If you haven't used it before, it asks you to commit to a daily minimum number of points when you join (I signed up for 20 points, which can be done in a couple of minutes), if you meet the requirements every day it logs these at the top as how many days you have completed without a break - I'm on 57 today. It gives you a series of graded exercises, unlocking them a few at a time so that you can't jump too far ahead. With passing time these exercises need to be redone to revise that topic. I gave up trying to keep them all at 'level 5' after a few days. I now redo them when they fall to level 3. You also get reminder of how much time you have put in over the last week. You are also awarded 'lingots' for completing a lesson, for multiples of 10 days without a break, and for 'moving up a level' - there are things that you can trade 'lingots' for, but I haven't explored this yet. I am not completely sure how the levels work, since I seem to go up levels when I have not completed lessons, but sometimes when I have just done a certain amount of revision. (Note: I now know that levels relate to the number of XPs (Experience Points) that you have - you go up a level for each 1500 points - you get 10 points for each lesson completed or redone.)
Wikipedia says this of Duolingo: "The efficacy of Duolingo's Spanish course has been reviewed by a study commissioned by the company. Conducted by professors at City University of New York and the University of South Carolina, the study estimated that 34 hours on Duolingo may yield reading and writing ability of a US first-year beginners' course university semester, which takes in the order of over 130 hours." If that holds true for all the languages, then that is a remarkable achievement - to learn a basic grasp of the language in about a quarter of the time usually required - and close to half the time that it takes to learn from Rosetta Stone. However, Wiki also says: "The research did not measure speaking ability. It found that a majority of students dropped out after less than 2 hours of study." There are many reasons why people drop out of learning a language, but commitment to a course, paying up front, expectations of other class members must be an important factor.
The lessons have notes, but a lot of the teaching is done in the lesson itself when new phrases or vocabulary is introduced.
However, you need to use it effectively, and I haven't really been doing that. I've plugged on through as many of the lessons as I can, largely made possible because I know a lot of the background already, once I've worked out the aim of the lesson (eg: future) I can easily work out what the next phrase means. I've become aware when doing revision of previous lessons that I haven't really absorbed the information well, so I've started to copy and print the notes for new lessons when I start them.
Now before each lesson I read through the notes to remind myself of the purpose of the lesson. I'm also trying to reinforce what I'm learning in each lesson by doing an exercise from a book, or reading more about the grammar that is being explained in the lesson.
My aim is also to write myself some kind of notes, and put them here.
I'm not going to rush through the exercises any more, I'd rather understand and retain the theory better.
UPDATE: I completed the Duolingo course on day 65, but I'm keeping on working through the exercises - I'm far from knowing it all yet. Towards the end of the course there are several lessons that are more vocabulary than grammar - particularly specific and specialised vocabulary - and I'm finding that I don't know much of this, and I'm not retaining it well. These sections cover things like: medicine, religion, technology, science, etc. Therefore, I'm working through the exercises and copying off the vocabulary to word processing software, so that I can print it out to review and remind myself of key words.
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