Duolingo: An Adult Learning Game
Despite the seven years of French class that I completed in school, my vocabulary has already diminished back into “bonjour” and “je m’appelle Athena”.
I have always envied bilingual people and desired to be as cool as them, but growing up with a purely English-speaking family in a dominantly English-speaking city meant French class was the only time where I was expected to use another language. But I was never great at remembering the new and different grammar and vocabulary. I would always try translating sentences to and from English in my head as opposed to really immersing myself in the language. My lack of language-speaking abilities is really my own fault though, because there are many accessible ways to learn a new language; classes to sign up for, videos on Youtube, friends. An increasingly popular resource for learning a new language has been Duolingo; an app that offers free language lessons to over 120 million registered users worldwide and is represented by a happy green owl.
It has been over three years since I have even tried to learn a new language, so I am interested to see if this platform’s popularity might mean it has discovered a new way to teach a language in a way that is immersive, memorable and easy to stick to. However, I’m going to take a break from French and try using Duolingo to learn some basic Greek, which has been a goal of mine since I was young because I’ve always wanted by language abilities to match my first name.
After the fast process of making an account and choosing from the many language options, I can immediately see the appeal of this app as it is displayed more like a game than an educational resource. The profile page is very colourful, with achievements to unlock and little images that represent all the “levels” to reach in the learning process.
Much like most addictive apps, Duolingo focuses on fast clicks, visuals, and reaching easily achievable goals. In fact, they suggest a daily use time of only ten minutes, which is very doable for anyone with a busy schedule who desires to learn a new language in their free time. The basic lessons I worked through simply consisted of dragging words into place to translate Greek words and sentences that were read to me by a computer voice.
Maybe it’s because I chose a language with a different alphabet, but I found I was mostly just guessing. I don’t know if there was some kind of subconscious learning that was happening or I was just choosing the most logical answer based on the given words because I was, surprisingly, getting most of them right. It is quite repetitive though, which is definitely an important aspect of learning something new. I also do get the urge to return to the app to progress to the next level and see what I can learn next.
I think there is still a little bit of room for improvement as the computer voice that pronounces all of the words and phrases is a little unappealing. I felt like hearing the words read to me was one of the more important aspects of the learning experience because I am not reading them out myself, so the monotone/blank, sometimes choppy-sounding voice threw me off a bit. Similarly, the sentences provided for me to translate sometimes seem very obviously randomly generated. None of them are ever completely ridiculous, or incorrect, just not very useful to know as a beginner.
I think the platform’s game-like design and function could be applied in many ways to create other educational apps. The focus on a fast-pace, colour, and easily achievable goals that anyone can access on their phone while they’re sitting around for ten minutes or less is a useful set of traits for a modern app. Subjects such as history, reading music, and mental math could be taught in a similar way with more suitable questions, while maintaining the fast and easy design that is so appealing and accessible.
Overall, Duolingo does offer a new way to learn using the aspects of an app that makes it easy, fast, and generally addicting. It is a learning game for adults, and I can see why millions of people have tried, if not stuck to it in order to use their free minutes to work towards acquiring a new skill.
