Foreign Language teaching methodological approaches using the Duolingo application

ABSTRACT The field of studies in Linguistic Education and Applied Linguistics has frequently focused on the theme of Digital Information and Communication Technologies and the processes of teaching and learning foreign languages. In this sense, in this paper, we took Duolingo application as a study object, a free platform to learning foreign language. Our scope fell on the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language, in its version of Android application. Therefore, we present a part of the results of a master‘s research (Sataka, 2019), which had as one of its objectives to understand the methodological approaches of language teaching that underlies in Duolingo application. The theoretical framework that bases us are the studies about digital technologies in Education and mobile learning (Boll, Ramos & Real, 2018; among others) and methodological approaches to language teaching (Larsen-Freeman, 2000; among others). Our methodology consists in a qualitative research and based on the experiences of using the application by the researcher herself. Our results showed that there are essentially two predominant methodological approaches in the application, namely, grammar-translation and audiolingual method. Even so, we conclude that it is not just about the transposition of old theoretical-methodological perspectives in a new learning proposal, because, in Duolingo, contemporary social, cultural and psychocognitive aspects are unveiled.

摘要 语言教育与应用语言学领域的研究常以数字信息与通信技术及外语教与学的过程为核心主题。基于此，本文以多邻国（Duolingo）应用程序——一款免费的外语学习平台——为研究对象，聚焦安卓（Android）应用版本中的西班牙语作为第二语言教学场景。本文呈现的是硕士研究（Sataka, 2019）的部分成果，该研究的核心目标之一便是探究多邻国应用程序所依托的语言教学方法论路径。本研究的理论基础涵盖教育领域数字技术与移动学习相关研究（Boll、Ramos与Real, 2018等），以及语言教学方法论相关研究（Larsen-Freeman, 2000等）。研究方法为质性研究，依托研究者自身使用该应用程序的体验展开。研究结果显示，该应用程序中主要存在两种占主导地位的方法论路径，即语法翻译法与听说法。尽管如此，本文仍得出结论：多邻国并非仅是将旧有理论-方法论视角移植至新型学习方案中，其平台还展现了当代社会、文化与心理认知层面的多元内涵。