The rise of Duolingo has been fast and has become a habit for students to play every day. Most students use the app for fun or class, but freshman Caleb Swanson has a different reason.

“I’m living with a foreign exchange student right now, so being able to talk to him in his language. He knows English but it’s fun,” Swanson said.

Most students use the app for practical reasons, like junior Griffin Judd.

“Since I’m in Spanish class, I think that learning [the] language helps me [in class],” Judd said.

Although Duolingo has gotten more and more popular over the years, some students like Junior Rachel Joseph has had the app for a while.

“Around sixth grade during the pandemic I downloaded Duolingo so I’d have something to do because I thought it’d be interesting to learn a new language,” Joseph said.

Similar to Joseph, Junior Kylie Stegner has had the app for a while and uses it for in-class practice and outside of class learning.

“I started in about seventh grade with my middle school Spanish teacher. It was half Spanish, half French, and she wanted us to do some Duolingo for an assignment,” Stegner said.

The app has many uses that can benefit the user, not only in everyday life, but in class like Stegner.

“[It’s helpful because] I can use some of the words that I learned from Duolingo and apply them to class and some of my knowledge from class and apply to Duolingo,” Stegner said.

There have always been apps like Duolingo, but none of them have been as popular. Other apps are not as user friendly and have gotten push back from it’s users, such as Stegner.

“I tried the Babble one because I heard a lot of stuff on it, like [on the] radio, but I couldn’t figure it out,” Stegner said.“You had to pay for everything, and it started at a higher level so it was weird.”

On the other hand, Duolingo doesn’t know all about every language. There is a big difference between languages they know well and the ones they don’t according to Joesph.

“The languages they don’t have a lot of information on, they’re structured very differently, mainly Hindi, when you started it, they would have you trace a letter,” Joseph said “Languages where it’s not using the English alphabet are very different. It has you, learning letters first, like the sounds and vowels, and they’ll have, not a lot of options for you to do [lessons] on certain ones.”

Starting a new hobby can be hard, whether it’s because of how  long it takes or because of lack of work ethic. Another reason why people love to keep their streaks up is to complete friend challenges and goals. But for some, it is also a competition, like Stegner.

“There’s this thing on there where your friends have streaks too, and so you want to keep up,” Stegner said. “Also, it’s nice to have that reminder of the language every day, because I’m really into French, so I like to be able to learn new words or just remember [words] that I forgot.”

For other students, it’s all about the learning aspect. Joseph, who has the longest streak, enjoys how much she learns from the app, and how she can see herself growing.

“I’ve been doing it every day and I’ve seen how much I’ve grown and learned with each language,” Joseph said “So that gives me a sense of accomplishment, and I like seeing my progress in the different languages I learned, and it’s helped me learn them.”

Although learning is the main purpose and aspect of the app, there is a strong drive to simply do one lesson a day to keep up a streak, like Stegner.

“There are some days where I’ll spend 30 minutes on it, and there are some days where I’ll spend five minutes because I need to get the streak,” Stegner said.

Many people learn in different ways which is why so many people love Duolingo. There is a wide variety of different types of lessons accessible per lesson, and Swanson is one of the players who enjoy the lessons.

“It’s more enjoyable [and] also the fact that I like the lessons,” Swanson said.

Another way that Duolingo has become so loved is how the languages mesh into each other. Even though the app doesn’t know everything, it finds ways to bring languages together. According to Joesph, the app does just that for her.

“I started Portuguese after I learned Spanish, and I already knew a lot of the words and all the grammar because they’re similar,” Joseph said. “So it’s nice to just pick up languages easier once you already know one.”