With 25 million monthly active users, Duolingo has become an immensely popular language-learning app, for good reason. It offers free instruction in 31 tongues, and it’s genuinely fun, with whimsical cartoon characters teaching sometimes-hysterical phrases that keep learners entertained. (Fans have compiled lists on Twitter and Tumblr.) One of my favorites, from German, translates to “They are washing the holy potato.”
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The app follows the common structure of teaching ever more advanced skills, starting with basic words and phrases like “Je suis un garçon,” and working up to complex topics like business and religion. In the past, if a skill section had been too long or complex, people would have gotten frustrated and dropped off. The new design gets around the problem by offering five levels for each skill, designated by crown icons. Students have to complete only the first level to move on to new skills; but if they want more practice on, say, the Spanish passive voice, they can now get it.
I tried the system in German, which I know well, and French and Spanish, in which I’m abysmal. Skill Levels solves one of my biggest language-learning problems: I forget stuff. (Perhaps I’m not alone.) Instead of having to go back over old exercises to refresh, say, my knowledge of Spanish food names, I can try a new level in that category, with new exercises and funny phrases, that reenforce the material.
In December, Duolingo quietly seeded the new version of the app to a sampling of users, some of whom wrote excellent tutorials on the company’s message board. Despite confusion among some users, the results have been good overall, according to Tsai, with people spending more time on their language. “They are speaking it and writing it a lot more than they used to,” she says.
I do have one gripe with the interface. The number in the crown icon shows not how many levels someone has completed, but rather the one they are currently working on. Seeing a number “2” in the crown for the “Spiritual” skill in German, I thought I had already earned two crowns, but instead I was just starting work on the second crown.
More Ear Exercises Coming
Listening and speaking exercises have always been part of Duolingo, but it’s about to offer a lot more. Tsai’s team is working on a phonetics module, for instance. Learners will see a letter combination and choose, from a selection of audio clips, the correct sound they make. They’ll also listen to a sound and choose the appropriate letters. “We want to have phonetics challenges, starting in the French course, because French is a difficult language to pronounce,” she says, with a chuckle.
One likely reason for Duolingo’s success is that it continues growing and reinventing, bringing in new languages, material, and exercises. In late 2016, for instance, it introduced chatbots that allow users to practice conversation with nonjudgmental robots before taking their fledgling skills to the streets. Earlier that year, it launched a flashcards app. With the new levels and coming audio exercises, the company shows a commitment to continue challenging and entertaining students, maybe even prompting some to exclaim “Holy potato!”