LEARNING LANGUAGES ON YOUR SMARTPHONE
How do you spend your time while waiting for a bus or standing in line at the supermarket? Maybe you call a friend on your smartphone. But there is another fun way to fill those empty minutes – you could use your phone to learn a foreign language. Today, there is a large variety of apps1 for learning languages. However, the most popular one is Duolingo – a free app that was created by the brilliant computer scientist Luis von Ahn.(lines 1–5)
Luis was born in 1978 in Guatemala, a country in Central America where the only language taught in public schools is Spanish. Unlike most parents in Guatemala, Luis's parents were wealthy enough to send him to an expensive private school. There he learned to speak, read, and write excellent English, and also studied high-level math and computer science. After high school, he went on to study at a top American university, and then began a great career in computer science. In many interviews, Luis said that his high-school education and knowledge of English gave him those wonderful opportunities. He wanted people to have similar opportunities even if they could not afford to pay for a good education. This, he thought, could help them improve their lives.(lines 6–13)
Luis believed that the solution could be smartphone apps that provide free lessons in English, math, and other subjects. In 2009, he and his student Severin Hacker started developing an app that would teach English. Three years later, they launched2 Duolingo. At that stage, in addition to English, the app taught three other languages – French, Spanish, and German. Today it offers 40 different languages, but most users learn English. Last year, Duolingo was used by about 500 million people, and most of them were 18 to 34 years old.(lines 14–19)
Even though Duolingo is free, it generates an enormous amount of money every year. Most of the money comes from companies that pay for their ads to appear at the end of each lesson. The rest comes from people who prefer to pay a fee to stop seeing the ads. With this income, Luis has covered the costs of the app. The money has also enabled3 him to develop two more free educational apps – one that teaches basic math and another that teaches music. Eventually, he hopes to provide even more educational apps to adults all over the world.(lines 20–25)