How To Create Your Own Language Learning App Like Duolingo?
Language learning apps like Duolingo come as a sigh of relief for those who feel the need to learn a new language. It is evident that the internet has decreased distances and brought people closer to each other. That’s why you see your app store teeming with language learning apps. Do you feel triggered by the excess of such apps and decide to create your own?
Whether you do a job in an international firm where people all over the world work together, or you are a hippy who loves to travel, the only thing that holds you from becoming expressive is the language barrier. Your curiosity doesn’t stop at downloading a language learning app like Duolingo.
Therefore, you feel the need to create your own app. If you have decided to go on this journey, then read this article, as it provides all the essential details to create the best language learning app.
What is Duolingo?
Duolingo is an interactive language learning app that provides self-paced programs. It also provides crowdsourcing translations. The best thing about Duolingo is its AI-based algorithms that keep on learning from its users and revise its performance continuously.
Some salient features of Duolingo are as follows:
1. Languages:
Currently, you can learn 36 languages on this platform. These languages include: Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Romanian, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, and Yiddish (in beta), Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian (in beta), Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Navajo (in beta), Norwegian, Polish, and Portuguese (Brazilian).
2. Free app:
With such a wonderful library of languages, you can access almost everything for free. Each language resource is different from the other, but generally, you can get podcasts, games, video tutorials and all of the cool stuff. Such an interactive environment facilitates the user in understanding the nuances of a language in a very smooth way.
It’s important to note that the main idea behind such a wonderful platform was to give the best resources to the language learners for free by removing the barriers of finances. The app has vowed to give free services and has been committed to this promise since its launch. Thus, you do not need to pay anything for using the app. Just sign up with your email and you are good to go.
However, they also provide premium packages but they aren’t mandatory for any user. Only those who think they should subscribe to the premium version can go for it.
3. Levels and Modules:
Now let’s see how this app takes you along each lesson and exercises to reach a certain level of understanding in any language that seems foreign to you.
You will find a lot of language options when you decide to start. Don’t get confused and choose the language you first want to learn.
Before actually learning, you can give a placement test that will judge your capability in that language. Duolingo will take the test and will skip some lessons depending upon your understanding.
Once you choose a language of your choice, the interface of the app shows you several modules or chapters of learning. Each module is prudently designed to build up your foundations and to move to further excellence. While entering a module, you will see some levels. You have to complete each level to essentially mark the module completed.
Although the app takes you step by step in chronological order, you can redo, or jump on other levels in a single module.
Moreover, with each completed module, you get rewards or coins. Another interesting feature is that you need to take practice tests to move forward, though they aren’t mandatory they impact your overall scores.
The list of its stunning features goes on and on. To mention another interesting feature, you will be stunned to know that apart from writing, it provides top-notch reading and listening lessons.
Well, no one can deny the usage and benefits of using Duolingo, but it isn’t a sufficient resource for learning any language. To develop deep knowledge, you will need to put in some extra effort.
4. Gamification:
The whole idea of gamification is to attract users to learn more and to motivate them to excel from others. Let’s say, the XPS and lingots you get when you clear certain levels, Duolingo remind you to keep going. You can even use that currency to buy something from the virtual shop. These features keep you going until you reach your learning goals.
Is Creating a Language Learning App Worth It?
Well, you may not deny the importance of learning a new language, but chances are you may not know the popularity of these apps. Knowing the gravity of lockdowns, you had seen yourself locked in your homes. People around the world suffered severe psychological issues by staying free in their homes.
Therefore, they resorted to meaningful activities like learning new languages. Consequently, the use of such apps sky-rocketed. Those who were witnessing new trends started pouring more and more creativity into these apps. Now, you can see the best apps which have video tutorials and interactive games. These features further glued people to the apps because started loving the design and experience.
Fast forward to 2022, the market value of language apps has reached a huge figure of $29.96 billion according to Businesswire. Likewise, Duolingo earned $ 180.7 million from subscriptions in 2021. You might be in awe to see such a huge market hidden from your eyes. One thing is established that people are spending more on language apps than on most other things.
Thus, you can find your place in the market if you create a wonderful language learning app that at least competes with Duolingo.
Things You Should Keep in Mind Before Creating an App like Duolingo?
Well, it’s would be remiss to not acknowledge the market dominance of Duolingo. But, as you have decided to create such an app, you need to first hold your horses and read these pertinent points.
Play on the drawbacks of Duolingo:
- You have to fill the gaps you find in Duolingo. For instance, the user experience of the translation mechanism of Duolingo is not 100% good. As it uses a crowd translation algorithm, sometimes the translated words do not depict the proper meanings. That’s a disadvantage and if you play on it wisely, you can outshine easily.
- Moreover, Duolingo provides 36 languages. But some have extensive lessons while others do not provide deep learning. You can also leverage this drawback and create an app that gives equal importance to each language.
Add Unique Training Exercises:
You can’t deny the fact that one can only learn a language through practice. Therefore, exercises are at the core of learning. For a better learning experience for the user, you need to create out of the box exercises. Furthermore, you can enhance the user experience by adding games and storylines to your app.
Graphic Content:
If you want your app to be similar to Duolingo, then video lessons are mandatory. It’s in-built into human psychology that they learn more from the visuals than bland text. Thus, you have to develop an interest in your readers, so that they stick to your app.
That doesn’t mean you should add video lessons like the typical classroom setting, rather you can diversify your videos around podcasts, movie scenes, animated videos and much more.
Ebooks:
Pdf ebooks are in vogue nowadays. People have gone from paper to paperless. They feel more convenient reading text on mobile or computer screens. You can leverage your training resources through Ebooks.
Though not all people are grammar lovers or lingual geeks, some of them will definitely love to read books by their favourite authors.
Steps to Create an App like Duolingo:
This is a step by step guide to creating your own language learning app. Starting from ideation to development, you can easily learn how to create your app.
Plan Out the Idea of the App:
Before even embarking on the journey to hire developers, you need to brainstorm the main purpose of your app. It’s very crucial to plan out the features and the concept of your app.
Since you are creating an app that helps people to learn a foreign language, you need to develop the persona of your audience. That is the point where you can point out the uniqueness of your application.
Your audience can be school going teenagers, govt officials, employees, or anyone interested to learn. Therefore, you have to keep in view the user’s demand. Only then, you can roll out the features you need to add.
Once the features are penned down, you can now anticipate how your app will function, what languages will be added, how the design will look and much more.
Analyse your Business Model:
As you are going to earn profit from your app, it is purely a business venture and you must see it through the lens of business.
This takes you to the formation of a business model. It describes the costs, the value, the projected downloads, different versions, outsourcing team, and return on investments to reach the capital volume.
Chalk out a proper business plan and analyze its various points. This will help you to understand your enterprise scope, once your app is rolled out.
Gather the Mentors and Curriculum Experts:
Content is King and will remain so because without it there will be no value in anything you see in the digital world. Your language learning app has to provide lessons and tutorials in different languages, which are nothing but the content you create to appear in various forms.
To choose as well as churn out content, you need to get help from linguists and teachers who can outline and prepare your content. You must define a fresh curriculum for your app’s content that should entice the users.
Start with the Best Design and an MVP Version:
You know you are just starting. You might have fears that your app may not become as popular as Duolingo.
Owing to such reservations, it’s better to focus on MVP or a minimum viable product. Such a product depicts a basic version of your app. When you launch it, you get the review from your initial user comments and then you get an idea of how your app will go.
It helps you to outline your app features one by one. As you are focusing on Duolingo as a set standard, it’s economical to focus on its features and designs, rather than reinventing the wheel.
While designing the UI/UX of your app, focus on some basic designs that will go for your beta version. You can hire graphic designers to put their creative juices into the designs.
If you can’t figure out some intriguing features, let me show you one. You can add an AI-based chat responder that gives answers to users’ questions in real-time.
Select the Tech Wack Wisely:
Since you aren’t a developer, you may not know that android, iOS, or web uses different technology to build the apps.
So, it means the programs for each platform are coded in a different language. That’s why you need to know which platform you want to target for users.
Since no single platform targets the whole audience, you must develop your app for all these platforms.
For instance, in the USA almost 50% are iPhone users, if you aren’t developing an iOS app, you are essentially losing half the traffic from the USA.
The same goes for android and web users. Do you know 69.7% of the world’s smartphone users are using android? So, you can neglect it either. You can consult your developer team to propose the best solution to target the audience on all platforms.
They may come up with the idea that either you go for three separate apps or you choose a hybrid framework to develop your language learning app.
Stack technologies for the web, the android and the iOS are given:
| Developer's Kit | Android | iOS |
|---|---|---|
|
Language |
Java, Kotlin |
Obj-C, Swift |
|
Database |
SQLite |
RealM |
|
Tool |
Android Studio |
XCode |
For the web, you use React.js, Angular.js for front-end and Python, Java and Node.js for back-end development. Moreover, if you are planning for a more thrifty cross-platform choice, you can use Flutter for developing both iOS and Android apps.
Test your App:
App testing is giving the final touch to your app. It will highlight the bugs and errors in your MVP. You can employ a team of testers that sits together to find the errors in your language learning app.
Once, your app is bug-free, it’s ready to be launched on all platforms.
Conclusion:
Creating a language learning app like Duolingo isn’t a piece of cake. Though it’s a lucrative business to own such an app due to the market demand. However, you always need a team of developers to meet this demand. Moreover, you have to do some homework before the development stage. Planning the app’s features and detailing its concept is the most important thing to do.
Then you can think about targeting the platform where you want to see your app. And at last, you have to check its quality with your quality assurance team vigorously. That’s how you can build your own language learning app.
