“Hey! Time for your daily language lesson!”. I’m sure most of us have received a notification like this at some point. The little green owl in the corner reminds you of a commitment you made only two days ago that you’ve already fallen behind on. These reminders are consistent, until eventually you are passively aggressively informed that they don’t seem to be working and that they’ll stop reminding you now. 

While Duolingo was already an incredibly popular app and website to use, it was the consistent joking online of these reminders (or threats, as they became known) that propelled them into mainstream pop culture. Suddenly there was a giant green owl on the red carpet, at concerts, at seemingly every important celebrity event. However, being so central in the spotlight leaves you open to criticism. Language learners everywhere were asking whether Duolingo was an effective language learning tool, or whether it was just brand power pushing people to try it out. 

There’s no denying that the good intentions for the app are present. Duolingo offers users a completely free language learning experience, with the ads mainly being for their own premium subscription. The app utilises its game-like interface to entice learners to stay with streaks, an in-app currency and other smaller prizes. The creator, Luis von Ahn, deliberately designed the app to feel more like a game to users, to make language learning a far more fun experience. In fact, Duolingo greatly outranks other language learning services in terms of users. But does it work?

Criticisms have come from language experts across the world, pointing out glaring issues in the way the courses are set up. Language coach Kerstin Cable argues the vocabulary being taught to users is wholly impractical and relies on the user memorising largely redundant phrases to progress to the next section. Users are prompted to learn how to discuss the possession of oranges before they are given a genuine conversational phrase to learn. They are then instructed to repeat the same phrases about oranges over and over; is pure memorisation an effective way of learning a language?

Psychologists Roger Kreuz and Richard Roberts argue that for adults memorisation alone is not enough. They argue that possession of metalinguistic awareness leads adults to become bored by the repetitive memorisation tasks and lack of explanation for any sort of grammatical functions. The memorisation tasks do have benefits, however, as they allow users to beat the forgetting curve; past mistakes from previous modules will also crop up in newer ones to reiterate the correct answer. 

Perhaps the largest issue with Duolingo is the machine behind it; unfortunately, that’s all the app is. Users only ever interact with the software, and what the software decides is the correct answer when multiple translations are available. Linguist at the University of Michigan Diane Larsen-Freeman argues that the problem with Duolingo is the lack of interpersonal connection. Conversations with native speakers and full immersion in the language are key in second language learning and sadly the app cannot replicate this experience. The team at Duolingo are fully aware of this; they have set up live events for users to meet up with native speakers in person in order to gain vital in-person interaction. 

Arguably the most important point about Duolingo is that it never promises to make you fluent. Von Ahn makes it clear the app is only intended to get someone between an advanced beginner and an early intermediate. Yet, if users can only come away being able to ask “Does you dog have my orange?”, maybe evaluation is needed on what vocabulary exactly constitutes that of an early intermediate language learner.