Duolingo

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Duolingo
languages Website available in the following languages:

Courses available in German:

Courses in German in development:

Courses available in English:

English courses in development:

Other courses only available in Spanish:

On-line 11/30/2011
https://www.duolingo.com/
Presentation at Wikimania 2015 about Duolingo (English)

Duolingo is a freemium - online service for learning languages. It was created with the aim of making education available to everyone free of charge.

Duolingo was launched in November 2011 in a closed beta version and made publicly available on June 19, 2012. According to the company, more than 300 million users have registered since it was launched.

development

The Duolingo project started in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University . The two founders are Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker , both with a doctorate in computer science . Duolingo is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania , not far from Carnegie Mellon University.

Duolingo has over 170 employees (as of autumn 2019), including many alumni of Google.

The registered Duolingo user numbers have now increased to more than 300 million (as of autumn 2019). Duolingo is considered the most popular app for learning languages ​​online. Due to the great interest Duolingo received numerous donations, for example about 45 million dollars from Google Capital in June 2015 (since November 2016 CapitalG).

Based on the number of downloads , the app is the most popular in the education sector in the USA, Brazil and Mexico, with Germany in ninth place.

Learning approach

Duolingo offers a lot of material for practicing spelling and understanding, but less speaking practice. The exercises follow a system that teaches content from level to level in a playful manner . There is also the option to repeat learned words. Users may experience points ( experience points , XP) gain while they learn the language, especially when completion of exercises. A skill level is marked as completed when the user has completed all exercises of a level; only then can the user begin the following exercises.

The number of XP per exercise and the maximum errors allowed differ depending on the platform on which Duolingo is running. While the user gets 10 XP per completed exercise with the desktop version and can make unlimited mistakes (if there is an error, the progress bar of the exercise goes back, if the answer is correct), in the apps on iOS and Android, after five errors lessons learned are repeated in order to be able to continue. With Windows Mobile the user has three lives available per exercise according to the old system that was previously used uniformly on Duolingo and the exercise is considered to have failed after four errors. Here the maximum number of XP per exercise is 13.

Duolingo offers the opportunity to practice on time. The user is given 30 seconds of start time and 20 questions. For each correct answer he receives a few seconds of extra time and an XP. Each of the language courses offered comprises around 2,000 words.

The effectiveness of Duolingo's approach was investigated by an external study commissioned by the company itself. Professors from the City University of New York and the University of South Carolina conducted the study and estimated that 34 hours of Duolingo would achieve the same level of progression in reading and writing as a freshman course at a U.S. college, which lasts an estimated 130 hours. The study did not examine the subjects' speaking skills. When compared, it was found that Rosetta Stone software users needed approximately 55 to 60 hours to learn the same material. The study also made no comparisons with other free or cheap courses such as the BBC , Book2 , or Before You Know It .

Functions

Leagues

The leagues were first published for Android in January 2019, then also for iOS in April.

The aim of the league system is to compete with other Duolingo users to reach the highest league. The competition is round-based, with a round always lasting seven days and starting on Mondays. With the completion of the first learning unit you are assigned to a league group, which always consists of 50 users. The top ten users move up a league, the last five users move down a league, all others remain in the league. The top three users also receive bonus points ( lingots ).

First there was the bronze, silver, gold, sapphire and ruby ​​league. The Emerald, Amethyst, Pearl, Obsidian and Diamond leagues were added during the release year.

Business model

Since 2017, advertising has been shown when using the free Duolingo version. Advertising can be switched off by switching to the paid version Duolingo Plus , with a monthly usage fee currently (February 2020) of US $ 12.99. By using Duolingo Plus, lessons can be downloaded from the mobile versions and then used offline.

Certificates

In July 2014, Duolingo presented the Test Center . There, users can take a certified language test for a fee. At the moment, the language test is only offered in English.

Duolingo Incubator

The "Language Incubator" was introduced on October 9, 2013. The Incubator allows users from all over the world to create a language course that is checked before Duolingo is published. This is intended to enable significantly more courses to be offered and also to offer less common languages ​​such as Welsh . Those interested in creating a language course must be fluent in both the source and target language and must submit an application. After completion, the new course will be tested in the beta phase and continuously improved and expanded by the authors. In the third phase ( Graduated from Beta ) the course is almost complete and error-free. There are now courses for learning fictional languages, such as Valyrian, known from the Game of Thrones series , and Klingon , a language of the Star Trek universe.

Awards

The company Apple chose the App 2013 for iPhone app of the year. In the same year, the app won the Crunchie Award in the Best Education Startup category . In addition, Duolingo was the most downloaded app in the Education category on Google Play in 2013 and 2014. In 2015, Duolingo was named the award winner in the Play & Learning category of the Design to Improve Life organization .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Press. Retrieved June 2, 2020 .
  2. ^ Susan Adams: Game of Tongues: How Duolingo Built A $ 700 Million Business With Its Addictive Language-Learning App .
  3. ↑ Duolingo. Funding rounds. In: CrunchBase. Retrieved May 20, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Duolingo has built a language learning app with 150 million users . In: Daily . January 9, 2017 ( omr.com [accessed October 19, 2019]).
  5. ↑ My Three Months of Duolingo : "There are 2014 words listed in my Duolingo vocabulary." ( Http://olimo.livejournal.com/ , from September 19, 2012)
  6. ↑ How many words does Duolingo cover? Duolingo, Discussions; accessed on Feb. 6, 2016
  7. ↑ Kevin Kelleher: Say what? Duolingo points to data's important role in online education . Pandodaily.com. May 30, 2013. Retrieved February 21, 2014.
  8. ^ BBC Languages . BBC. Retrieved August 23, 2013.
  9. ↑ book2 - Learn languages ​​online for free with 100 audio (mp3) files . Goethe publishing house. Retrieved August 23, 2013.
  10. ^ Forum - Duolingo. Retrieved September 17, 2019 .
  11. ↑ duolingo.com: Duolingo Plus ; accessed on December 23, 2018
  12. ^ Duolingo to Release Test Center: Fair Language Certification for All. (PDF) July 23, 2014, accessed on May 19, 2016 (English).
  13. ↑ Kif Leswing: I took Duolingo's standardized language test of the future on my phone. August 9, 2014, accessed May 19, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Parmy Olson: Duolingo Takes Online Teaching To The Next Level, By crowdsourcing New Languages . In: Forbes . ( forbes.com [accessed February 8, 2017]).
  15. ↑ By Juan Andres Munoz CNN: Duolingo 'incubator' aims to crowdsource language teaching - CNN.com. Retrieved February 8, 2017 .
  16. ^ Status Valyrian. Accessed January 31, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Klingon status. Retrieved September 27, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Lauren Hockenson: Duolingo snags iPhone App of the Year. December 17, 2013, accessed January 31, 2018 (American English).
  19. ^ Rip Empson: Fast-Growing Duolingo Caps Off A Big Year With The Crunchie For "Best Education Startup" . In: TechCrunch . ( techcrunch.com [accessed January 31, 2018]).
  20. ↑ Abhimanyu Ghoshal: Google Play Reveals 2014's Most Downloaded Apps . In: The Next Web . December 11, 2014 ( thenextweb.com [accessed January 31, 2018]).
  21. ↑ DUOLINGO - INDEX: AWARD 2015 WINNER (PLAY & LEARNING CATEGORY) . In: INDEX: Design to Improve Life® . August 27, 2015 ( designtoimprovelife.dk [accessed January 31, 2018]).