Case Study

DUOLINGO AS MOOC: PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Dear students of “Open and Mobile Learning”,

 Welcome to my two-month-long and ongoing pedagogical experiment of learning a foreign language with Duolingo.  

I currently define Duolingo as an excellent educational tool for focused people to learn the basics of a foreign language. It combines the advantages of the behaviorist theory of language acquisition, the audiolingual method of teaching a foreign language, and individualized instruction. Before I gave Duolingo a try, I knew very little about it, so most of my observations are from practice. I am also a teacher of English as a foreign language, and I count on my professional experience to guide me through these individual studies.

 From the technical point of view, Duolingo is very easy to utilize; the only difficulty I have come across so far is that I miss the right words in the word bank when I have to restore a structure of a foreign sentence, for example. The small screen of my smartphone is at fault, but since the longer we work with the language unit, the better we remember it, any mistake that I make while using Duolingo is not really a problem, but a benefit.

 To start using it, I went to www.duolingo.com to register. It was necessary to give the system a preferred nickname and an email. When I was asked for permission to send me reminders, I refused. Many people complain about Duolingo’s reminders on YouTube (how annoying they are, etc.). My answer to that issue is everyday study because, after a couple of weeks, the issue of reminders completely disappeared from my interaction with Duolingo.

 Once the learner is in, I would advise them to find Duolingo's lexical-grammatical exercises in a target language and to start doing them. This is the only part of Duolingo worthy of a user’s undivided attention. Speaking and listening elements are pre-set too. Everything else (find/invite friends, daily goal, shop, connect to Facebook, etc.) does not really matter if the aim is to learn a language, not an application. Read the little theory and dive into its practice – this is my formula for success with Duolingo.

 Last week the app informed me that I have learned 2000 foreign words. My inner self-control tends to lower this number to approximately 1500 new lexical units, but it is still not bad for two months of working with a language from an unfamiliar language family. The time I spend on Duolingo varies from one hour to five hours per day.

 I noticed that the linear character of exercises has a lulling effect: I do not have time to get frustrated over the material I did not quite comprehend because endless assignments lead me away from reflection, good or bad. Similar to mastering a mother tongue, practice totally dominates theory, imitation prevails over analytical activities, and it is quite possible to learn a language rule without grasping it at the first attempt. If the misunderstanding persists, I consult online textbooks, YouTube videos, and language-learning forums to solve the problem.

 My dream is to complete one new Duolingo Unit every day, but this seems unrealistic during the semester. I assume there are at least 150 units ahead of me at the beginner’s level, so I definitely found a wonderful form of escapism for this year. I hope to finish these units by the end of 2023 to start working with a reliable tutor on a generalization of my new knowledge.     

To summarize my experience, Duolingo is great for people, old and young, who can and are ready to concentrate on the same activity for a long time. I enjoy doing repetitive tasks, and Duolingo has an eye for mistakes, so together we are quite an effective team, I think.

 Thank you for reading and all the best for your own endeavours!

This link will take you to the UBC Blog, where I have posted a short presentation on my experiences.

Anna Rzhevska, 23d February 2023