Duolingo: 24 million people hooked on learning languages ​​with one click

Duolingo has metrics typical of an entertainment application, not a teaching one: 83 million people connect to learn one of its 42 languages ​​every month, 24.2 million do so every day (10 million more than the previous year). It is the educational application with the most downloads in the world and the Guatemalan Luis von Ahn, one of its two founders, does not hesitate to share his secret formula, like someone preaching so that his idea is copied. “Outside of class you only learn if you are motivated and we do everything we can to keep people coming back to Duolingo. “We use the same techniques as mobile games and social networks,” acknowledges the mathematician in a video conference from the company's headquarters in Pittsburgh (United States).

“Each lesson has to last about three minutes and people have to feel that they did well,” he continues. As? “We give each person exercises that have an 80% probability that they will respond correctly,” she confesses. If it is too easy or difficult, he will give up. There is no shortage of challenges and rewards, the mascot – a small green owl – encourages you to continue lagging if you have not logged in, the streak of consecutive days doing tasks is highlighted (the Japanese always win), you can get points and there is even a virtual currency.

“The vast majority of our users, when asked why they are using it, respond: 'Duolingo is almost as fun as Candy Crush and, at least, I'm not wasting my time,' Von Ahn says proudly. “Or they say, 'Now I spend a little less time on Instagram because I'm learning French,'” he continues. In his opinion, the debate on children's access to technology is sterile: “It is inevitable. “What we are trying to do here is to make the use of the screen at least useful.”

In his entertaining talks with a viral audience, Von Ahn reviews his “rich” upbringing without being one, since his mother, who raised him alone and as an only child, invested her resources in him. He graduated from the American College of Guatemala and this opened the door to Duke University, where he graduated, and Carnegie Mellon, where he received his doctorate.

The return of languages

The app It began to take shape at Carnegie Mellon in 2009. That year, Von Ahn, a mathematician and professor of Computer Science, became a millionaire after selling Recaptcha – the system that forces you to prove that you are not a robot – to Google and, although he thought about Retired at the age of 30, he was excited to invent an educational tool that would facilitate the training of the most disadvantaged. And he opted for languages, which have a quick return. “Knowing English increases the salary quite a bit in almost any job, in Guatemala it is almost double. If you are a waiter, a secretary… it is worth a lot to you.”

Uriel Kejsefman, product manager at Duolingo, enjoyed an experience similar to Von Ahn's. “I grew up in a middle-class Argentine family, and ended up studying in the United States thanks to English. That experience completely transformed my life,” he told EL PAÍS within the framework of WISE, the educational summit of the Qatar Foundation. In his opinion, the team, with people from 30 countries, shares “the mission of expanding these types of opportunities to more people.” Kejsefman trained at Yale and Harvard and, after working in the Education Department of the World Bank, two years ago he landed on Duolingo, a step, in his opinion, that was natural for him: ”It was evident that, in a post-pandemic world, education was going to advance from the private sector and from technology in particular.”

Duolingo has become extremely professional and is a company with more than 700 workers, including engineers (45%), designers (13%), teachers (9%), publicists, strategists… But it was not always like this, because Von Ahn He was one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing ―the outsourcing of tasks to a large group of people through an open call― and founded a course incubator. “At first we created the courses with volunteers and that meant that there were a lot of them that were really created by popular demand,” explains Kejsefman. For example: “The Irish created the Irish course with our tools [gaélico] that is used by most of the world that learns it,” says the Argentine proudly. “At some point, when we were making like over $100 million a year, it felt weird to still be using volunteers. And we decided to start paying everyone,” adds the Guatemalan co-founder with a laugh. In 2019 they began to advertise, in 2021 they went public, and artificial intelligence now forces them not to sleep.

“Today we are going slower, the focus is on making sure that what we have is of very good quality,” explains Kejsefman, who speaks seven languages ​​and practices his German with the app.. Half of the users learn English, another 20% Spanish and another 10% French, but their catalog includes languages ​​in danger of disappearing (Navajo, Hawaiian or Haitian Creole) or rarities such as High Valyrian, from Game of Thronesor the Klingon of Star Trek.

For four years, Eduardo González-Mora, professor of Engineering at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, has been studying Esperanto. He tells by email that reading the novel motivated him to learn it. The war of the salamanders, by Karel Čapek, in which amphibians speak this language. Use the app at least 30 minutes a day. “On my trips abroad I talk to others and I usually write my notes in Esperanto,” he says.

In a short time, artificial intelligence will translate and dub any recorded material – Coursera is already doing it – but Kejsefman does not believe that people will lose interest in making themselves understood face to face and the testimonies on social networks seem to agree with him. Juan wants to speak some Italian to travel to Tuscany; Julia saying things in Swedish to her summer date; Antonio longs to soak up everything Japanese (cuisine, manga, language); Blanca, a K-pop fan, struggles with the rudiments of Korean. Von Ahn is especially surprised by the exponential growth of this Asian language, parallel to the musical craze.

Job opportunities are, however, the first driver to download the application. It looks very clear on a world map. In English-speaking countries they study Spanish (in Canada French, their other official language), in Balkan Europe German, and in Sweden immigrants struggle with Swedish. The student does not learn rules, but rather discovers patterns with practice, like when he learned his native language.

There is a more sophisticated premium payment option, without ads, Duolingo Max, which Von Ahn encourages anyone who can afford it to pay (8% of the total), so that it results in better technology for the rest of the users. Artificial intelligence advances every day. “The idea is to have an almost natural and realistic conversation. For example, like you are in a bar in Paris and the barista comes and asks you,” says the product manager. “We have learned that it is much more magical if the app responds dynamically and coherently to what you tell him. But that magic of ChatGPT must be kept according to the person's language level.” And he deploys another novelty: “a button that, when you make any mistake, explains to you what you did wrong. Before it was impossible, because each user makes a different mistake.”

Duolingo has an English level certification exam that is accepted in 4,500 universities, costs only $49 and does
not require moving, which makes the process cheaper. “Almost any university in the United States accepts our certification when applying, half of those in Canada and quite a few in England and Australia,” says Von Ahn, who points very far: “Now we are expanding to mathematics and music”.

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