three words out! This is my biggest complaint by far because it makes the app fairly useless.