Can you actually learn a language with Duolingo?
I practiced Japanese on Duolingo every single day for a year to find out.
When a lot of things came to a stop last year (you might have heard about it), I found myself with a lot of free time, and unable to attend my weekly Japanese classes.
I didn’t want to lose too much momentum with my Japanese, but I also wasn’t particularly keen on investing a lot of time or money into it either, let’s be honest. Naturally, the next logical step was thus to rely entirely on a mobile app for my language learning efforts #millenial
Fast forward 450+ days later, I think I’m able to put together an honest review of the app I picked, in an attempt to answer the big question: Is it possible to learn a new language using Duolingo?
Let’s start from the beginning.
What is Duolingo?
Duolingo is a very popular language-learning mobile app. I’ve used it sporadically in the past, mostly to work on my German and Spanish skills. But even though I’ve enjoyed playing around with it, I’ve never really tried hard enough to see tangible results.
Currently heading towards a multibillion-dollar IPO, the app boasts some impressive numbers:
- 40 languages
- 500m+ downloads
- ~40m monthly active users
(For those of you interested in this sort of stats, I recommend checking out Duolingo’s SEC filing.)
With plenty of time on my hands, I decided a COVID lockdown was the perfect opportunity to dive a bit deeper and give the app a fair chance, with Japanese this time. Given my interest in tech and user experience, it was also a great excuse to explore Duolingo through the product lense, looking specifically at user onboarding and gamification, two areas the app leverages masterfully.
Now before we get into the app itself, let me give you a quick look into my language learning background for full transparency.
A little bit about myself
Although I’m far from a language expert, I have a pretty extensive learning background. Not a very successful one, but still. Studies have shown that speaking or learning different languages can serve as a “scaffolding” to take on new ones, something I’ve observed in my own efforts.
I’m a French native speaker. And while English is the only other language I can speak fluently, I’ve tried to learn a lot of other ones throughout the years: Spanish, German, Japanese, Arabic, Persian... I even took Latin in middle school (it was bad).
Unfortunately, I’m terrible at most of these today and wouldn’t be able to hold the simplest conversation. My actual language proficiency profile looks something like this:
I’ve studied Japanese for a semester in 2007, and picked it up again in 2019, with weekly 2H-long evening classes, for about 6 months. I also traveled to Tokyo in 2015 for a couple of weeks, but I spent most of my time there smiling and nodding at everyone, awkwardly pretending to understand what was going on.
Long story short: I didn’t start my Japanese Duolingo challenge with a blank slate, but I wasn’t advanced either. I was unable to read the two basic alphabets perfectly (let’s not even speak about Kanji), and definitely unable to conduct anything resembling a conversation.
Now that we’ve established how clueless I am, let’s talk about learning Japanese on Duolingo!
Duolingo for Japanese: The exercises
Because Japanese has a different writing system than English (the more you know), the way Duolingo approaches Japanese lessons is through 2 main axes:
- The “learning tree”, Duolingo’s traditional, progressive learning experience.
- The character learning practice, designed to learn Japanese 2 main alphabets, Hiragana and Katakana.
The Duolingo learning tree
The learning tree is Duolingo’s main interface, a succession of increasingly difficult exercises you can unlock as you complete each set. Very game-like, learning is divided into sections you can access once you’ve successfully finished the previous exercises, after passing through checkpoints that assess your fluency.
Starting with basic topics such as family, food, or hobbies, exercises become increasingly difficult and slowly introduce elements of grammar and conjugation, along with reminders of previous lessons as you continue progressing forward. Each individual set can be “maxed out” by completing it several times, increasing the difficulty as you go over it again and again.
The sets themselves are made up of exercises and questions in various formats, such as:
- Select the missing word
- Translate this sentence
- Tap the matching pairs
- Tap what you hear
- Select the correct character
This variety manages to keep the learning process fun while pushing students to work on different areas of the language. The obvious game mechanics involved work as an incentive for players to continue going down the tree and working towards their next checkpoint.
But more on that later.
Hiragana and Katakana Practice
The second main component of the app is the alphabet practice. Japanese has three alphabets: Hiragana and Katakana -syllabaries used respectively for Japanese and foreign words- and Kanji, which are basically ideograms derived from Chinese characters.
Duolingo only offers character practice for Hiragana and Katakana at the time of writing this. And it’s plenty enough.
I really enjoyed this part of the app, as someone that has struggled to learn writing and reading the most. Mnemonics charts help a lot, but Duolingo is a great add-on, offering a few different methods of learning:
- Writing, inviting you to draw the characters.
- Matching, associating the Japanese and English spelling.
- Listening, matching the character to its sound.
- Identifying, offering different options for you to select from.
This is quite effective and while the writing especially is a bit superficial, it’s a fun, bite-sized practice that can really drive home some of the characters. I found it especially helpful to improve my reading and use of a Japanese keyboard on my phone.
Now that we have a fair idea of how the learning happens in the app, let’s take a quick tour of some of the underlying mechanics that make Duolingo such a unique experience.
User Onboarding: Getting learners started
From the very moment you install the app, Duolingo does a terrific job at showing you around, setting goals, and offering a very personal experience.
Much like video games that show you the ropes by letting you play and figure things out on your own, the app manages to give just enough guidance. It introduces core concepts but most importantly gets you to try it all out for yourself, learning and making progress within the first few minutes.
As a matter of fact, you can start playing/learning before your account is even created:
When you’re tackling the complicated endeavor of trying to learn a new language, small wins are a huge deal! Duolingo provides value to the user from the get-go, taking them to their “Aha moment” within the very first session.
Branding and messaging: A unique tone of voice
Duolingo communicates through a very playful and friendly brand, from the sleek and bright-colored design of the app to the friendly messaging and of course the mascot, Duo the green bird.
This cute and friendly character comes with a bubbly personality, regularly jumping in the app or via notifications with comments and words of encouragement, nudging the user to practice regularly. Copywriting plays a huge part in the overall friendliness of the app, with clever in-app messages to make you feel good about your progress:
Over the last few months, Duolingo has introduced a new cast of characters, joining forces with Duo to encourage users. They are a diverse and quirky bunch, coming along with cool animations that give an even warmer, wholesome feel to the app.
I really enjoy seeing the app embrace this cartoonish feel, and am excited to see further use of these brand elements, similar to some of the new notifications I’ve started to receive:
Duolingo manages to delight users with these playful brand details, connecting the overall experience to lighthearted fun instead of the grueling, homework-and-textbook dread learning a new language can easily turn into.
While the app doesn’t take itself too seriously on the surface, it still puts forward academic benefits and legitness, promoting its accredited tests and language teaching materials for educators for example.
That balance is reflected by the company’s overall communication and roadmap. You can see more by watching some of the content from their annual Duocon conference where different team members share their latest efforts, from design to product, research, and more.
Gamification: Fun, incentivised learning
One of the best things about Duolingo is how effective it is at making language learning feel like a game. The app takes a lot of design elements from video and mobile games, translating them into powerful, fun ways to engage users/learners/players.
What are some of the elements that make using Duolingo feel like a game? This piece from Shengyu Chen offers a nice look into some of the recent gamification improvements made over the past year in the app, but let me cover a couple of aspects I find particularly important.
- Progression and performance metrics
The first and obvious gamified aspect of the app is the learning format. Users are invited to complete increasingly difficult challenges to unlock more levels, gaining experience points and badges in the process, gearing up to beat harder and harder stages as they progress.
Looking at these elements without context, you’d be challenged to guess this is a language learning app and not a role-playing game:
From badges to XP points, checkpoints and levels, my favorite mechanism is the streak, which challenges you to practice every single day without fault to maintain it. The desire to maintain my streak (or fear of losing it) was instrumental in my motivation to come back and learn every day for more than a year.
To make it even more challenging, one of the latest updates introduced a heart system, which pushes you to play mindfully or risk losing it all. Make a mistake and lose a heart, sounds familiar?
- Leaderboard and leagues
Leaderboards are universally known as a key component of many games, and a popular way to motivate players. Who doesn’t like to be first?
However, they’re not always the most effective when applied to a massive community, as they provide little incentive for the top players and can discourage lower-ranked ones. To solve that issue, Duolingo gave it an engaging spin, by introducing a league system.
Instead of competing for an overall, big leaderboard with thousands of users, you start in the low-level League, competing with 49 other users. The more you play and complete time-bound challenges, the more points go towards your ranking. At the end of the week, the top 10 players get promoted to the next league, while the bottom 10 are demoted.
Week after week, you have the ability to slowly make your way up, the challenge getting harder as the competition gets more serious. For competitive individuals, this is a great incentive to continue playing, hoping to one day reign over the ever-elusive diamond league.
To be completely honest, I personally opted out of this feature because I kept being demoted and became irritated about it ahah. It’s a fine line!
- Personalization and in-app items
If you’re even remotely interested in video games, you already know that there is a huge market around virtual, in-game items. From loot boxes to in-game currencies and more, it’s a whole thing. I had my fair share of dealing with these concepts when I worked in the video game industry (a nice way to describe a former life as a professional droid 🤖) a few years ago.
If you’re serious about learning Japanese, you’ll probably end up purchasing stickers on LINE at some point, if you haven’t already. Personalization is a strong way to make people feel involved in a product, dedicating time, energy, and money until they feel like they’ve invested so much they can’t leave.
This is an area for improvement for Duolingo in my opinion.
While the app makes a good job at most everything else, the personalization options are relatively limited, with a barebones user profile and a lack of choice for in-app items. Sure, you can buy some buffs or dress up Duo in a golden tracksuit (which is dope, don’t get me wrong), but I wish we could do more.
As we speak I’ve accumulated 9583 gems (the in-game currency) and have nothing to spend it on, for example.
On the other hand, the amount of data generated by the app allows for cool personalized marketing content, such as weekly and yearly recaps. I remember falling in love with these sorts of insights with Last.fm years ago, and I’m happy to see products like Duolingo or Spotify adopt a similar approach to customer-facing data today.
Conclusion: Actual results, honest review, and advice
After more than a year of using Duolingo daily, I can safely say that I’ve made significant progress. The app helped me improve my Japanese, specifically my Hiragana and Katakana reading.
But what about the real, burning questions:
- Am I fluent in Japanese?
- Can I hold a proper conversation?
- Have I learned as much as I would have in a classroom?
- Can I watch Japanese comedy shows and understand anything that’s going on?
The answer to all of these is a resounding いいえ, which can be translated as no. While the app is very fun and a great learning companion for language learners of all levels, there’s no secret recipe when it comes to achieving results and Duolingo is no exception.
Japan expert Chris Broad broke it down nicely on his podcast Abroad in Japan (May 5th, 2021 episode):
Every day I get about 57 messages from people around the world saying “Can I use Duolingo to learn Japanese”, and the answer is no.
It’s more of a game for fun, it’s a good app, I do love Duolingo but you’re not gonna do Duolingo for a week, come up to Japan and be able to have a conversation or do anything of real tangible value. So bear that in mind.
Great app though, lot of fun. If you want to learn something: human Japanese!
This sums up my experience and while I’m going to continue using Duolingo (can’t sacrifice my streak), I invite you to be realistic about your goals and about what anyone can achieve with a ten-minute-a-day learning regimen.
If you’re serious about learning Japanese or any other language and want to incorporate Duolingo in your lessons, here are 3 easy steps I wish I would’ve adopted earlier:
- Writing: This is the big one in my opinion. After more than a year of doing daily hiragana exercises, I still have trouble not mixing up chi (ち), sa (さ), ki (き) and ra (ら). I have no problem in the app or when typing, but writing needs to be practiced over and over again to get that muscle memory going. Duolingo itself recommends it.
- Speaking: Easier said than done, but interacting with Japanese speakers will help a lot. As it turns out, native speakers don’t sound like what you learn from books and learning apps (shocker, I know). Japanese is much more straightforward in real life and very contextual. Don’t overthink it!
- Consume content: That’s the easy part, but watching Japanese shows, reading Japanese-related content, and overall being immersed in Japanese culture seems to play a big part in learning. You might come off as silly if you speak like a manga character to a native speaker, but it’ll help a lot to connect to the culture and feel emotionally involved.
Keep in mind that this is coming from someone that has used an app to learn Japanese for over a year, and yet can barely speak a word of it still, so take it with a grain of salt. I also know it’s pretty generic advice, but Duolingo can make you quite lazy if you’re not careful. The gamification aspects of the app are very effective, and it’s easy to feel satisfied after a “difficult” two-minute quiz.
The best thing you can do is using this great, fun app as a springboard to learn more and explore the language in other places. In the meantime, I’ll continue completing the hiragana and katakana practice for the 200th time 😎
ありがとう for reading this article, I hope you liked it! I write sporadically here on Medium about technology, education, and other topics, as well as more regularly for software companies online, which you can find more about on my website. Below are some great articles and sources I’ve read when researching for this post, I invite you to check them out as well!
Bibliography / Related reads:
- “Duolingo CEO explains language app’s surge in bookings” — Natasha Mascarenhas, TechCrunch (September 2020)
- “Duocon 2021” — Duolingo, (August 2021)
- “How Duolingo Designs with Psychology in Mind” — Jordan Koschei (May 2016)
- “3 things I learned from 365 days straight on Duolingo” — Johnson Kee (July 2016)
- “Duolingo UX Analysis” — Gaurav Makkar, UX Planet (May 2018)
- “Distraction disguised as learning: Duolingo, Codeacademy and why you should get back to basics” — Greg Dickens (March 2019)
- “User Onboarding Spotlight: Why Duolingo’s user onboarding is ‘magnífico’!” — prototypr.io (August 2017)
- “DuoLingo: a (better than!) textbook approach to practical spaced repetition” — Dion Almaer (February 2016)
- “What I Learnt From My 299-Day Duolingo Streak” — Braden Moore, More Remarkable (January 2019)
- “Duolingo and my history of lazy Spanish practice” — Pax Ahimsa Gethen (Jan 2018)
- “Duolingo: how they nailed their product and became the #1 education app” — Jeroen Corthout, Salesflare
- “Professional Spotlight: Cem Kansu of Duolingo” — Product Coalition (September 2018)
- “Is Duolingo Really Helping Me Learn Korean?” — Tanya Bryan (August 2019)
- “Duolingo Review: Does the Resource Offer Compelling Content?” —
Steve Kaufmann (May 2017) - “What Happens After 200 Days On Duolingo” — Toni Koraza (February 2020)
- “How Duolingo’s new gamification mechanism convinced me to pay” —
Shengyu Chen (June 2020) - “Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: A Totally Ridiculous Comparison” — Donovan Nagel, The Mezzofanti Guild (2019)
