Duolingo & Quizizz

7th & 8th Grade Spanish

Ryan Daley

Problem Identified: How can we ensure that students retain Spanish vocabulary and grammar?

Hypothesis: If we use Duolingo and Quizizz as a way to flip our Spanish classroom, student participation in projects and larger activities will increase and student confidence in their speaking ability will also improve.

Data Collection: Through Excel documents, we have noticed an increase in vocabulary retention.

Actionable Step: Here’s how to use this tool in your class tomorrow: create a Quizizz vocabulary list (5-10 questions) of meaningful/timely terms in your class in Spanish. For example, “en la clase de matemáticas, estudiamos…” (See Daley for assistance.) In English, use Quizizz to review terms for upcoming Mastery Checks.

Overall Findings/Impact: Both formats have proven somewhat successful but have their limitations. Students should be incentivized/graded on Duolingo lesson completion on their own time (via the phone app) and then supported with Duolingo lesson reviews in Quizizz at regular intervals. Moreover, Duolingo and Quizizz are great resources but lack the full potential for comprehensible output that presenting and speaking do. Duolingo, as a passive receiver of student communication, judges only on pronunciation and diction. In other words, Duolingo cannot help students suss out problems of language communication; it can't stop and look confusedly at speakers or correct them mid-sentence like an active listener would. Quizizz even less so. As attempts to flip our Spanish classroom, students who regularly completed Duolingo assignments were exposed to new vocabulary and retained the information at a greater rate than those students who didn’t complete regular lessons. My speculation is that students need to know they are preparing to use language at a later time and should be primed for the checks and assessments to come later. In both cases, the "later time" is merely to finish the lesson (Duolingo) or to get a high score (Quizizz). More to the point: students didn't see the information long enough-- especially in the Quizizz case-- to really have it sink in. While I think repeat exposure to Quizizz as a method to "front load" vocabulary for later projects and activities can work, I'll need to investigate more methods to add to this as away to get students to retain the information they see presented inDuolingo and Quizizz.