Research

For more information, please refer to my academic CV

Research at Duolingo

As learning scientist, I collaborate on research projects across the company. I have conducted hypothesis-driven, experimental studies to assess learning effectiveness using Duolingo's curriculum, and I have also worked on more open-ended projects seeking to identify and understand learner behaviors and choices more broadly. Part of my work with the Marketing and Public Relations team involves investigating learner behavior and learner response to current events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and in response to media requests about particular markets. I regularly communicate this research to the public through the Duolingo blog, Facebook Live events, and media interviews.

One of the research projects I'm most proud of is our 2020 Duolingo Language Report, which analyzed global data to determine how learner interest in languages, language-learning behaviors, and learning motivations have changed over time and especially during the pandemic. Read more about it my Portfolio!

I also co-organize Duolingo's Research Colloquia series, through which I organize visits to Duolingo's office in Pittsburgh for researchers in applied linguistics, language and learning sciences, and machine learning. This series builds relationships between Duolingo's research teams and the experts we admire and on whose research we rely. Visits typically involve a one-hour research talk for an audience of researchers, designers, and product managers, and meetings with the teams most related to the researcher's expertise. If you're interested in participating or will be passing through Pittsburgh, please reach out!

Academic research

In my academic research, I investigated how people learn from new kinds of language, especially new accents. I often compared children and adults, and those who learned their second language during childhood versus those who learned it as adults. My work was especially focused on the sounds of language -- accents! We're used to thinking about speaking with an accent, but we all hear with an accent, too, according to the dialects and languages we know best. I used experimental studies to test how the languages a learner knows influences their sensitivities to new sounds and accents.

Much of my research was conducted while working with brilliant, creative scholars, post docs, graduate students, and undergrads in these labs:

• • Infant and Child Development Center, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University

  • UT Sound Lab, Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin

  • Child Language Lab Austin, Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin

My research and approaches to language learning and teaching have also been shaped in significant ways by the work I conducted with the brilliant psycholinguists in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the Pennsylvania State University.

Selected academic manuscripts

van der Feest, S.V.H., Cynthia P. Blanco, & Rajka Smiljanic. (2019). Influence of speaking style adaptations and semantic context on the time course of word recognition in quiet and in noise. Journal of Phonetics, 73, 158-177. Available here.

Blanco, C.P., Colin Bannard, & Rajka Smiljanic. (2016). Differences in the association between segment and language: Early bilinguals pattern with monolinguals and are less accurate than late bilinguals. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1-17. Available here.

Blanco, C.P. (2016). Cross-language speech perception in context: Advantages for recent language learners and variation across language-specific acoustic cues. PhD Dissertation. Available here.