Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence by Erica Dhawan & Saj-nicole Joni

Author:Erica Dhawan & Saj-nicole Joni [Dhawan, Erica]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2015-02-23T14:00:00+00:00

Language pedagogies are like diets. They have questionable efficacy and all disagree. Learning at the scale of millions, we can now use data and engineering to dramatically improve pedagogy.

For people who grow up in developing countries like Luis’s native Guatemala, Duolingo is more than a hobby, it’s a boot-strapping tool. As Luis explained, “[T]he majority of people in the world who want to learn a language are learning English because it might get them a better job.” And these people don’t have money to spend on language lessons. Luis’s challenge was how to make Duolingo free and keep it that way. The solution came in a way analogous to his breakthrough with reCAPTCHA. In that problem, he took the online work people were doing to verify that they were human and reused it to digitize books. In Duolingo, Luis takes the online work people are doing learning a new language and reuses it to perform the service of translating content on websites.

More specifically, in Duolingo, when learners reach a certain level, the sentences they practice on are actual sentences from news websites that need translation. When enough people get the same translation, the system considers it accurately translated and uses it. Done at scale, this method of translating basic website content is as accurate as using professional translators. One example stunningly illustrates how accurately Duolingo’s users translated a sample text from German:

Sample input (German): Falls Pakistans Geschichte ein Indikator ist, so könnte Musharrafs Entscheidung, das Kriegsrecht zu verhängen, jener sprichwörtliche Tropfen sein, der das Fass zum Überlaufen bringt.

Professional translator (at the cost of 20 cents a word): If Pakistan’s history is any indicator, Musharraf’s decision to impose martial law may prove to be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Duolingo: If Pakistan’s history is an indicator, Musharraf’s decision to impose martial law could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.53

It works for the same reason reCAPTCHA works. When the same answer is given many times by people working individually, a useable translation of straightforward text is yielded. (Note that this method of translation fails on highly complex, nuanced and subjective texts, such as poetry.) It’s also successful because there is a fun motivation factor built in: Duolingo works with real content, from sites like the New York Times, CNN, Buzzfeed and PBS.54 So for many students, the content is more engaging, current and relevant than many of the made-up translation exercises in outdated language textbooks.

When Duolingo debuted, Apple named it “iPhone app of the year,” pushing the number of users a week to a reported 20 million. A quarter of Duolingo’s “players” live in North America; a larger percentage (35 percent) lives in Latin America. For Luis von Ahn, the benefits are multiple: he uses science and engineering to solve several major needs he’s passionate about—learning languages, web translation and bringing people together by enabling them to communicate without language as a barrier. And he’s found a sustainable economic model to support his commitment that learning languages should be free.

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