I’ve been using and writing about Duolingo and their excellent language lessons for a long time now, but was not expecting the wise old language owl to branch out into other areas, particularly maths and most recently music. The team have said they get asked a lot to expand into other areas, and it’s always been their mission to make the best free education possible so perhaps it was always the next steps.

The maths courses had previously been available in a separate app, with a separate points and streak system, but last month Duolingo announced they were bringing languages, music and maths all into the same app so that they all work together in harmony. You can pick music or maths as a course as if they were a separate language option.

The lessons are structured in the same way across all the courses - a path of lessons that you work through, earning experience points and ticking off goals along the way. The lessons themselves are really interactive so that it continues to feel like playing more than learning. I’ve only tested out the beginning of the music course and I do wonder how far you can go with it before it doesn’t quite make sense to not have an instrument under your fingertips, but for basics and theory, it’s a good start.

The maths lessons felt a bit easy in the standalone app but it looks like there is more scope for progression in the current app, and it’s always good to practice things like your multiplication tables anyway. Ultimately it’s just more good stuff on the Duolingo app and as long as it doesn’t distract from keeping up the quality of the language courses, then I’m all for it!