Foreign Language teaching methodological approaches using the Duolingo application

Abstract

The field of studies in Linguistic Education and Applied Linguistics has frequently focused on the theme of Digital Information and Communication Technologies and the processes of teaching and learning foreign languages. In this sense, in this paper, we took Duolingo application as a study object, a free platform to learning foreign language. Our scope fell on the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language, in its version of Android application. Therefore, we present a part of the results of a master‘s research (Sataka, 2019), which had as one of its objectives to understand the methodological approaches of language teaching that underlies in Duolingo application. The theoretical framework that bases us are the studies about digital technologies in Education and mobile learning (Boll, Ramos & Real, 2018; among others) and methodological approaches to language teaching (Larsen-Freeman, 2000; among others). Our methodology consists in a qualitative research and based on the experiences of using the application by the researcher herself. Our results showed that there are essentially two predominant methodological approaches in the application, namely, grammar-translation and audiolingual method. Even so, we conclude that it is not just about the transposition of old theoretical-methodological perspectives in a new learning proposal, because, in Duolingo, contemporary social, cultural and psychocognitive aspects are unveiled.