Talk:Duolingo

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bbkesler (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Hlydon. Warning!! I clicked on a Duolingo ad and it was a scam that gave hacker access to my device. I strongly advise against clicking on their ads. I may have to replace my device to shut down access to the hacker. Reported to Duolingo - received no help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8801:A81:F800:C1E4:F728:DA7B:AD73 (talk) 18:16, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedy deleted because the project is high-profile. By doing a Google search, it has been covered by TechCrunch, Technology Review, New Scientist, Hacker News, etc.

Hi, Huyzin, I agree that your references confer notability and I will remove the speedy tag. Ta, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 00:21, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Out of Date

Duolingo is a rapidly evolving website, with missing features being added, plus the logo used on this page is quite obsolete. They have a new one with a CGI green owl character, though I can't find a version that has both the owl and the "Duolingo" logo text together. Kelvinsong (talk) 21:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Update

Yes, the data on what languages are available to speakers of what language, needs to be updated frequently. Same where the language courses (for English-speakers) are listed in order of popularity; the rankings keep changing. I, in particular, am closely following the growing popularity of Hindi; today, based on current trends, i will probably see Hindi overtake Ukrainian in popularity; tomorrow, i will see Hindi overtake Welsh in popularity; before November is out, Hindi will probably also overtake Hungarian in popularity. (I say "i will see" because the popularity figures apparently update every 24 hours, and the calendar date on which the update takes place may depend on your time zone [i liv in Vermont, United States].)--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 18:23, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I updated the part "Courses available in other languages", and added a source, and edited for legibility and concision.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 19:26, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Update two

Duolingo has continued growing, and it has now surpassed 300 million users. I'll be updating this info soon.––Jmaxx37 (talk) 12:00, 21 November 21 (MST)

I fıxed an error ın the projected completıon tıme of (Castılıan) Spanısh for Arabıc. You're welcome. GlottalStop777 (talk) 15:00, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Criticism source

In the article, it is used the reference of the duolingo forums to show that there is criticism of the more advanced lessons. Is someone's personal opinion on a forum, really a reliable source? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.207.225.251 (talk) 18:16, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

It was a complaint I filed which got a relatively large number of upvotes, and it triggered a long discussion(mostly consensus). When talking about user opinion, I think there is no better source than asking the users themselves. -- Kelvinsong (talk) 18:48, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

That would still, strictly speaking, be original research on the basis of unreliable sources. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:00, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Fine, removed it for now. What about the rest of the info about how Duolingo works? Its not the kind of thing that you can find a newspaper article written about it.Kelvinsong (talk) 15:46, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure you can! [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]. —Tom Morris (talk) 10:09, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I didn't have time to read through each and every one, but I'm pretty sure they all go like "Duolingo is crowdsourced" and "Duolingo has language lessons in a tree format" or "Users translate sentences and get points for them", or "User vote on Translations". Some things that you only know by using the site daily like how there is a minimum of 6pts and max of 15pts per sentence and up to three bonus for rating, difficulty scales from 1-10, various bugs and quirks, points only getting awarded if match with computer is greater than or equal to 50%, points than show up in the daily count, but not the activity stream, etc.

Oh, and some of the info there like: "and the program automatically detects blatant errors." is wrong, and I can give you about twenty screenshot examples to back it up(Though I guess that would count as Original research.) Kelvinsong (talk) 13:18, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Number of [active] users

Are any stats available out there? --eugrus (talk) 20:58, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

"Duolingo publicly launched in June and now has about 250,000 active language learners. The company plans to expand to Italian and Chinese later this year. It also plans to release an iPhone app for mobile learning." http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/09/17/duolingo-gets-15-million-to-translate-the-worlds-text-through-online-learning/ Mimjac (talk) 02:31, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

November 2018

The number of activ learners of Spanish for English Speakers, alone, is now 21.2 million. For English for Spanish Speakers (currently the most popular Duolingo course of all), it is even more: 27.3 million. (Data from https://www.duolingo.com/courses/all; in the "I speak [language]" part, you can just click "All languages" to get a complete list of courses.) The total number of activ Duolingo users is probably difficult or impossible to know, given the question of multiplicity, i.e. how many people study multiple languages on Duolingo and if so, how many languages?; plus how many people use multiple Duolingo accounts to study the same language. (I myself am currently studying 5 languages on Duolingo [listed in order of when i started on them on Duolingo; first languages first]: Greek, Chinese, Swedish, Portuguese, Hindi. And it is not uncommon for me to see a Duolinguist listed with 10 or more languages that they hav studied.)--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 18:55, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

"offers extensive language learning lessons"

I would say that it offers extensive vocabulary learning lessons. It offers very few tips on grammar (in Spanish) and none at all in French. Thoughts? --TheSeer (TalkˑContribs) 23:48, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I have been using Duolingo to learn Spanish for a while. It teaches grammar using an immersive method. I haven't noticed grammar tips and I have certainly not been missing them. If you see lots of sentences that all use the same grammatical construction and you know enough words to see what they mean, then you automatically learn that construction. The process is faster in small children (who learn languages only by this method), but it also works for most adults. It certainly does for me. (I am over 40.) Rosetta Stone doesn't do explicit grammar teaching, either, and it works.

In addition, it should not really come as a surprise if you need some additional material such as a grammar to help you with theoretical understanding. The lessons are for practice, and they are quite good for that. Hans Adler 11:54, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Neutral?

This article is well organized but to me sort of reads like an ad. I don't really know what would be changed but does anyone else see this as a problem? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.188.200.55 (talk) 02:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like an ad to me. The article is written in a rational, observent-like point of view. The features of duolingo.com are described in an unbiased form. If you think any part of it is not rational and advertises the website, then tell us, or edit it yourself. --Yashowardhani (talk) 12:52, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems biased in favor of Duolingo. Needs to cite drawbacks, as in http://www.lang1234.info/3/category/duolingo/1.html . It does not teach as much as other free courses like http://Book2.de (many more languages, and downloadable to practice offline) or http://bbc.co.uk/languages (good video courses in most of the same languages as duolingo). The discussion below which says that "active users" probably means "users who have not clicked the deactivate button" means it seems puffery to list it as having 5 million users in the first paragraph. The sponsored study did not test speaking or listening. Numbersinstitute (talk) 00:45, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

The opening paragraphs read like marketing copy – in both tone and content. The way that it emphasises the fact that the service is free feels like advertisement, and clauses like: "includes a language-learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam," read just like about-us text on a company website. Other marketing copy examples include: "Duolingo uses only very limited advertising in its android app. There are no subscription fees for the tutorials," and "Duolingo also includes a timed practice feature." Zach Beauvais (talk) 22:06, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

5million users, 30minutes on average daily

I can't believe these numbers and the source wont open for me. Can anybody confirm, that the source link is not working? COuld anybody give a working link to a reputable source or better some different sources for this big statement? 178.11.231.171 (talk) 19:28, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I could open both links (in firefox, not sure which version). The second source states that Louis von Ahn claims there are five million active user. It says nothing about how an active user is defined. I could not find anything about the average user use duolingo for 30 minutes pr. day in either source. The source, TechCrunch seems reputable enough. JakobSteenberg (talk) 20:01, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Economist article (http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21578514-luis-von-ahn-helped-save-internet-spammers-his-larger-quest-put)

says on June 1 that "Duolingo already has 3m users, who use it, on average, for 30 minutes a day." The Techcrunch article of July 11 has a headline that says it "now Has More Than 5M Active Users".

It's naughty to conflate figures from two sources that differ, in such a cherry-picking manner. Still, they are big numbers. I fear that since Duolingo is an unlisted/closed corporation they can say what they want to say. William Avery (talk) 20:07, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Agreed that this form of cherry-picking is a no no. How about deleting the part with 30 minutes? While it is pretty certain that Duolingo have the 5 million active users if they state it; an easy statistic to make if you say e.g. how many individual user logins have been made in the last month. Claiming that the average use is over 30 minutes per day however; Are they saying that each task takes x time and the daily number of task per user is or are they much more likely measuring how long each user are on the website. If it is the last I have personal contributed quite a lot by having Duolingo open i my browser without doing anything on the site because I was doing something else. JakobSteenberg (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

That sounds good. By the way, the Duolingo user interface has a "Deactivate my account" option, so "active accounts" in their terms might mean accounts that have not been actually deactivated, but could still be pretty dormant. William Avery (talk) 21:28, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree, that the user number might be accurate enough - perhaps "active" could be set in quotation marks in order to show the questionable meaning. I certainly cannot believe that the average active usage time is 30min per day at such a big user base. I think the latter statement needs some bomb-proof sources or should be deleted.178.11.231.171 (talk) 22:01, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I seems like we had a consensus. I have deleted the bi-sentence about 30 minutes in the article. Please have a look at the change for good measures. JakobSteenberg (talk) 10:14, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, everything is fine now. If anyone comes up with some reliable usage-statistics, i still would be interested.178.11.231.171 (talk) 10:25, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Plan for Chinese given up? Any source?

Bilinguist88 deleted this source on July 14th, which mentioned Chinese among languages to be introduced later. What is the source that supports that this piece of information is outdated? Adam78 (talk) 20:33, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh sorry. I just noticed this addition. Adam78 (talk) 20:32, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of reference to Duolingo's study of effectiveness?

On 13 Sept 2013, an anonymous user removed the bold items in the paragraph below (not bolded in article, just here for clarity), saying "Removed unnecessary information and claims with no reputable source"

The efficacy of Duolingo’s data-driven approach has been backed up by an external study commissioned by the company. Conducted by professors at City University of New York and the University of South Carolina, the study found that 34 hours on Duolingo was equivalent to reading and writing ability of a first-year college semester, which takes in the order of 130+ hours. The research did not measure speaking ability. It found that a majority of students dropped out after less than 2 hours of study. The same study found that Rosetta Stone (software) users took between 55 and 60 hours to learn a similar amount. It did not compare to other free or inexpensive courses, such as BBC, Book2, or Before You Know It (software).

The bold info was sourced, primarily with a cite to Duolingo's own study, which previously had been mentioned but not cited in the article. If their study is not reputable, the entire paragraph should be deleted, rather than just the limitations of the study. It is necessary information, because the dropout information was significant in the report, and the non-measurement of pronunciation is significant in any comparison of language learning results.

In fact the positive finding of 34 hours is a stretch. There were too few absolute beginners to measure their progress directly, so the study reports a synthetic estimate, based on progress rates of students who already knew some of the language. Duolingo may take longer with actual beginners. The 34 hours is standard Duolingo publicity, but not really proven. Further a comparison only to Rosetta Stone begs the question how free Duolingo compares to free competitors.

I welcome other editors' thoughts. i am thinking of reverting, and adding a note on the weakness of the 34-hour estimate. Numbersinstitute (talk) 23:29, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Word Count per Language (only French is Verified)

Reference 7 only verifies that French offers 2000+ words. Do we not need more information to verify the word count for other languages?

Mooglemann (talk) 22:29, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I finished the German course and it taught me 1710 words. Repeating the lessons doesn't increase the vocabulary.

Marting456 (talk) 03:11, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Turkish and Hungarian

Updating the percentage of completion for new courses is fine, but when y'all edit the Turkish and Hungarian percents, please use citations 36 and 37. Most languages on Duolingo are Indo-European, so the "model" used for making new courses is based on IE languages, taking into acount syntax and grammar. Neither Turkish nor Hungarian are IE languages, so the percentages on the site (citation 35) are wrong. Both teams regularly post their progress on the course pages (citations 36 and 37) based on the number of words in their courses, please use those. If you spend some time on the site, you can see that the percentages for these courses jumps up and down. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Last edited by: (talk • contribs) 23:20, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Guardian article

I stumbled upon a Guardian article from today about Duolingo [10] which I thought could be of interest to some. There is not really anything new or surprising in it. But it is also good to have good sources. Kind regards JakobSteenberg (talk) 19:45, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

ChineseSkill

"Why this app specifically?" I guess since of the screens (the skill tree and list of lessons in a skill) look a lot like the analogous screens in Duolingo. Is there a lot of language learning apps that take design clues from Duolingo? TvojaStara (talk) 21:06, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I found the similarities very striking. Especially 'Test Out' facility. William Avery (talk) 12:12, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that ChineseSkill is free, like Duolingo, and consequently caters to a similar market. Triptothecottage (talk) 03:31, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Fluency Badge

Certain duolingo courses have a fluency badge, that can be shared to linkedin. It judges your fluency percentage as you progress through the course. Again only certain courses have this. Can this feature be reported on in this article? 47.20.9.43 (talk) 22:57, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Please note what I am referring to above is distinct from "Duolingo is also collaborating with LinkedIn to allow the score to be easily incorporated into a user's résumé page." 47.20.9.43 (talk) 23:00, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Self promotion article

There is no problem having a wp article about Duolingo. It meets the notability criteria. However, the article has developed into a barely disguised marketing tool, whether intentional or not, and that is not, in my view, appropriate. For example, the company offers various languages. It is not necessary to have a long list of these languages, that varies every month or so. Some of the references used are from the Duolingo website, seeing as ssome contributors have admitted they work for Duolingo, this is a clear case of wp:or, or self advertising. There are cases where claims made (to the benefit of the company) have been questioned as ambiguous or illogical or simply not reliable wp:rs. All of this breaches several principles and guidelines. An example is wp:10YT. What possible importance will it be in October 2027 what the list was of courses offered in October 2017, when that list will have changed by February 2018, and again by April 2018, and so on? There is ample opportunity to develop this article to be a good encyclopedic standard, without filling it with wp:trivia and giving the company free advertising. I can see that similar concerns have been raised many times before in comments made above. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 01:02, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

You overstate how ephemeral the items in the list will turn out to be. The vast majority of languages offered are presumably permanent features, i.e. the list will only grow (more and more slowly) and will never shrink. Therefore wp:recent does not apply. The fact "Duolingo teaches Spanish to English speakers" and every other similar fact are long-term facts worthy of being mentioned in this article. I don't see them as advertising but as interesting and important details in the description of the article's subject, so they are not items of wp:trivia. Tayste (edits) 02:15, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree. The complete list of languages should stay. They are highly relevant to this article and I do not see them even slightly as some kind of "advertisement" (quite a stretch, in my opinion). PS: I do not, nor have ever, worked for Duolingo or any related company. --Thorwald (talk) 04:03, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Advertisement template message

Hello, I am an employee of Duolingo and want to open a dialogue with the editors of this page around the advertisement tag. I make occasional edits to the page to keep it up to date and accurate. I have no intention of using our wp page for self-promotion or advertisement but understand that my position biases me and would rather work with the editor community to suggest changes and ensure we avoid violating any rules.

When would it be appropriate to consider removing the advertisement template message currently appearing on top of the page? I would be glad to provide sources or further information as required.Sam at Duolingo (talk) 16:48, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not associated with the company in any way, and have never used the product. I agree that the "reads like adsvertising" tag is no longer accurate. I think it can be deleted. —johndburger 13:57, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

New Section: "Game Elements"

I did not think there was a lot of information on the specific features of the Duolingo app/website itself. I therefore added a section on the common video game features that Duolingo uses. I thought it would provide a better picture for the readers of what it's actually like to use the program. Bbkesler (talk) 03:00, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

New Section: "Classroom Uses"

I added this section to provide an important example of how Duolingo is used systematically. My discussion on its effectiveness at different levels of language-learning was intended to give the readers a sense of Duolingo's strengths and limitations. The source cited in this section says that beginners improve very rapidly through Duolingo, whereas more advanced learners have a harder time with it due to the ambiguity of trying to perfectly translate sentences that involve complex words and phrases.Bbkesler (talk) 03:05, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

80% of traffic comes from the app?

This claim is made in the article but the source provided does not seem to mention this. Is it there? M.T.S.W.A. (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:20, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

This article seems just an advert

Nowhere is it explained what this app/platform actually does. It is something to do with language learning, but how does it do it and what does it actually offer/provide? quota (talk) 17:52, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Possibly a section about the Incubator?

Hello all. I frequently edit this article, and I have noticed that there is no section about the Incubator, which is a crucial part of DL. People create the courses, and I feel that that is important. Could someone help create that section? I am not sure how to not make it sound like an advert. Jmaxx37 (talk) 03:44, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree, there ought to be a section, or at least information, about the Incubator.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 11:54, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Category

I added Category:Education in Pittsburgh, on the grounds that this outfit is based in Pittsburgh, and it is about language education. Okay?--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 11:46, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Cite

In the subsection "Duolingo Clubs", i added the template, "This section does not cite any sources..." We ought to add sources. Okay?--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 11:53, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Free or freemium?

The article previously described Duolingo as "freemium", but I changed it to "free" since there aren't actually any additional features in "premium" besides the removal of ads, which any free ad-blocking extension or software could alternatively do. Buying it seems to be just a symbolic way of supporting the project. Does anyone here has objections to this change and thinks the article should describe it as freemium for some reason?? - Alumnum (talk) 05:03, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

I would keep it as freemium because adblock isn't particularly usable on mobile, where the app tends to push the majority of its updates. Additionally, the app gives you stuff for buying premium, rather than just asking for donations. Now there's also the fact that leveling skills up requires either the spending of lingots (which can be bought with real money) or premium. puggo 16:36, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Missing a Duolingo lesson

There is this meme going around that Duo, the website's mascot, is a scary and evil owl if you miss your daily lesson. He will haunt you or even kidnap your family. I would like to know how this started because the comment sections always seem to be aware. --2001:16B8:31E8:6300:7CA0:EB4B:9F7F:6DCF (talk) 11:31, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Probabily from those Duolingo notifications?

see this [[11]] for more info. Worra Mait Kosit (talk) 07:30, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Duolingo-logo-2019.png

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 02:52, 29 August 2019 (UTC)