Vietnamese commitment to language learning stands out in the region: Duolingo exec

Can you give us a breakup of active Duolingo users in Vietnam, Southeast Asia and the world?

Duolingo has more than 1 million active users in Southeast Asia region. And over the past two years, this has increased by 288% with those in Vietnam increasing approximately five times in three years.

Learning English from Vietnamese is the second largest course in Asia, right after learning English from Chinese.

What sets Vietnam’s language learning apart, compared to other Southeast Asian nations?

Vietnam stands out in the region in the commitment to language learning. We have witnessed impressive growth here. The number of active users in the country has increased approximately 5 times in 3 years. Monthly active users also grew by 67% between January 2021 and January 2022.

Vietnamese are learning many different languages. Apart from English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are top languages of choice among Vietnamese learners. Since the love to learn English is great, we launched a revamped English course signed specifically for Vietnamese people.

We have a great fan base for Duolingo in Vietnam. Our Facebook group has attracted over 150,000 learners. People love Duolingo and love talking about it.

Many learning apps can be seen in Vietnam these days. What makes Duolingo different?

Our mission is to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. In fulfilling this mission, Duolingo offers competitive advantages.

Firstly, all Duolingo learning content is free (it’s part of our mission!). Our lesson content is built to feel like a game. Users compete with each other via Leaderboards, maintain streaks, earn points, level up and get virtual currency as they learn.

Secondly, Duolingo offers more than 100 language courses for 42 distinct languages, from the world’s top 5 most spoken languages to smaller, endangered languages like Hawaiian, Navajo and Scottish Gaelic.

Thirdly, lessons are "bite-sized," which means they can be taken on-the-go in five minutes at a time and fit anyone's schedule. These include reading, writing, listening and speaking exercises. Fourthly, we have a cute mascot owl, Duo, who has become an icon in this field.

What are some new products that Duolingo is working on?

Compared to people learning other languages, we know those learning English have professional goals (find better jobs or get promotions) or academic goals (higher studies to access new knowledge, to study abroad or to get better education). Thus, we developed a more advanced English course to help learner achieve such goals. And we are excited to share that the Immersive English course for advanced English will be launched in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia in the fourth quarter of this year.

Chinese and Japanese language apps are growing very fast. The character system is very different from English. So we are developing new features for our Chinese course with Pinyin and Hanzi lessons, and new features for learning Japanese Kanji.

What are Duolingo's strategic development goals in Vietnam?

As I said earlier, among Southeast Asia countries, Vietnam stands out in the commitment to language learning. Thus, we’d love to further invest in Vietnam in different aspects.

For growth, Duolingo’s operating strategy is to “take the long view”. We envision long-term, sustainable growth which fulfils our mission to make language accessible to everyone.

We are improving our courses and deep diving into UXR research to better serve the needs of Vietnamese users. We want to make a great product first and then market it. English has always been important to Vietnamese people and we at Duolingo are committed to continuously improve our English courses.

In addition to revamping English courses for Vietnamese learners early this year, we are planning to launch a brand new intermediate-level English course for Vietnamese learners in the near future. We will keep you updated on the launch and look forward to helping our users reach their language learning goals.

Regarding our brand, we are also engaging influencers, media, and fans on social media for building brand awareness as also word-of-mouth advertising. Recently, we have carried out some creative campaigns that leverage local cultural insights to bring the Duolingo brand closer to Vietnamese people. For example, we have collaborated with Vietnam national soccer star Van Toan and also highlighted cheering the Vietnamese contingent during the SEA GAMES.

We have also launched Duolingo Vietnam’s official TikTok channel, as we understand that learners don’t just want to be educated, but also be entertained on different platforms. With such recent efforts, our green owl Duo is getting more and more popular in Vietnam. In the coming time, we will continue to increase brand awareness and our user base, tapping local culture to get the brand closer to local users.