By Katrina Liao For the past few years, the green owl icon has been gaining global recognition with more than 500 million users—it shows up in people’s daily notifications and on several social media platforms as a strict coach who is always desperately urging people to practice languages. More and more people are learning languages with the app Duolingo, and, interestingly, some users seem to get obsessed with the learning environment it creates—they enthusiastically collect “XP” (meaning “experience,” the scores in the app) to rank higher in the leaderboard while carefully maintaining their “streak,” the proof of their amazing persistence on how many days in a row they have been practicing. Yet, what exactly makes this app so charming, and is it really effective for learning a new language? Duolingo is a language-learning-oriented platform launched in 2012, aiming to diminish social inequality in education. To create a friendly environment for whoever wants to learn new languages, Duolingo boasts a few distinctive features—free access to learning up to 40 languages, an intuitive gamified interface, and a system of bonuses and rewards. The company adapts simple design to make the interface easy for people of all ages to navigate through, and thanks to the compact size and the rewards of the lessons, users may accumulate a sense of achievement while utilizing their fragmented spare time the most. Each language course consists of different levels of sections and several units within them, and each unit contains small lessons in vocabulary, grammar, listening, and translation exercises. Through completing the lessons, users earn XPs, gems, and badges that situate their positions in leagues of different levels—only when ranked top 10 can they enter the “promotion zone” to get into the better leagues; otherwise they remain in the current league or get demoted. Other than that, a social network is weaved into the system—users become friends with other users, achieving “friends quests,” and congratulate each other once they reach their learning goals. However, what makes Duolingo stand out the most among numerous language learning apps is its personalized and user-centric design rationale. A large part of its success is attributed to machine learning. The system analyzes reports from users, and thus several versions of translation can be accepted in the exercises, making the learning process more engaging and flexible. It also takes notes about the words that users are less familiar with and the grammar mistakes made by each individual, then targets their weak areas for more practice as a human teacher would do. Just like a competent tutor, the algorithm would provide materials that are right at the edge of the users’ proficiency level to keep them engaged. More importantly, learners can decide on their own learning pace and set up different goals according to their needs. Whether it’s about 5 minutes a day or a 30-day plan, the green owl would track their progress and make sure to remind them to practice with word choices that have worked for them in the past. Thanks to these settings, users feel understood, encouraged, and well-supervised while learning with Duolingo. So is Duolingo benefitting learners in an effective way? What’s worth praising about its teaching strategy is the comprehensive learning approach for learners who are still in a preliminary stage. Users learn new words in chunks and sentences, making it more effortless to acquire the real-life usage and the grammar rules as well. The input of new content comes in both visual and audio forms, and it’s sometimes presented in daily conversations between fictional characters, which helps in strengthening the memory. There are also plenty of chances to practice speaking and pronunciation, only if the user can resist the temptation to hit the “skip” button.
Duolingo has done a great job in equipping beginners with essential skills in reading, listening, speaking, and translating, considering it is only a digital device. But the cute green owl is still not a human teacher, though. While users are presented with grammatical units that involve changes in terms of the gender of a word, the singular and plural form, and the personal pronouns, which sometimes can be quite complex, there is no clear explanation in the lessons like a traditional grammar textbook. Furthermore, in-person communication still cannot be replaced. It’s hard for someone to navigate through the various intonations, emotions, and slang only with the assistance of a language learning app. There are also a few occurrences where some heavy users fall into the cycle of vicious competition. In such cases, the reason for them to open the app and finish the lessons is no longer the mere yearning for acquiring a new language, but rather their desire to win, or to beat others on the leaderboard. “There are always people in front of me. It’s like an endless battle,” according to Sonia, a Duolingo user. As a person with a strong competitive spirit, she found that she started to lose the pleasure of learning something new and even become weary of it. Therefore, she decided to stop and take a break. Months later, Sonia came to realize that the decision had always been in her hands. She could also regard it as a lighthearted activity to do in her free time, and that it’s completely alright not to be ranked at the top of the leaderboard. More important was to keep her thirst for knowledge and her passion for learning. To conclude, the answer to Duolingo's effectiveness lies in the hands of its users. What it can provide is insufficient for mastering a language, but if you are a determined learner who is willing to work hard and fetch extra materials on your own, Duolingo can serve as a useful tool in ensuring regular exposure to the language, cultivating a habit, and achieving the goals that you have long been unable to start. a
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May 2024
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