Duolingo as a Bilingual Learning App: a Case Study

Abstract

Due to the evolution of technology, this study focuses on the use of technology in order to promote language learning. Duolingo is one of the modern applications that facilitate acquiring a second language. Hence, the study aims to confirm the hypothesis that Duolingo helps promote acquiring two languages simultaneously for beginners. It is a mixed-method study including observation, assessment, and interview. It is also a case study that involves one participant who used Duolingo to learn Spanish and English simultaneously for two months. The participant is a male school student whose age is 12 years old, and he lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After collecting the data, they were analysed and described to have the final results. At the end, the results displayed that Duolingo can promote acquiring two languages for beginners, but it has limitations. Thus, it is recommended to develop Duolingo for advanced levels as well as for English language learners. Introduction Technology has been used as a technique to improve education and teaching methods. Accordingly, mobile applications have been used extensively in learning the second language since smartphones and tablets are available most of the time. One example is Duolingo; it is an online app and website that was created to facilitate learning various languages, such as Spanish, German, and Chinese. The main method of the app is Direct-Translation Method. In addition, it provides the learner with a track of his/her improvement over time as well as a reminder to follow up with the learning process. The learner also can specify the duration of daily studying, such as studying for fifteen minutes or for twenty five minutes per day. To illustrate, Duolingo was dedicated only for native speakers of English at the time of the study, but the participant of this study is a native speaker of Arabic. Hence, this study was conducted to examine how Duolingo can promote acquiring two languages, which are English and Spanish, simultaneously for beginners. Vesselinov & Grego (2012), have done a study to investigate the effectiveness of Duolingo in learning Spanish. The results showed a significant improvement of the participants during two months. Thus, it has proven that Duolingo promotes learning a second language. However, Garcia (2012) reported that Direct-Translation Method that is adopted by Duolingo is helpful, but it is more challenging for upper levels. As an illustration, Direct-Translation Method proves its capacity to learn a second language, but it will be more difficult while levelling. On the other hand, this research paper aims to discover in depth how a beginner can learn English and Spanish by using Duolingo, which is created for learning only one language at a time. Hence, the purpose of the study is to improve learning techniques by using technology, primarily apps. Literature Review Learners, nowadays, can easily access to a numerous sorts of language learning apps, especially with the existence of smartphones. However, Duolingoˡ was created in 2010 as an online web, and then it became available on Android and IOS. Its rapid development led to registration of over 100 million users (Duolingo, 2016). The application's potential and limitation were evaluated in several studies.