Ejercicio 1.2 · Inglés PAU Aragón Extraordinaria 2026

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LEARNING LANGUAGES TWO MINUTES EACH DAY

Duolingo is the most frequently downloaded education app in the world. It was founded by the Guatemalan computer scientist Luis von Ahn, known for creating the test CAPTCHA, designed to tell computers and humans apart. In 2009, shortly after developing the system called reCAPTCHA, von Ahn sold it to Google for a sum that would ensure neither he nor his future children would ever need to work.

Instead of retiring, he set up a new project, Duolingo, whose popularity spiked dramatically in March 2020, when COVID-19 shut hundreds of millions of people in their homes. But attracting people is one thing, and getting them to stay is another—this is Duolingo’s core business. When you begin a course on the app, you are greeted by the company’s mascot, a green owl named Duo. Then, cartoon characters speak sentences to you and prompt you to translate them. Users are reminded to finish at least one lesson each day. They earn points and trophies, and move through increasingly challenging levels.

In order to engage learners’ brains in different ways, Duolingo deliberately limits the kind of explicit grammar instruction we might associate with an old-fashioned foreign-language class. It pushes learners to use the building blocks of a language, and to understand, through that experience, how they fit together. The lessons do not exceed, on average, two minutes, although that length has been decreasing. “Already we’re a little worried that younger generations actually expect thirty-second activities, not a two-minute thing”, von Ahn said.

Another key element is the number of user repetitions, which generates an enormous amount of data. While the app teaches users, users are simultaneously teaching the app to be a better instructor. Duolingo is now using GPT-4, a large language model created by the artificial-intelligence company OpenAI. It has been trained on far more data than previous models.

Von Ahn believes that artificial intelligence would eventually make computers better teachers than people. He considers this a hopeful development, since more people have access to smartphones than to high-quality education. “I really want people to be able to learn for free”, he said.

Surprisingly, a recent study reveals that most teachers do not oppose Duolingo. Instead, they see it as supplemental to the kind of deep immersion that language learning requires. Despite von Ahn’s predictions, they find it highly unlikely that apps will replace human instructors in the upcoming future.

(Adapted from “How much can Duolingo teach us?”, The New Yorker)

PART 1. Reading Comprehension

1.2. (2.4 points). Choose THREE of the following questions and answer them according to the information given in the text. Use your own words.

Each answer will be awarded 0.8 points. Provide only the number of answers requested; if you don't, only the first three answers you give will be corrected. The aim of this exercise is to evaluate both comprehension (up to 0.5 points) and linguistic accuracy (up to 0.3 points); in other words, the ability to communicate information inferred from the reading. Therefore, the literal reproduction of expressions from the text should be avoided. Points will be deducted if the response is incomplete or includes information that does not appear in the text.

1.2.1.

In which ways are Duolingo lessons different from traditional language teaching?

1.2.2.

Why are Duolingo developers concerned about our attention spans?

1.2.3.

Why does Duolingo improve when interacting with users?

1.2.4.

What does von Ahn think about human teachers of languages?