“For Peruvians, learning English is not an option, but a necessity”

Duolingo is the leading platform for language teaching online, with 500 million users in the world and 100 language courses, available in 40 languages. Annually they publish theDuolingo Language Report”, with information about the preferences of its users regarding this type of learning.

El Comercio spoke with Cindy Blanco, learning and language scientist from Duolingo – who was passing through Lima – to learn more about Peruvian users.

—What were the main findings of this study?

In the annual report, being worldwide, we do not go into the detail of each country. But in these last weeks we decided to do a deeper investigation about the trends of Latin American countries, including Peru. We have searched for most popular languagesthe reasons for learning it, and if there are also differences between the interests of Peruvian users, depending on the generation.

—Is English still the most demanded language?

In the world language The most popular is still English. But in this study we look for the details of why and the comparisons between countries. For example, in Peru we see that two out of three users study English. That 67% is a little lower than the world average, but it is higher compared to neighboring countries. For many people, English is a necessity, especially for work reasons, but there are also those who are interested in traveling, or because they have relatives in the US. What we have seen among our Peruvian users is that the first reason is to improve knowledge received, probably, in college or university. The second reason is work reasons and not travel, as happens in other countries. This tells us that for Peruvians, learning English is not an option, but rather a necessity, which will allow them to open more professional doors.

“For them [los jóvenes]learning a language is the next step to enjoy your interests more”.

– What happens in the neighboring countries?

In Chile or Argentina we see that traveling is more important to learn another idiom than work reasons. This tells us that users in these countries think more about learning to have fun, to travel. While for our users work is more important. So, learning English becomes a necessity for the Peruvian user.

How do you get to that detail?

Duolingo is the most downloaded education app, and because it’s totally free, we can see the trends of what people want, what their preferences are about Languagesespecially when the money factor does not come into play.

—What other languages ​​do Peruvian users prefer?

There is a lot of variety according to the generation, according to the age range. That is not seen as clearly in other countries as in Peru. For users between 13 and 22 years old, their preference is French. For the group between 23 and 29 years old, their preference is Portuguese, and users who are 30 years old or older choose Italian. We see many changes of this type, depending on the user’s age, which are not as clear as in Peru.

—What other languages ​​are Peruvians looking for more?

The Korean and the Japanese. Chinese does not appear, but the Korean is in the younger age group. I think it’s related to music and series. In Peru, two out of three of our users are under 30 years old. Young people are the leaders in learning. For them, learning the language is the next step to enjoy their interests more.