The idea to get a 100 million people to translate the whole web for free and learn a new language in return.... for free!!

1. Atula Ahuja
Teaching English with

2. Launched in June 2012
Absolutely Free!!

3. IN THE CLASSROOM
Secondary school ESL students in an International school
who are proficient in French or German or both. The school
offers language instruction in French, German and English.
Grades: 8 and 9
Age: 13- 15
Level of English: Intermediate to Advanced
Preferences:
o Improve their English for success in IGSCE board exams.
o Authentic language use for higher level of accuracy in
reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary.
o Some opportunities to be independent learners and design
their own learning.

4. Currently Duolingo offers free language
opportunities to speakers of these
languages:
French,
German,
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian
English

5. BIRTH OF THE IDEA
Same problem manifests itself on the web. Large portion
of the web is partitioned into multiple languages.
 If you don’t know the languages in which
knowledge is stored on the web, you can’t access it.
 The Solution is to translate all or most of the web
into every major language.
Humans need to
communicate with each
other, through a common
language- to make sense
of the world.
Absence of such a language breaks down communication.

6. Google, Amazon- Kindle, Archive – digitizing
books. Problems arises in digitizing old
books. A book is scanned and scanned
images of text to be deciphered using OCR.
Machine translation would have been ideal, they are not
good enough yet. Lot of absurd mistakes can happen.
We need people to translate the whole web.

7. Utilizing time and human effort for good
The solution to this is to divide this job into small
chunks and get users to translate the web.
This ingenious solution is called DUOLINGO- a way
for learners to learn a language for free, at the same
time, helping translate text from the web.

8. LEARN by TRANSLATING
If you are a speaker of English,
trying to learn Spanish
Duolingo begins by giving you a
sentence in Spanish and asking
you to translate it.

9. Duolingo only gives you sentences
using an algorithm based on your
skill level:
Beginners simple
Advanced complex
Learners unlock each level to progress
HOW it works?

10. If you’re stuck
at a word,
you can see the
possible
translation.
HOW it works?

11. The curriculum is
divided into skills. Each
skill comprises 2 – 10
lessons, with reading,
writing & vocabulary
exercises and grammar
concepts. Students can
track their progress and
unlock the learnt skill.
SKILL TREE

12. Content?
The content owner
uploads the
content/text that
needs translation, to
the Duolingo site.

13. .
Duolingo gives it to its
students who translate
it as part of their
coursework
When the translation is
complete, it’s returned to
its owner who pays for
this service.

14. AFFORDANCES
Access: Versions for desktop, ipad, iPhone or Android devices
making it very accessible to students.
Provides flexibility of time, independence of place.
Storage and Retrieval: Student progress can be recorded
electronically and accessed any time by students and teacher.
Cost efficiency: Free for students. Content owners pay.
Non- linearity: Students can skip between levels and reach a higher
level by unlocking a skill level they have mastered. If you feel that
you already know everything, you can do a test to skip all the lessons
and master the skill immediately. There are some locker icons along
the skill tree which you can use to skill a lot of skills in a row.
Monitoring Learning behaviour and progress: Classroom support
feature is being added which will allow teachers to trace
student progress and address difficulties.

15. AFFORDANCES
Control: Students can control and design their learning by
contributing to the skill tree and choosing material of their
choice.
Authenticity: Learners get practice translating sentences both
from and into the target language..
Situated Learning: Learners get to choose from a wide
variety since material is uploaded by content owners from all
areas.
Disadvantages: No opportunity to converse with native
speakers. Heavy focus on translation. Limited language
availability, though more languages will be added soon.

16. POTENTIAL BENEFIT: I would
like to use it since much of the
learning happens in the form
of games and rapid-fire
quizzes. Learners can switch
between speaking, listening,
and writing.
It is designed to enable
learners at all levels to learn
autonomously, quickly and
accurately -- all for free.
CONCLUSION
Duolingo is an ingenious
concept that has initiated a
system of user-driven,
crowd-sourced translations
for online content while
helping learners learn many
languages.
The project’s ultimate aim
is to get 100 million people
to translate the web into
major languages.

17. Thank you!