Lexical frequency lists identify which words to prioritise, based on how often they’re used in texts (which is a simple task, given the vast amount of data available online).

Knowing the name of every single dish on a menu might be useful in a restaurant, but not if you can’t say ‘eat’. However, this requires knowing the ‘correct’ one thousand words to learn. Let’s put this in perspective – you had already learnt double that by the time you started nursery. With a vocabulary of just a thousand words, you should know enough to get the gist of about 70 per cent of any foreign text. Unlike most subjects in the curriculum, you don’t need a qualified teacher and an expensive textbook to learn a language. Like the other new releases, it is claims to be an easy and effective way to learn languages.ĭespite superficial difference, these new apps are all grounded by a simple underlying principle: learning languages should be cheap and easy. The app – winner of Apple’s ‘iPhone App of the Year’ award – is one of dozens of free foreign-language-learning tools that have recently flooded the Android and iOS app stores. If you’re one of the 70 per cent of Britons who owns a smartphone, chances are you’ve heard of Duolingo.

Duolingo classroom