Duolingo: anylisis of a mobile aplication of Teaching and Learning Spanish as a Foreign Language

Identifier:  TFM:582

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TFM582

Authors:  Durán Castro, Esther

Abstract:
Work dedicated to the analysis of Duolingo, a mobile application of teaching and learning Spanish as a Foreign Language. In this work is analysed the full course of Spanish version 4.10 of Duolingo, consisting of 61 levels, in order to determine: linguistic skills, the type of user that this application it is focused, the methodology used to teach Spanish, what kind of activities are in the application, if language samples appear and what type they are, the contents in the application, the design and the presence of gamification. Having performed the analysis, the results show that Duolingo uses a traditional methodology and structural base which with the repetition of the same translation activities and the lack of interaction with other students the user, who can only learn Spanish from English, lose the motivation to continue learning. Therefore, this work has served to show the shortcomings of Duolingo and show that there is still a long way to go in research of mobile applications for language teaching, because it is a new and evolving field.