There was a time in my life where I was spending hours every day on Duolingo. I was about to move to Sweden, a country I’d never even visited, and those hours on the app learning Swedish were a means of convincing myself that I had some degree of control over what would happen when I began my new life abroad. If I could understand what was going on at the post office, that was at least one thing I wouldn’t have to worry about.
Swedish was the fourth language I learned on Duolingo. First was French, because I felt guilty about letting what I had learned at school lapse, then a bit of German out of curiosity, then Irish, for love. I had a boyfriend who spoke the language, and we thought it would be fun if we could talk about strangers in public in Irish, which is a particularly great secret code because it’s almost impossible for speakers of anything other than Celtic languages to guess what the words mean. I have always been interested in where words come from and how languages work. But there was something about Duolingo that made it compulsive: the friendly, bright green owl, the promise of learning a language almost by osmosis, without really working at it. You complete short lessons on a colorful, user-friendly platform on your phone and progress gradually up through levels, encountering more complex grammar and vocabulary, and gaining experience points and gems as you go. If you make too many mistakes in a lesson, you lose all your “lives” and have to stop playing, unless you use your gems to buy more.
I could read an article in a magazine, but then would lose my nerve trying to order a coffee. All those hours on Duolingo had given me a huge vocabulary but left me more or less mute.
When I arrived in Sweden, all fired up to put my new language skills to use, I had a rude awakening. I could not speak Swedish. I could sit at dinner and listen to people speaking in Swedish, and then contribute in English to the conversation, but if I had been called upon to do so in Swedish, I would have been lost. I could read an article in a magazine, but then would lose my nerve trying to order a coffee. All those hours on Duolingo had given me a huge vocabulary but left me more or less mute.
Perhaps needless to say, I didn’t reach fluency in German, French or Irish either. I have, slowly, read books in French, but I lose conversational threads quickly. I can tell you that I don’t like someone’s trousers in Irish anytime you like, but that’s about it. German, I still know basically nichts. So I gave up on Duolingo about five years ago, thoroughly disillusioned.
In the meantime, Duolingo has continued to be the most downloaded language learning app in the world. The app’s green owl has become a popculture figure in his own right, loved and hated for his insistent good cheer that turns into something more like menace if you fail to return to the app for your lessons each day. Duolingo is free but has a paid subscription option that removes ads and gives you infinite “lives” to use on your lessons. More than 1 billion exercises are completed on the app daily. I’ve been ambiently aware that, while my obsession lapsed, other people have remained firmly in the owl’s clutches, perhaps more so even than I was. Their inability to break away from Duolingo has a lot to do with what the app calls streaks, a ticker that increases by one every day that you complete a lesson, and resets to zero if you miss a day. Millions of people have streaks over a year long. One user, a historian named Agnes, told me she forced herself to complete her daily lesson while in labor with her son, so she could maintain her now-1,738-day streak. Jack Remmington, a British TV presenter whose Spanish streak is coming up on 1,000, said he would be “devastated” if he lost it. “It’s become a bit of an identity thing,” he told me, adding that he has found himself in the corner of nightclubs at 11:58 p.m. yelling into his phone to keep his streak going.
The question that remains in my mind, and in the minds of many of even its most dedicated users, is: what is Duolingo actually teaching you? “The speaking element is trash,” a user called Elizabeth, who has a near-400-day streak learning French, put it to me bluntly. Practically everyone I spoke to told me that speaking was far and away their weakest suit. If Duolingo is not really teaching you to communicate in a language, what is it doing? According to Matt Kessler, an applied linguist at the University of South Florida who has researched Duolingo’s efficacy, the app is giving you a beginner’s guide, and not much more. “It’s really good for learning receptive skills: listening, reading, learning about grammar and vocabulary, so it can be a great place to start. But oftentimes people struggle with production: speaking and writing. Studies have shown that again and again,” he said.
There was something about Duolingo that made it compulsive: the friendly, bright green owl, the promise of learning a language almost by osmosis, without really working at it.
Duolingo knows that spoken fluency is a promise it can’t make. A recent blog post on the company’s website included in its list of FAQs the question “Can Duolingo make me fluent?” to which the answer was a dressed up, encouraging version of “no.” “Research shows that Duolingo is an effective way to learn a language! But the truth is that no single course, app, method, or book can help you reach all your language goals,” it says.
Duolingo hopes, however, that this is about to change. In September, I attended Duocon, the app’s annual conference, streamed live from Pittsburgh for any user to attend. The company was going to be unveiling a new feature, something it promises will transform the speaking element of the Duolingo experience. I watched as a product manager at Duolingo called Zan strode out across the conference stage and told his story. He had been studying Spanish, and met a Spanish speaker at a party. When the person tried to speak to him in Spanish, he froze. “In hindsight, I knew all the words, I just couldn’t get them out.” This sounded familiar to me. Simply repeating phrases that appear on a screen does not lead to being able to speak a language. Duolingo’s solution to this problem is, no surprises really, AI.
