It’s become almost trendy to knock Duolingo in the last couple of years. In fact, positioning a new language learning product as the “anti-Duolingo” has become a fairly standard marketing tactic.

And while there are always reasons to debate a language learning method – no one approach is perfect in every way for every person – it’s good to know the difference between a social media pile-on and legitimate criticism.

A new paper has provided some more objective balance on that.

Published in Language Learning & Technology, a study by Smith, Jiang, and Peters (2024) took a rigorous look at how effective the app actually is for independent learners. Instead of just relying on anecdotal feelings, they measured outcomes across a comprehensive range of linguistic abilities. We’re talking both receptive skills (reading and listening) and productive skills (writing and speaking), alongside vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

They tracked 48 independent learners tackling the Spanish course over a three-month period. The findings? After putting in an average of about 27 hours of study, participants showed significant improvement across all ability measures. A small sample, for sure, but 27 hours is remarkably low for meaningful gains – less than 15 minutes a day. For an app coming under flak for meaningless gamification, that is an excellent piece of defence.

When gamification earns its keep

Working in educational software development myself, I know how tricky it is to balance engaging user interfaces with genuine pedagogical value. It’s one thing to build a platform that people want to log into every day, but it’s another entirely to prove that it’s actually teaching them something substantive. This paper validates that the gamified approach, when engaged with consistently, really does translate into measurable linguistic gains. The researchers specifically noted that session completion, accuracy rate, and an overall positive user experience were directly linked to this observed growth.

This challenges one of the most common criticisms you hear: that apps like this only teach you how to pass their specific tests, or only build passive recognition. The fact that productive abilities like speaking and writing improved significantly is a huge win, as these are notoriously difficult to scaffold outside of a classroom or immersion environment.

Of course, this isn’t to say any app is a magic bullet. Twenty-seven hours of app time won’t instantly make you fluent enough to debate current affairs over a coffee. I’m a Duolingo user, and get frustration and satisfaction from it in, sometimes, equal amounts. It never hurts to spread your screen time over other language learning apps, either.

But as a tool for building a solid foundation and keeping learners consistently engaged with the target language, this fresh evidence is robust. It turns out that beneath the relentless notifications and leaderboard leagues, there is a some sound pedagogy at work.

The next time a social media ad pops up claiming they’ve “fixed everything the green owl gets wrong”, it might be worth taking it with a pinch of salt. Any tool that gets people to consistently show up, put the hours in, and tangibly improve is something worth celebrating!