Language Learning Made Fun
Duolingo is an app or website that helps you learn another language. When you first sign up you get to choose the language that you want to learn. They offer over 35 languages, so it’s a wide range of available options. Each language begins with different starting points, categories such as basics, phrases, food or animals. There are multiple levels for each category and it’s almost as if you’re playing a game. Once you master all the first levels then new ones will open. You set a goal for yourself and the app will remind you to meet your goal everyday. Along with your goals and levels there are leagues that you can strive to move up into, you start in bronze and move your way up, competing against other people around the world to gain the most XP. You earn your XP by completing your daily lessons or doing other tasks available in the app.
Motivation Mascot
The logo for the app is an owl that’s Duo, he’s the mascot of the app and he kind of becomes your own personal little mascot popping up and keeping you motivated. Duo will pop up and remind you that when you haven’t completed your daily goal. He also pops up within the lessons to tell you when you’ve hit a nice streak without getting anything wrong. The other characters within the app help to keep you motivated as well with animations. With all of the different ways the characters all interact with you it’s really easy to spend a lot of time in this app learning all the while. I feel that Duolingo is Rosetta Stone for the modern day, it’s easily accessible, but also much more affordable, and I think the characters that you get to interact with make it more like a game than an app for learning.
Affordable Learning that’s Easily Accessible
Duolingo has the option for a free account the only limitation to this account is that you start out with 5 hearts which you lose when you answer a question incorrectly. If you run out of hearts you can’t finish the lesson, so you would have to wait until you refill your hearts in order to finish. They also offer an upgrade with unlimited hearts, but this option is $10 a month. Even at $10 a month it’s still very affordable and easily accessible. Having the ability to learn another language for free or even a small fee right at your fingertips makes it so much easier than it has been in the past. I personally use Duolingo and I have been for the past 6 months, I recommend this app to anyone who is interested in learning another language. The way the lessons are set up makes it easy to interact with and it also helps to drive the information into your brain because they use different strategies all within the same lesson. Sometimes you will hear a character say something in the language or see a sentence in that language and you have to translate to English. Other times you might have to translate an English sentence into the language you are learning. They also have you record yourself saying sentences or words in the language to be sure you are learning the pronunciation.
This app is set up so that it is user friendly for anyone, and with everything going on with remote learning teachers could definitely utilize this app within their classes to help students boost their lessons and help them have more interaction with the languages since they don’t have a teacher in front of them during this time.
References
Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2018). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology. New York, NY: Pearson.
Apps and Web-based Learning
Duo Lingo is an app that was created to help with the acquisition of several languages at your own pace. I am a user and have lessons in Spanish, French, Italian, and Zulu. I agree with Ashley Ryan, “I feel that Duolingo is Rosetta Stone for the modern day, it’s easily accessible, but also much more affordable, and I think the characters that you get to interact with make it more like a game than an app for learning” (Ryan, 2020). As Reimer and Dempsey say, “Intrinsic motivation occurs when on engages in a task for which there is no apparent reward except the pleasures of the activity.” When deciding to learn a second…
As a daily user of Duolingo since 2014, I can attest to its ability to maintain learner engagement and motivation. Duolingo allows users to interact with each other as if they are on social media, provides inspiration and outside learning opportunities, and utilizes storytelling to help learners memorize common responses. But this is not the main reason why I choose to use Duolingo over other apps. I've tried apps such as Babbel, Mango, Rosetta Stone, Memrise, and more. Each time I go back to Duolingo because it caters to multiple learning styles, has micro-lessons, and the characters are relatable. Each character has a distinct personality that they maintain, no matter what language users choose. They also have different voices, so…
Curiosity
Duolingo is a free app, there is also a web version, where adults and children can learn or reinforce a language. In Reiser’s (2018) definition of this learning engagement principle, curiosity stems from the want to close any learning gaps. This would also fall under epistemic curiosity where learners have a desire to gain knowledge to explain the causes of gaps in the learner’s understanding (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018). Throughout the years of teaching, I have come across many students who entered the country with a slight knowledge of the English language. Duolingo allowed them to satisfy their curiosity and close the gap of the unknown language. While this benefits the learner who is learning English, it a…
Succeeding in Mastery
I have personally been using Duolingo to learn Greek and I think it’s a very fun and efficient way to learn a new language. I am very familiar with language learning since I am fluent in three languages, but I had never used a language learning application before. I am a native Spanish speaker and had to learn English when I moved to the United States at the age of fourteen. I married a French woman at twenty-seven, so I had to learn French in order to communicate with her family. Greek is a language I want to learn for fun and Duolingo is proving to be great at giving me the confidence to stay motivated and…
Opportunity
The importance of understanding language has been preached to students for decades. DuoLingo saw this opportunity and created a platform to satisfy this drive for people everywhere. The global nature of business and the ease of interacting and meeting with all business areas has increased the marketability of individuals who know multiple languages. The leaders are seeing the gap in their knowledge and the opportunity for growth and DuoLingo is able to satisfy that need (Keller & Deimann, 2018) In my experience, DuoLingo starts with language basics to support the user in having elementary level conversations in the language. This platform answers a need for business professionals everywhere.
Digestable Segments
The platform uses small digestible segments to keep…