Duolingo
It's addictive
helping me set daily goals and then launching into simple phrases
it asked me to translate Italian phrases and sentences into English, or vice versa, providing multiple-choice responses
Duolingo praised me constantly
The app kept me apprised of my progress via various point schemes, and used email and phone notifications
way a language can be learned
classroom, tutor, textbook, audio recordings, flash cards, software,...
until Duolingo, I looked forward to my lessons
click to edit
self-study in 1 week
got my hands on a self-study book, a travel phrase book, and a pocket dictionary, and started cramming
Duolingo had exposed me to a considerable vocabulary, I needed only minimal drilling with books to remember the words
It's a product of crowdsourcing
27.5 million active monthly users
lead to better adherence and faster learning
The challenge, von Ahn said: We prefer to be more on the addictive side than the fast-learning side
he explained. “If someone drops out, their rate of learning is zero.”
the most popular language app in the U.S
learning a language is often crucial to communicating with partners and their families, and for work
In the U.S., about half of our users aren’t even really motivated to learn a language; they just want to pass the time on something besides Candy Crush
Joey J. Lee's opinion
He's a director of the Games Research Lab at Columbia University, who did a study of 50 language apps in 2016
Duolingo has more to do with business models than with language learning
Duolingo has been rolling out new features—including podcasts, social interaction among users, and character-driven narratives—that aim to raise its language pragmatics
Lee predicts that language apps will eventually also incorporate AI-based chatbots
the caution offered by Tom Roeper
He's a linguistics professor at the University of Massachusetts who studies language acquisition
apps aren’t likely to soon overcome the two essential advantages of a human teacher
the ability to hold a student’s attention
continually tailor a lesson to the individual’s progress, difficulties, and interests