color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Duolingo is an extremely popular application to learn a new language. Even though Duolingo is meant to be a tool for second language acquisition; the way Duolingo organizes its lessons follows many traditional didactic principles. Duolingo's lessons are organized in small, sequential levels focusing on specific skills such as vocabulary memorization, sentence translation, grammar patterns, and pronunciation. Duolingo asks the learner to perform a number of different types of activities to demonstrate mastery of a lesson such as selecting the correct answers, filling in blanks, matching words, or translating sentences. All of these activities have a right or wrong answer and after selecting their answer, they get instant feedback to let them know if they selected the correct or incorrect answer and then they can move on to the next higher level of instruction.

Duolingo also uses a very structured, skill based progression model. To progress from one level to another, the learner must first pass all of the drills presented in the lower level. Duolingo teaches concepts explicitly and uses repetition to reinforce those concepts. The gamification aspects of Duolingo provide motivation to continue practicing, however, the pedagogical model still utilizes a teacher centered approach in that Duolingo determines the order in which the content will be delivered to the learner.

A strong point about Duolingo's model application, is that it is very well organized and easy to follow. The lessons are built upon previous lessons using a scaffolding technique allowing the learner to build a systematic foundation of knowledge in smaller, more manageable steps that reduce confusion. The drills that Duolingo provides to help retain what the learner has learned llow for repetition to occur and improve memory retention.

Another strong aspect of Duolingo's didactic model is the ability to provide learners with immediate corrective feedback. Once the learner selects an answer to an exercise, they are immediately informed if they were correct or incorrect, and this can help the learner avoid developing incorrect patterns.

While Duolingo is effective in helping learners develop proficiency in discrete skills, it also has limitations similar to most other forms of didactic pedagogy. Since language is typically learned in isolated or artificial sentences, the learner may not experience authentic communication when practicing on Duolingo. Learners may develop the ability to complete the various exercises that Duolingo provides, but they may find themselves struggling to communicate spontaneously or to use language appropriately in everyday life.

Overall, Duolingo demonstrates how didactic pedagogy functions in a digital environment: structured, measurable, skill-focused, and efficient. Duolingo is successful at providing learners with the foundational knowledge necessary to begin the process of acquiring a second language through repetition and feedback. However, it would likely benefit from being supplemented with more authentic, communicative approaches to language learning.

Poveda-Balbuena, M. L. (2024). The digital language learning platform Duolingo as an effective and motivational tool at the initial stages of face-to-face instruction. In Language, technology, humanities in Society 5.0 (pp. 219–232). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=IoEwEQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA219

Duolingo as a Language learning Model