Duolingo’s new learning app ‘Duolingo ABC’ gamifies reading for kids

Duolingo (Nasdaq: DUOL) – the world’s most popular language learning app – today launched 'Duolingo ABC' in India, an app designed to help children between age groups of 3-8 years to learn how to read and write in English. Developed by learning scientists, Duolingo ABC is a free-to-use app for kids that includes over 700 bite-sized lessons, teaching the alphabet, phonics, and sight words in a fun gamified manner. The platform offers a differentiated learning model with 9 different levels to start from allowing kids to learn at their own pace and build confidence. 

A Fun and Friendly Companion for Independent and Effective Learning 

Duolingo ABC is designed specifically for younger users to help them learn independently. With a child-friendly interface, no ads and in-app purchases, the app makes learning to read fun and simple for kids and also allows parents, guardians and educators to track their child's learning progress. Furthermore, the application customises the learning experience depending on the child’s level of reading, offering shorter, easier to decode words and stories in early levels, and providing longer form stories with less support in later levels. The app features personalised lessons such as teaching children how to write their own name and letter writing activities that teaches each lowercase and capital letter to kids. 

Instill the Love for Reading in Kids with Gamification 

Housing a variety of game-like features, Duolingo ABC is built to make a child’s learning experience more engaging and enjoyable. The learning app offers an array of gamified lessons to help kids maximise learning with interactive activities. These engaging activities encompass a variety of techniques, such as tracing letters with fingers, connecting images with phrases, identifying objects that start with specific letters, and more. In addition to the short lessons, Duolingo ABC has dozens of fully illustrated short stories for encouraging kids to read out loud and learn from the real-time feedback with speech recognition. These stories are designed to help young children develop a lifelong love of learning and reading. 

Built on a Tried and Tested Teaching Methodology 

Duolingo’s teaching methodology is aligned with Common Core standards and is based on recommendations by the National Reading Panel to improve phonemic awareness, fluency, phonics and reading comprehension among kids. According to research by The Education Development Center, the teaching methodology used by Duolingo ABC has also shown to improve literacy scores by 28% among kids who used the app for 9 weeks. 

Commenting on the launch of Duolingo ABC in India, Karandeep Singh Kapany, Country Marketing Manager, Duolingo said, “Duolingo’s mission is to make learning free, fun and accessible to everyone. We wanted to cater to the educational needs of children and offer a free tool that helps them in their early education and enables them to form a strong literacy foundation. To avoid problems in kids like low reading levels, behavioural issues, school-year repetitions and school dropouts, a strong literacy foundation is very important. We know that teaching people to read and write can change lives and by taking everything we know about how people learn languages, with Duolingo ABC we want to use our expertise in encouraging and motivating kids to build a strong literacy foundation with gamification and positively impact lives.”