We thought ‘let’s teach the most frequent word first’. He added that Duolingo’s approach had changed a lot since launching in 2012. That is exactly what we want to achieve – everybody has equal access to education.” And the same week I learned Bill Gates was on Duolingo. “The thing I’m most proud of was in 2017 when I learned that Duolingo was being used all over Europe by refugees to learn the language of the country they were moving to. Von Ahn said that he always intended Duolingo to be a “mission-driven” company making language education accessible to everybody. Von Ahn said online tests were fairer and more secure than tests in physical centres.ĭuolingo CEO Luis von Ahn. Many students were deported, and some say their lives have been ruined. In February, MPs accused the Home Office of a “shocking miscarriage of justice” after evidence revealed that thousands of international students were wrongly accused of cheating in exam centres in the UK. Language tests for visas have been controversial.
So I don’t know how long it will take but I think that will be really good for the world if it happens.” My experience is that all governments move very slowly. I don’t know how fast the UK government moves. I think they’re coming around to agreeing that online tests are good. But we’re not yet accepted by the UK government. “Harvard, Stanford, MIT … and I believe there are 75 universities in the UK that accept the test. Now the test is accepted by most major universities in the US, he said. The online test was launched in 2016, and Von Ahn said there was resistance to it being adopted until the Covid pandemic hit. The company is now worth $4bn, offers tuition in more than 40 languages, is about to launch a maths app and already offers Duolingo ABC, an app to help children learn to read, as well as the Duolingo English test. By its 10th anniversary this year, the app had been downloaded half a billion times around the world, with 20m UK downloads. Von Ahn became one of Silicon Valley’s leading entrepreneurs, launching Duolingo with his co-founder, Severin Hacker in 2012. It cost me $1,000 just to fly there and take the test. “In my country they ran out of these tests so I had to fly to a neighbouring country, El Salvador – which, in the late 1990s, was a war zone. “I applied to come to the US to study,” Von Ahn told the Observer. These countries include Mali, Niger and more than 20 others in Africa South American countries including Uruguay, Paraguay and Von Ahn’s native country, Guatemala, and many Caribbean and Pacific islands. Yet that leaves people in 67 countries having to travel abroad to take a test.
These are available in 134 countries and territories, according to Home Office data. Currently, visa applicants need to demonstrate their grasp of English by taking a “secure English language test” in an approved centre.
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