University Students’ Perception towards the Use of Duolingo Application in Learning English

Abstract

Abstract. This study aimed to investigate students’ perception towards the use of
Duolingo Application in learning English. This was a descriptive study. There were 135
university students in Pekanbaru, Riau, Indonesia participated in this research. The data
were attained through students’ questionnaires and students’ interview. The findings
revealed that students had an overall positive perception towards the use of
Duolingoapplication in learning English. The findings from questionnaires described
that 82.3% of the participants found the features in Duolingowas easy to use and 83.7%
of them also agreed that practice English through Duolingowas convenient because
they could communicate and access it anytime and anywhere. Then, 85.2% of the
participants thought that Duolingowas helpful, 90.4% of them stated it was useful for
improving their English skills and 91.2% of them agreed that Duolingowas effective to
improve their’ English skills anytime and anywhere. However, it showed that 89.6% of
them have positive attitude towards the use of Duolingo in learning English and over
60% of them also approved that Duolingocould develop their self-learning skill and
encourage them to learn English. In addition, it also found that there were over 80% of
the participants agreed thatDuolingo could increase their motivation to learn and to
practice their English skills. Finally, the finding described that overall means scores
of each items from questionnaires’ were in high level (3.51-4.50). Furthermore,
according to the result from students’ interview, there were several benefits and
drawbacks towards the use of Duolingo in learning English. There were several benefits
towards the use of Duolingo for example, this application as an adequate way to a new
context learning, it could help the students in improving their English skills, the features
of Duolingo was interesting and addictive, it could stimulate and motivate the students
to learn English, the students felt comfortable and enjoyed learning English through the
use of Duolingo. In other hand, there were also several drawbacks towards the use of
Duolingoapplication that noticed by students namely they could not play and learn
trough the use of Duolingo in offline mode, they also found that there were unnatural
sentences in the exercises in Duolingo, there were annoying advertisements in the
middle of exercises, several repeated questions also found in the same level and there
was no explanation related to the grammatical structures.These problems gave
difficulties to the students in accomplising the exercises and learning process. In
conclusion, eventhough there were several drawbacks found in Duolingo, but the
positive aspects of it still gave contribution to the students’ learning process.