Dear global education leader,
Duolingo, which offers online language courses in 40 languages to approximately 40 million monthly active users, filed to go public this week. Its prospectus — the document it files to the government prior to the IPO — says there are more people in the United States learning languages on Duolingo than there are foreign language learners in all US high schools combined (it also says there are more people learning Irish and Hawaiian on Duolingo than there are native speakers of those languages worldwide).
The company’s financials show fast growth — revenues increased 129% to $161.7 million last year over the previous one — and substantial investor interest: it raised $183.3 million since its founding in 2011, from a who’s who of venture capitalists.
Educators might be more interested in how it uses gamification to make learning a language fun. Million of learners complete over 500 million exercises every day, which in turn creates a massive data set. Combined with artificial intelligence this data can be used to constantly run A/B tests and iterate to test what motivates learners and keeps them coming back.
Compare that to language learning in UK schools. According to Ofsted, the UK’s inspection authority, entries for GCSE languages fell 19% between 2014 and 2018. French and German took the biggest hits (30% over the period); with Spanish more stable (2% decline) and other languages, which only make up 10% of the total, rising 6%, including Arabic, Chinese and Modern Hebrew. No doubt ever-changing exams and standards play a role, but it could also be that tech is uniquely suited to dish up language learning.
Duolingo’s mission is “to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available.” It was founded by two engineers, Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker who met at Carnegie Mellon University. Luis grew up in Guatemala and knew the power of English fluency. “[K]nowledge of English in a non-English speaking country can usually mean that your income potential is doubled. I mean, you literally make twice as much money if you know English,” he told the BBC.
I doubt very many Duolingo users end up fluent. It’s patently obvious that to learn a language you need to speak to people. But most students don’t leave classes fluent, which begs the question: Is digital language learning the rare area where tech might beat humans?
In 2020, Duolingo conducted a formal study to evaluate its effectiveness versus traditional university language courses. It found that its own learners earned proficiency scores comparable to those of US university students at the end of their fourth semester of French or Spanish. They also did it in half the time.
Not surprisingly, interesting partnerships are emerging. Universities are increasingly turning to places like Duolingo to assess English-language ability: As of May 2021, over 3,000 higher education programs around the world accept that test as proof of English proficiency for international student admissions, including Yale, Stanford, MIT, Duke and Columbia. Busuu, a London based online language learning community, has 200 corporate clients, as well as universities like Texas Tech. New York City’s iSchool uses Rosetta Stone to teach French, Italian and Mandarin, while employing two teachers for Spanish.
According to Holon IQ, 1.8 billion people around the world are learning a new language, with consumers spending about $61 billion to learn on and offline. Just think of all the conversations this will fuel.
Stay curious,
Jenny
