How We Learn Languages. Part 2. Why You Won't Learn a Language in Dualingo

Duolingo is considered by many users around the world to be the #1 language learning app. It is well-known and has been tried and tested for a long time, while polyglots and language experts consider it ineffective.

I've been following Duolingo for several years. I conduct various experiments myself, I had 600-day strikes, reached the last colored league in the tournament table, trained using different algorithms. Some are no longer relevant, because the app has been updated significantly since then.

Duolingo has a huge user base – several tens of millions of people for each popular language. Naturally, they chose this application for a reason: such a service has a lot of advantages, and the most important one is “the feeling that I am learning a language.” That's what we'll talk about.

I believe that it is impossible to learn a conversational language at least at level B1 using only this app, and I will continue to believe so until you prove me otherwise. However, I can recommend Duolingo for three purposes:

1. You want to take a quick look at the structure of a language you don't know: what's there, what basic words and patterns are used. For example, when I start learning Turkish, after 3-4 workouts I can understand that the verb is in the last place, and at the end of the question there is most often a word with the letter “m”.

2. You once studied a language, but there was a long break. For example, you have already scheduled a lesson with a tutor, and before the lesson (an hour or a week before) in free five minutes you take such lessons. Activate the passive vocabulary of what you have already used. I do this with Greek when I sometimes fly to Cyprus.

3. You consciously use Duolingo as a secondary tool in language acquisition and do not rely solely on it. For example, you attend lessons three times a week, and before each lesson, to immerse yourself in the context of the language, you open the app.

Section One: The Duolingo Advantage

The biggest advantage is that Duolingo helps you form a habit of studying for at least 5 minutes a day and spending them on learning a language. Of course, there is a question about the effectiveness of these 5 minutes, but in any case, 5 minutes are better than 0 minutes. Referring to my previous article about Stephen Krashen's hypotheses, it should be said that some processes of language acquisition occur at a subconscious level. Therefore, something will still be mastered in these 5 minutes, I do not argue with this, otherwise the application would not be so popular.

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Duolingo is a huge company, currently valued at $9.9 billion. This is where their ability to make a product beautiful and enjoyable to use comes in. Many competitors fail in this area. Duolingo heavily uses gamification (game elements) to enhance the learning process. The app encourages users to complete levels, earn points, and maintain a “strike” (a streak of consecutive days of use), which motivates them to continue learning. Agree, it’s nice to use a fast app with a beautiful design and content.

Duolingo does not use grammar. That is, you are not given a rule first, and then a lesson. To master a language, the user needs to figure out the pattern of using some morphemes and apply them when composing sentences in other exercises using examples earlier. I think this is very important, and it makes the application not boring and useful. In life, when mastering a language, we do the same. And what did you think, 2 thousand years ago people mastered foreign languages ​​using self-study guides?

Section two. Disadvantages of such applications

False feeling

Unfortunately, for every positive aspect there is a negative one. Paying attention to the language only 5 minutes a day will not get you far, but along the way you get the feeling that “I study the language every day, and the results will not take long to come.” And now you can tell your friends: look, I have been studying Spanish for 300 days already. But for some reason, when communicating with a native speaker, my speech is extremely abrupt, and there is a feeling that it is still too early, and I need to start talking later, when I have covered more topics and remembered more phrases.

Product metrics are at odds with learning effectiveness

Because Duolingo is a big company and attracts investments, they have a plan for growth and attracting new users. Therefore, when conducting A/B experiments, they end up leaving those methods and exercises that increase retention. That is, they do not increase the effectiveness of classes, but increase product metrics. Perhaps this is the main problem, that product metrics rarely correlate with effective learning for each user. From the experience of launching my applications or algorithms, I found out that the complexity of the algorithm correlates with the effectiveness of memorizing new phrases, but users do not like complex products. They need very simple, convenient, calm mechanics in a game form. Otherwise, everyone would have used Anki long ago and not resorted to Duolingo.

An impractical set of words

Not all sentences make sense and are of little practical use. In a couple of weeks of training, users receive a set of words: “pear”, “ripe”, “you have a strange jacket”. Just what you need if you want to approach a girl in a strange jacket and give her a ripe pear. For example, in what life situation would you need the phrase: “Does your bear drink beer?” And Duolingo even launched such merch.

T-shirt

Why do they use these particular phrases?

1. This is marketing. Users take screenshots of different funny expressions, and virality is launched. Therefore, the funnier the phrase about Duo the owl, the more likely it is to fly into social networks.

2. Emotions. A person remembers if the information was accompanied by some emotions. Evolutionarily, the brain filters out the information during the day that did not affect our emotional behavior, and then it is not needed for survival, and it can be deleted at night during sleep. But if something caused a smile, irritation or laughter, the probability of transferring to long-term memory increases.

3. Certain words can be better for showing the variety of grammar in a language. But why these when there are more useful words for the first few days of learning?

Ineffective repetition of words

To learn a word, you need to remember it yourself and repeat it several times – this is a truth that everyone who learns a language should know. Duolingo offers simplified methods of repetition, where you don’t need to remember anything: out of 4 answer options, there will be the right word and three – from a completely different topic. Thus, those same impractical words are also practiced in a strange way. That is, this is essentially performing constant tests. And to go further, I need to talk about skills.

When learning a language, we use and train 4 types of skills:

1. Reading: The skill of understanding written text. Reading helps to master vocabulary, grammatical structures and stylistic features of the language. It develops the ability to understand written texts at different levels of complexity. At the initial stages, these may be simple sentences and dialogues, and at higher levels – complex texts such as articles, books and technical documents.

2. Listening: Skill of oral speech perception. Listening helps to learn to understand speech by ear, to distinguish sounds, intonations, rhythm and accents. This skill is important for successful communication, since in real life most information is transmitted through oral interaction. Listening to native speakers or audio materials helps to get used to the speed of speech and different accents.

3. Letter: The skill of creating written texts. Writing allows you to consolidate grammar and vocabulary in practice, as well as develop the ability to express thoughts in language in written form. It can include writing short notes, essays, letters, messages, and even more complex texts at advanced levels. Writing practice helps you understand how to use language to convey information and emotions.

4. Speaking: The skill of expressing thoughts orally. This skill is the most difficult for many language learners, as it requires not only knowledge of words and grammar, but also the ability to quickly formulate thoughts and pronounce them with correct pronunciation. Speaking includes both everyday conversations and more complex forms of communication, such as public speaking, business negotiations, or spontaneous dialogues.

Reading and listening are receptive skills because they require taking in information. They help expand vocabulary and deepen understanding of language structure. Speaking and writing are productive skills because they require active production of text or speech. They help consolidate the knowledge and skills gained through reading and listening.

Now very simple And important thought: we train the skill that we train. If we read a lot, we train reading. If we talk a lot, we train speaking. If we stroke our phone every day, we train the skill of stroking the touch screen.

Let's analyze what skills are trained in Duolingo. Reading – in every exercise. Listening – quite a lot. Writing – less often, this does not include composing a phrase by words or letters. Writing is when a person generates symbols in his head and transfers them to some form, but this type of exercise is considered difficult there, and there are few of them. Speaking is good if you read each exercise out loud so that the neurons are fixed in the right sequences. If you are lucky with the language, then you will have pronunciation tasks where you need to voice phrases, and Duolingo will recognize it.

Now let's return to ineffective repetition. Repetitions and exercises are made in such a way as to tire the user minimally, not to overload cognitively, but still to have a little progress and complication. But mainly not productive skills are trained, but receptive ones. This leads to the emergence of a large difference between the amount of passive and active vocabulary, which entails the emergence of a psychological barrier. This is not the main feature, but the main one.

Without much effort and studying for 5-15 minutes a day, you begin to understand a completely new language for you. As a hobby – a miracle! The application works if your goal is to impress your friends by saying a few words in a foreign language. But if you want to seriously master the language, training all its aspects, choose a teacher first of all. And Duolingo is just an additional entertaining toy, nothing more. So what I want to say is that if you make a conscious choice in favor of Duolingo and similar applications, you must understand that you will only develop certain skills with limitations, and this is normal. But it is dangerous to rely only on the application, and a week later blame yourself for not being able to order dinner at a restaurant.

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But why does everyone love these types of apps so much?
Duolingo creates the illusion of achievement and progress and gives fast dopamine from daily strikes (dopamine is often called the hormone of joy and happiness). We get the same quick dopamine from watching 30-second videos on TikTok.

If you really want to learn a language, move on to more meaningful learning and learn to give yourself dopamine. But as I said above, even Duolingo is better than nothing — just don't get your hopes up.