Duolingo Unleashed: Decoding the Secrets Behind Its Language Learning Magic
As someone with an immense interest in language learning — I’m an English teacher who has studied applied linguistics, after all — I found it quite remarkable that I only speak three languages fluently (English, Dutch, and Papiamento, the language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean), one language at intermediate level (French), and one at elementary level (Spanish).
I recently wrote about the future of AI and language learning, and to put this future to the test, I got back on Duolingo and started learning two languages to see what the AI tools do and to figure out which language learning principles are applied in the Duolingo learning method.
My first language of choice was Spanish. As someone who understands and speaks Papiamento fluently, learning Spanish on Duolingo should be a manageable challenge, as there are many commonalities between Spanish and Papiamento.
The second language I wanted to learn on Duolingo is Japanese since my girlfriend and I are planning a trip to Japan in 2024. Japanese would be a more significant challenge, as there are no similarities between Japanese and the languages I already speak. Learning Japanese meant I had to learn hiragana characters, and I was curious how Duolingo would handle this.
Using the Zone of Proximal Development: Personalised Learning
The first question Duolingo asks any new learner is what they already know about the language they want to learn. In the case of an elementary learner like myself, it tests the learner’s knowledge with a short quiz and adjusts the starting point based on the test results. The test results were positive for Spanish, and I was allowed to skip a few levels and units.
For my Japanese course, however, I had to start at the beginning since I didn’t have any pre-existing knowledge other than konnichiwa and shushi.
The first language-learning principle that immediately stands out is that Duolingo tries to remain within my Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) for my Spanish course. The ZPD is the area in which a learner can do something on their own with the appropriate guidance and scaffolding; it’s the gap between what a learner already knows and what a learner can’t understand.
In my case, Duolingo offered words, sentences, and chunks I already knew in activities while also presenting me with new vocabulary. In a word-choosing activity, the app would show four pictures and a Spanish word and ask me to select the picture representing that word. This exercise was simple but still within my ZPD since I didn’t know the Spanish word. To actually learn the word, it would appear again in the three activities that immediately followed this initial encounter.
Grammar: it’s there, but without the rules
In a different exercise, the app would present a few sentences in which the verb is missing, and the task was to fill in the correct verb tense. Although the app doesn’t offer any grammatical rules, it does present sentences in which the correct verb tense is used before the learner is presented with a fill-in-the-gap exercise. The learner then hopefully selects the correct option.
Grammar is always presented within a particular context. For Spanish, the phrases in which the different verb tenses and conjugations are presented are longer. For Japanese, they are shorter and repeated more often. Duolingo first gives some ‘tips’ on the grammatical topic discussed, which is a perfectly logical thing to do since the language does not use Roman script nor the same word order as English. Then, there’s a listening activity in which the learner has to put the words heard in the right order. Since the different words are also given phonetically, it is an easy task to complete, and the English translation is also given after the answers are submitted.
Then, the learner is presented with the same grammatical construction in different contexts and has to translate sentences in which that grammatical construction appears. Take the unit on “it is”. In Japanese, all third-person singular conjugations of the verb to be are the same: “de su”. In the first instance, the learner is presented with an audio recording of the sentence “He’s nice” and has to put the English words in the correct order. The choice is made easy by the capitalisation of the <h> in “He’s”. Then, the learner has to select the words that represent the spoken version of “She’s nice”. Finally, Duolingo asks to translate the English sentence “He’s nice” into Japanese, again with necessary scaffolding through the audio recording and hidden hints.
The three images below show the acquisition process for asking questions in Japanese with the word “ka”.
Before I started the activity, a prompt was given to review the tips on the use of “ka” in Japanese. The first image shows the introduction of the new word “ka”: there’s a reminder that there’s a new word, and the new word is given in purple. The <i> in Is is capitalised to show that it is the beginning of a sentence, so the learner naturally selects the order Is it tasty. Image 2 shows that I had to listen to <piza de su ka>, which translates as “Is it pizza?”. Finally, there’s no scaffolding in the form of an audio clip, so I have to choose the correct translation on my own, but since we’ve already covered “Is it …?”, I should be able to correctly select <ka ree de su ka>.
Vocabulary
To study the vocabulary, Duolingo does matching activities with images or sounds. New words are always highlighted in purple so they stand out, and they are always repeated several times instantly, again in different constructions, so learners always see the new words and phrases together in different contexts.
This approach is quite challenging for Japanese since there are no similarities between Japanese and English words, except for words that are the same in almost all languages, like cake, pizza, curry and sushi. Unsurprisingly, I find this approach easier in Spanish since I can (still) recognise most words based on their French or English counterparts.
In the following exercises and activities, the words are repeated several times again to maximise retention. The words are also used in stories, listening activities, and other activities throughout the unit.
Duolingo’s success: gamification.
Duolingo’s success, both in language learning and in popularity, lies in the fact that they built the app around the best way to learn a language: gaming. As I addressed in my article on gaming and language learning, the gamification of learning is a highly motivating way to stimulate learning. There’s the element of competition through the weekly leader board with a promotion zone and a demotion zone. There’s a point system in which XPs can be gained, which will put a learner higher up on the leader board (and there are 15 minutes of double XPs). Every time a learner makes a mistake, they lose a heart, and after losing all five hearts, the learner loses their progress of that exercise and has to wait a few hours before a new heart appears (or they can purchase Super Duolingo to get access to unlimited hearts, but who does that?!). If learners feel extra competitive, they can invite friends, start direct language-learning challenges, and send motivational celebrations and comments.
Conclusion: great stepping stones.
I think Duolingo is an excellent app to start learning any language, especially if there’s not enough time to sit down, watch a series on Netflix, or go through a complete course. It’s simple, fun, and provides an accessible way to learn a language. As an applied linguist, I feel confident about the fact that its approach is backed up by research and that the app does many things I recommend my own students to do, too.
I feel that there is room for improvement regarding the acquisition of vocabulary. I made my own post-its for Japanese and stuck them around the house to revise the words while doing other chores. The app could benefit from a flashcard option to practise words like Quizlet offers.
Even though my Japanese and Spanish studies with Duolingo are still in their infancy, I feel that I have some stepping stones on which I can build the rest of my Spanish and Japanese journey. Whether I’ll be fluent enough before my trip to Japan is something yet to be seen.
Want to know more? My friend SpanishBlueprints has reviewed Duolingo on YouTube in light of his own Spanish-learning journey. See more here: SpanishBlueprints on YouTube.
Want to learn Japanese from books? Here are some books I ordered to supplement Duolingo (affiliate):
More on language learning and gaming:
