Duolingo: Language Explained Clearly

Duolingo. Is Duolingo a gateway to comprehensible input? What do I think of Duolingo as a way to get into language learning. Well, Duolingo is without a doubt, the most successful language learning app ever. It's got like 135 million users. They are extremely successful, far and away, the most successful language learning app in the world ever, in terms of people using it, number of people using it. And when I think of Duolingo, I think of the expression that we find in many languages. Which is that the first step in any endeavor, in any activity, is sort

of the job half done, or you have to get started somewhere and there's no question that Duolingo starts you off. A lot of people who would otherwise never try to learn a language have gotten onto Duolingo, and I always say, I have always said, you never know what will lead to what. So in the example of Duolingo, the whole project apparently started in 2009 when a person named Luis Von Ahn who was involved in developing that CAPTCHa thing that you have to find when you're confirming who you are, signing up at some website. Uh, the same Luis Von Ahn came up with a scheme whereby people would translate things back and forth and somehow this would provide language learning content.

I don't know the details of that, but that was the beginning, but it didn't really work. But as a result of that, and then as Luis Von Ahn and his associates became more aware of some of the tools of engaging people in, you know, online gaming and other forms of gamification, they changed their system from one of translation into one of getting people committed to maintaining their streak or competing with other members, or getting little mascots and all those kinds of things which trigger engagement. With the result that Duolingo is almost addictive and people get onto Duolingo and they don't wanna lose their streak and all the other kinds of, call it extrinsic rewards that they get or fear of losing the streak, that motivate

them and they stay with the system. So therefore, it has been successful in terms of maintaining a level of activity with whatever target language. So to that extent, I think it's very successful. And even in terms of LingQ, we've gotta think of better ways of using these kinds of tools to keep people engaged. However, engagement for those reasons doesn't necessarily mean successful language learning. One of the problems is Duolingo is primarily driven by this desire to get people engaged, to maintain their streak, but at the end of a streak of, you know, 365 days, say in Spanish, the average learner will have learned 1500 words, which is not an

awful lot, and this is because Duolingo is primarily, sort of a, a gamified word retrieval testing system with relatively unconnected words and phrases, and it's not genuine compelling input. Comprehensible input. And we know from research that we learn vocabulary best when we find it in compelling comprehensible input a la Stephen Krashen, so as successful as Duolingo is in driving engagement, it hasn't proven successful in helping a lot of the people who are otherwise keen to use it, uh, in helping them to learn vocabulary, so. And I'm gonna explain why I think this is still nevertheless very

important for, you know, any tool like Duolingo is only a tool. So the question is how are you going to use it? I think that the way to use Duolingo is that it is a tool which helps break down the barriers. So if we go back to Kato Lomb and her formula that, you know, motivation and time divided by inhibition frustration. So Duolingo has the advantage that it motivates people. It motivates them to spend time, maybe not enough time, but it motivates 'em to spend time on a daily basis. And to some extent, the language becomes less strange. So someone who has no contact with Spanish, all of a sudden he's a

little familiar with the sounds of Spanish, the structure on the language, some vocabulary items. So gradually the task of learning Spanish becomes more doable. So to that extent, it's a very good introduction. To language learning, but ultimately, people who use Duolingo should take this tool then as a lead in to learning from comprehensible input. And primarily, if I look at what I do in language learning at LingQ, most of my time is spent listening. And there's all kinds of research that shows that just plain listening without even having the text in front of you, enables the brain to focus on what the brain is listening to.

It doesn't have to go into the reading pathway and the listening pathway. It focuses on what it's listening to. You're then motivated to look up words you didn't understand. You're engaging with content, hopefully content of interest, and that ultimately this is a much better way to learn. So if I look at, you know, my statistics. After a year, let's say the equivalent of 365 days that someone would spend would spend on Duolingo, I've learned tens of thousands of words. I've learned them in context. I've listened to a lot of context.

I've come across the words in many different situations. I've listened to them, I've read them. So my engagement with the language is much richer. Not only therefore in terms of comprehension, but also in terms of. Being able to produce the language because I've accumulated all of this ability to anticipate the language within me, which is difficult to do in an environment like Duolingo. So Duolingo breaks down the barriers, gets you spending the time. Now you need to develop some different habits. You may still continue doing Duolingo, but maybe you should be looking into ways that you can be listening away from the computer.

And I was very surprised to find that Duolingo doesn't let you at least to the extent that I was able to find, download a series of, you know, lessons or texts you can then take away and listen on your own. Because the easiest thing to do in language learning, the one that's the freest in a way, is just plain listening. And so, uh, a learning app that requires you to spend five minutes a day, 15 minutes a day doing these albeit gamified and, and fun to do and sense of achievement, these activities, nevertheless, it requires you to sit there in front of your computer or with your iPhone doing them, whereas once you've moved your language learning content onto an MP3 file on your iPhone,

you are now free to do other activities and continue your learning activity. So in summary then, and I have done some videos recently on the importance of circular learning, covering the same. Essential content in different formats. Reading it, listening to it, listening to different versions of the same content, much as we do with the Mini Stories. I think all of these things have to be an important part of language learning if the goal is to understand the language better and use the language better, and if the goal is simply to maintain your streaks at Duolingo,

that's a different story and, and that does ensure that you are maintaining a level of contact with the language. It's not that you aren't, aren't learning anything. However, I would recommend that people take whatever commitment and engagement they put into Duolingo, and then move it into the next stage of engaging with comprehensible input, learning about the history of the culture, of the language, developing a better sense of the syntax and so forth. So one thing I should say, the word count at Duolingo is similar to the word count that we have at LingQ. In other words, every form of the word is a different word.

I think that's a legitimate way of counting words rather than counting word families. Because every time there's a different form of the word, it implies a different grammatical structure. Or in many cases it can imply a different grammatical structure. It might be plural instead of singular, it might be present tense instead of past tense. And we need to learn and see these words in all of these different contexts. And we do that at LingQ by engaging with comprehensible input. But even at Duolingo they present you with different forms of the words, and by exposure, these words are acquired. It's just that the amount of words that are acquired is relatively limited.

Some of the sources that I looked at suggested it's 1500 words a year, and that even if you completed the whole course in Spanish is still only gonna be five, 6,000 words, which is not very much. Whereas if I look at my statistics at LingQ, if I go to languages, say after Russian, then Czech, I'm very soon at 30, 40,000 words. Uh, even in Romanian, because of the similarity to Italian, I'm very soon at a very high level of words, even in Arabic and Persian. After, you know, a year of engaging with those languages, I have a

much higher vocabulary or word count than is achieved at Duolingo. So I'm saying Duolingo is a wonderful system. They've been very successful at engagement and breaking down the barriers to language learning, and I think the people who are genuinely interested in learning languages should take their experience with Duolingo and then start to engage with comprehensible input following the established theories of Stephen Krashen. The more you're dealing with meaningful input, the sooner you are learning, naturally, learning the words and the structures of the language to where you can understand them and eventually use them in speech yourself. So there you have it.

A quick look at Duolingo. Thank you.