Duolingo: Learn a language anytime, anywhere

Duolingo is a widely popular free web and mobile application for learning foreign languages. Language enthusiasts can explore and practice more than 22 languages through Duolingo. According to Wikipedia sources, with a nearly five-star rating, this tool has over 200 million users worldwide. The application is downloadable to desktops, android and iOS smartphones. The green owl sends you nice reminders via email once you register yourself for a language. It motivates you every time you complete a level of the language tree. In simpler terms, its all about learning by doing.

Here is a YouTube video on how Duolingo actually works:

This tool offers scheduled practice for learners and based upon the frequency of practice and retention, learning becomes spontaneous. The  basic idea behind portability of such an app is informal autonomous learning, anywhere, anytime. The game like learning space constitutes of exercises such as fill in the gaps, building sentences from word bank, interpreting pictures, listening and writing (i.e. typing) etc. Hence, all these tasks greatly appeal to reading, listening, writing skills. Visual and auditory inputs within actual contexts can thereby greatly contribute to better retention of language particles.

It supports drilling and repetition of the expressions of words and sentences until the learners enter the correct form. The main trick behind all these tasks is reinforced language practice which leads to memorization. Therefore, the ideas, in one way or the other, shed light on the basic principle of audio-lingualism. The main features of Duolingo include:

• Requires problem-solving ability to learn language
• Supports better retention through various types of tasks
• Encourages translation based language learning
• Motivates learners to aspire for the next stages

Duolingo in Bangladeshi Context

Affordances

• Students can download Duolingo in their mobile phones and computers and use to learn a language informally
• Teachers can encourage young students to use Duolingo and strengthen their language expertise.
• Learners can be autonomous and motivated to learn more than just one language.
• As most students in Bangladesh are already used to practicing language skills through repetition and translation in their respective educational contexts, practicing on Duolingo would thus, be more convenient and effective for them
• The background sound, scores, the green owl and the colorful tree will encourage learners to devote more time on a regular basis to this application for language learning.
• The stages are from easy to medium. Therefore, students do not feel pressurized while learning rather they experience a sense of accomplishment and can challenge themselves to learn more and complete further levels.

Disadvantages of Duolingo

• No scope to audio-record and evaluate one's spoken language. Students can only type, listen and read. The main aim of learning a language is to be able to use it with it in real communicative event. Therefore, Duolingo should include speaking practice segment for instance, where students will listen and repeat a certain chunk or expression and the application screen will respond on the accuracy of the spoken language. In this way, students will be simultaneously learning and speaking that specific language expression.
• Duolingo is not available offline for computers. Users who want to practice language with this tool should have an app on their android or iOS devices. But sometimes the app does not show content under unreliable internet connection. This may cause difficulty for low-resourced contexts. It also does not provide grammatical explanations of the examples in its mobile version.
• Expressions such as 'We have a cow', 'I eat apples', or vocabularies like 'snake', 'lion', 'tortoise' are not necessarily used in our everyday conversations. Therefore, the instances can be annoying and not very useful at times for some people.
• The contents do not show contextual cues. Giving hints to learners about the authentic use of that phrase or word would ensure more effective learning.
• Too many repetitions of same expressions can be both tiring and frustrating for adult learners. The app can include small 20 second break in between where some music with lyrics of the language will be played or a comic strip will be shown. This will help learners understand the use of that language in an authentic context.

This mobile app is great for language learning. We as teachers, for the sake of a more proficient and  competent language user community, should share these applications and its uses in social media so the information reaches out every corner of our context. This will increase the rate of informal, self-directed language learning across countries.

Courtesy: YouTube, www.wikipedia.com/duolingo, www.duolingo.com, www.pixabay.com