Learning languages has been an important part of one’s childhood since as long as we can remember. Language impacts the regular life of people of every profession, race, or region of the world. Being fluent in a language helps us express our feelings to the people around us. People around the globe are accepting the importance of communication as the world is soon becoming a global village. It has become immensely important to learn foreign languages to travel the world for fun or business purposes. As people are looking for different ways to learn foreign languages with the help of their smartphones, it is now important to provide them with more language learning apps like Duolingo.
The arrival of language learning apps has brought a transformation in language learning. Being fluent in more than one language is considered an advantage in a lot of job profiles nowadays, this is the reason there is a constant growth in the usage of language learning app development. A lot of language learning institutes are seeking this as an opportunity to launch their own language learning clone app like Duolingo.
If you are also thinking about investing your hard-earned money in building a language learning app development like Duolingo, then you must have to read this entire article.
Learning a foreign language seems pretty fun, besides it can help people secure a job position that would not be theirs if they did not know the language. Most people must have this written on their bucket list, that is how popular it is becoming to learn new languages. No matter how exciting it sounds to learn a new language, the entire process can be appalling. Most of the learners that are trying to learn a new language, especially a foreign language, find it difficult to grasp new words and master the accent. As a result, they leave the process midway.
More than 1.5 billion people are learning English across the world. 80% of European citizens between the ages 15 to 30 are fluent in at least one foreign language. Suffice to say that people have always been eager to learn new languages.
To make things easier for the ones who are interested in learning foreign languages, online language learning has opened an infinite number of opportunities for learners around the world. Whereas most of them learn a new language for business, travel, self-improvement; a lot of learners do not even need a reason to learn a foreign language. 46% of learners said they learn a foreign language simply because they have fun while learning it, and 35% of them learn a new language to maintain the fitness of their brain.
Duolingo has over 200 million users, making it the best language learning app. Due to its clean design, effective user experience, and tempting gamification, Duolingo has managed to dominate the language learning market. When Duolingo first came to the market, the global mobile education market was at 3.4 billion US dollars per year. By 2017, the global mobile education market grew more than 4.5x times to $16.2 billion. As per Statista, this number is only going to increase in the upcoming years.
(Source: Statista)
The e-learning language market is thriving, and it is still not too late to get on board. Even if you have not considered developing anything even remotely close to a language learning clone app like Duolingo.
Why Duolingo App Becoming More Popular?
AppBrain says the total number of educational apps in the Google Play Store is more than 300,000; which is way more than the number of any other category of apps including entertainment, business, or lifestyle apps.
(Source: AppBrain)
Duolingo was founded in 2009 by Luis von Ahn (a professor at Carnegie Mellon University) along with Severin Hacker (one of Luis’s graduate students) with the help of a few others. Luis knew it well enough to learn English, his fellow citizens had to pay a huge amount of money. He wanted to provide people with a way to learn new languages for free. And so he came up with a brilliant idea to develop a language learning app and started calling it Duolingo.
Duolingo attracts new learners with its easy-to-use interface, affordability, and uses a gamified method for language learning. The app is available on both platforms, Android, and iOS. It offers a lot of freebies in order to bring in more new learners.
The exercises that the Duolingo app has been based on a gamified approach. They focus highly on the direct translation of sentences, phrases, and words from your target language to your native language and vice versa. This makes the process of learning bilingual, which makes the learner’s studies easier and faster. The users of Duolingo remain engaged as it offers badges as awards and levels to mark the learning process.
Reason Why Users are More Attracted to Duolingo App
Appealing design
Most reviews we have gotten from the users of Duolingo start with how this language learning app is designed marvelously. Even the ones that disregard Duolingo accept that the design is not the reason they dislike the app.
Socialization
The owner of Duolingo understands well that learning a new language is supposed to be a social process. Keeping this in mind, they launched the Duolingo Language club in the year 2017. Although it is an optional element in the process of learning a new language, it is quite beneficial. The clubs are accessible to both iOS and Android devices. This allows you to have competitions with your friends, family, or social groups you are a part of. And like I mentioned above, it is an optional component, so the people who are not fond of socializing are free to learn the language on their own.
AI-driven tutors
Learners can communicate with chatbots in the iOS version of the Duolingo app. These chatbots help you practice your speaking skills by maintaining a conversation with you. This allows learners to polish their chat ability with real people while practicing with chatbots.
Effectiveness
A lot of research papers have established the fact that it is easier to learn a new language with Duolingo. It speeds up the process of learning. It also supports multiple platforms, Web, desktop, iOS, Android, and it is also available on Windows Phone.
Gamification
Duolingo’s gamification feature is the one that made this language learning app so popular. The developers of Duolingo have been experimenting with a lot of different user-engaging techniques like non-monetary in-app currency known as lingots as loyalty points and regular rewards to encourage the learner for finishing the needful sets of exercises. The team of developers consistently work on bettering the user experience, and a lot of users have said that Duolingo is almost as addictive as Instagram.
Features that the Duolingo App has and Your Future Clone Language Learning App Should Have
Sign up
Whenever you build a language learning app, you should be considerate of the authorization system. Like Duolingo, simplify the process of signing up for your users. Ask certain questions such as name, gender, age, email; type in the password, and your users have signed up. If you wish to make it simpler, we suggest you make the process easier by authorizing using social media platforms.
Filling in personal details
When new learners sign up, they are needed to fill in the necessary details within their profile. To create a language learning clone app like Duolingo, you should request the new learners to fill in the data mentioned below;
- Personal Data: Such as age, sex, name, their photograph (optional).
- Languages that the user aspires to learn: Provide them with a wonderful list of languages like English, French, Spanish, German, etc.
- Set a daily goal: Your users are required to set a goal of a specific number of hours they wish to study on a daily basis.
- Specify the language level: If the user signing up for your language learning app is familiar with the basics of a specific language, they can take a test to see what lessons would be best for them.
When you decide to develop your language learning app clone like Duolingo, you can go by this exact scheme or come up with something new.
Dashboard
The dashboard is substantially a learning screen that helps learners keep a track of their success and bears tools for the learning process.
User Feedback
One of the best ways to boost up your language learning app is by integrating a user feedback feature within the app. This would be the place where your users are allowed to give their opinion on the course in your app. Duolingo uses this feature as its ideal method to see which segment of the app is lagging behind.
Live Streaming
Live streaming is a brilliant way to have your users interact with the tutors in real-time and discuss their queries. By integrating this feature within your language learning app, you will enhance their learning experience. This will also help in increasing your users’ confidence.
Let your users use the course within your app for free for a certain amount of time
This is without a doubt the most wonderful feature that you can provide your users with. You can give free lessons without charging the user for a specific amount of time for any language. With this feature, the people who are visiting foreign countries can learn the language of that country enough to have basic conversations with the local public of that country.
Integrate good learning resources
Filling up your language learning app with unnecessary features is of no point. You need quality content for your users to have a good learning experience. Therefore, do not try to overfill your app with learning courses and compromise the quality of the app. Rather focus on the content that your users might enjoy during their learning process.
Bring in illustrations
When we were in school, our textbooks had illustrations that were informative and explained the concept really well. Likewise, in language learning apps, the learning process of your users would revolve around writing and reading with a set of vocabulary suitable for people of all ages.
An online community of students
A feature that is quite popular amongst users of Duolingo is its language club. Consider including this in your list of features where students can communicate with each other freely, they can put forward their queries or doubts on several topics, exchange opinions, and discuss what they have learned. This will help them polish their learning skills further.
Technology Stack Needed for Develop Clone App Like Duolingo
If you aspire to create the best quality language learning clone app like Duolingo, it is essential to integrate the latest technologies to assure a great user experience.
UI/UX
For frontend development, you require CSS3 and Bootstrap. Whereas for backend development, you require JavaScript, Ruby, Django, Python, or AngularJS. It is best advised that you hire app developers that are well equipped with Swift and Java for iOS and Android platforms respectively.
Database
It is not a surprise that a language learning app would carry a lot of data. So the technology you decide to deploy needs to be robust. You can leverage MongoDB, MySQL, HBase, Postgres, etc.
Cloud
To make sure you have secure and safe data storage, you can employ AWS or Google cloud storage.
How much time it takes to Develop a Clone App Like Duolingo
Developing a language-learning clone app like Duolingo does come with a disadvantage. It takes a lot of time to develop a top-quality app like Duolingo. The numbers that are mentioned below are pretty rough but they will give you an idea of how long it takes to build a language learning app. To keep it simple, the below-mentioned estimations are just for the iOS platform. However, Android app development takes the same time, give or take;
- Designing of the app, SDK, and integration of the libraries - 72 to 108 hours
- Function development of the app - 374 to 504 hours
- Stabilization and debugging of the app - 70 to 100 hours
Although it is difficult to give you an exact number of hours it will take for the development of your language learning app, these numbers will give you an approximate idea. It also depends highly on the kind of features you decide to integrate within your app and how you want it to look.
Estimated Cost to Develop an App Like Duolingo
The cost of development of any app depends on the number of hours developers invest in it, the features that the app owner wants to integrate within the app, and the functionality included in the app. These factors decide the cost of the app development:
- Basic functionality
- Advanced features
- Preferred platform (iOS or Android or both)
- Size of the team for the development of the app
- The complexity of the app
The cost of developing a language learning app like Duolingo will rise with the rise in technologies integrated. Even though an app with basic features will cost you somewhere between $10,000 to $30,000 for one platform. An app for both platforms will cost you around $45,000.
Choose the Right Company for Clone App Development
If you are planning to get a language learning app developed, you must have to integrate all the features mentioned in this article. You can give your users a highly functional app that provides them with a great language learning experience. Like Luis von Ahn, you can allow people to experience modern education.
The success of your app relies entirely on your users, so you need to make your app to fulfill your users’ expectations. We can help you with that. At Cypherox, we have a team of experienced and highly talented developers who can develop your language learning app just like Duolingo and make you the next Luis. With the skills of our developers, we can even build the app faster for you. If you want to build such a language learning app, you should contact an experienced company offering language learning app development services like Cypherox.
