Flashfriend and Duolingo

Duolingo is how millions of people start a language, and it’s very good at that. It’s free, it teaches dozens of languages, and its streaks and short lessons make a daily habit easy to keep.

Flashfriend starts with the words you’ll meet most, and gives each one a memory picture you help make. Then it builds on them: sentences made from words you already know, grammar one pattern at a time, and audio on everything.

What Duolingo does well

• Getting started. Short lessons walk you through your first words and sentences, with listening, reading, speaking and grammar mixed in.
• The habit. Streaks, leagues and reminders keep you coming back every day.
• The price. The courses are free, with ads and a daily Energy limit. The paid plan, Super, removes both.
• Range. It teaches many more languages than Flashfriend does.

How Flashfriend teaches

Words first, the most useful ones

You learn the most frequently used words of the language in order, at your own pace. Each one gets a memory picture you make in a few taps: a place you know, and a scene from a phrase that sounds like the word. Personal pictures you helped make are among the easiest things to recall (Symons & Johnson, 1997; Slamecka & Graf, 1978). Each Mandarin tone and each Spanish el or la has a colour in the picture, and Japanese words have furigana over the kanji.

Then sentences, with one new word each

Once you know enough words, Flashfriend writes sentences where every word is one you know, except one. You read the whole sentence, work out the new word from the rest, and practise everything you already know as you go. Readers pick up new words best when they know nearly every word around them (Hu & Nation, 2000). See sentence cards.

Grammar, one pattern at a time

Grammar comes in the same way. Each pattern arrives when you know enough words to use it, as a short grammar point and sentence cards that put it to work, so patterns like Mandarin’s 了 or the uses of Spanish estar are learned in real sentences you can read.

Listening, and speaking with your AI

Every word and sentence has audio, with a Slowly button. With Pro, you can connect Claude or ChatGPT and practise real conversations, by text or by voice, using the words you’re learning.

Reviews timed for each thing you learn

Each word, sentence and grammar point is tested again just before you’d forget it, with a longer gap every time you remember it, so you keep them for years with few reviews (Cepeda et al., 2006).

Side by side

Using both

Many learners start with Duolingo and add Flashfriend when they want what they learn to stick, or use both side by side: Duolingo’s lessons for variety and the daily habit, Flashfriend for words, sentences and grammar that last. If you do both, keep Flashfriend’s new words a day low at first, so its reviews fit alongside your lessons.

Read more about Flashfriend for Mandarin, Japanese or Spanish, or the memory techniques behind every card.