Duolingo, a CNET Editors’ Choice Award pick, announced at Tuesday’s virtual Duocon conference that it’s introducing two new features to its language learning app today: Adventures and AI video calls.
“Our mission is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available,” Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, said in a news release. “These innovations are just the beginning of how we’re leveraging technology to serve our global community of learners better.”
Here’s what you need to know about these two new Duolingo features.
Adventures
Duolingo is expanding its lessons with a new gamelike element called Adventures. In Adventures, you can explore settings and storylines within the Duolingo universe that follow Duolingo characters like Lily and Oscar. Adventures will also have you apply your language lessons to real-world situations, like ordering at a cafe.
There is only one Adventure available per course unit, and they are only available to English speakers learning French, and Spanish speakers learning English. Adventures are available on iOS and Android devices.
AI video calls
This new language learning feature will have you practicing your conversational skills in a realistic setting.
“Video Call is designed to simulate natural dialogue and provides a personalized, interactive practice environment,” Duolingo wrote in a new release.
In these video calls, you’ll be talking to the character Lily in real-time, so you’ll have to put everything you’ve learned in your language lessons into practice. But Duolingo wrote that conversing in this low-pressure environment will hopefully build people’s confidence enough to converse in real-world situations.
However, this feature is only available to iOS subscribers of Duolingo Max, which costs $30 a month or $168 a year. AI video calling is also only available to those subscribers of any language who are learning English, Spanish or French. Duolingo said in an email that this feature will also come to Portuguese, Italian and German lessons soon.
Anything else from Duocon?
Duolingo also announced a new partnership with the portable instrument manufacturer Loog to create a three-octave electric piano. This piano is designed for the Duolingo Music course and can be preordered now for $250 from the Duolingo Store.
For more on Duolingo, here’s how well the free version of the app prepared me for a trip to Italy and our review of the language learning app. You can also check out our best language learning apps.
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