Language Learning App Development: Features, Cost, Technology Stack

How many of us think that any learning app is just out there to help you get rid of your boredom? People voluntarily stuck at home have made anything and everything possible as part of their quarantine 2020 detour.

Language Learning Apps like Read Along (Bolo) are usually open-source, free and fun speech-based reading tutor apps designed for children aged 5 and above. Such apps usually help them improve their reading skills in English and many other foreign languages by encouraging them to read aloud interesting stories and often get rewarded in the way by achieving small reading milestones in form of stars and badges. Apps for learning languages also come with friendly app assistants that listen to children when they read and offer real-time positive feedback when they read well and help them out when they get stuck, even in offline mode.

How to Create Apps like Duolingo?

Language Learning Apps like Duolingo for Android and iOS is priced from free to $6.99/month. They cater to 36 different languages and are in serious competition with Rosetta Stone. It works on advertisements/pay per click model but removes advertisements if upgraded to Duolingo Plus. It is suitable for those who wish to practice a language and not necessarily start learning from scratch. Let’s dive deeper into the concept.

Any language learning app depends heavily on its user base and its validation. Four basic steps go along:

1. Selecting the target language and evaluating the skill level
2. Understand the basic requirements
3. Make Strategies
4. Estimate the feature list
5. Start with designing wireframes
6. Convert the wireframe design into actual code
7. Modularize the app often
8. Test the app and deploy
9. Keep levelling up

What Should You Keep In Mind As You Build A Language Learning App?

Besides understanding the principles of the language learning app, you should know the following:

• Introduce Core Vocabulary Learning – with translator and multi-lingual dictionary support for better understanding.
• Hearing Practices – give your users a chance at speech comprehension with listening practice.
• Pronunciation / Chatbot – Vocabulary and auditory experience are an important part of pronunciation. A user needs to pronounce the words correctly to learn it.
• Practice More to Understand Better – The in-built community of people encourages users to practice more. This increases learnability.
• Frequent Revisions – App-based learning often calls for users to skip their practice lessons. To avoid this, including push notifications can help in improving user attendance and attentiveness.
• Introduce Gamification – Including some fun and entertainment games is important to keep users motivated and compel them to come back.
• Increase Encouragement – Encouraging employees by showing daily goals or daily streaks or number of hours spent in learning.
• Bring on Competition – Creating a league board to rank users as soon as they finish off a lesson or holding a monthly/weekly/daily contest where users can compete and get a chance to win something will encourage them to earn rewards and eventually lure them to keep coming back for more.
• Self Help for The User/Student – Giving users some kind of assistance or self-help tips can help in understanding and remove the fears that they might face during their learning process.
• Handy Tips – Providing tips during the app, on the home page, or during the transition can help users get an intrusive app experience.
• Assigning A Virtual Tutor – It can be complex and confusing to understand every word or every rule out there. Therefore, assigning an online tutor or a virtual assistant to make the user understand the part they get stuck in can help them in understanding better.
• Quality Resources – It is important to research the content before providing on the app to retain the users.
• Using Illustration – Making use of diagrams, infographics, tables, graphics and animations can help increase the views and keep users interested.
• Best Learning In Minimal Time – Users look forward to making the best out of the available resources whether it is money or time, they wish to read the best content and be satiated.
• Online Student Groups – This helps to keep users measure their milestones with their peers, often indulge in group discussions and problem-solving sessions. It helps fight off the competition. As more people indulge in forums, it encourages them to share the resources more, eventually making the platform popular.
• Integrating Chatbots – To make the platform fun and engaging to use.

What Features Can Be Added To The Spanish Language Learning App?

Specific Features

• Offline Mode: Once downloaded, the app also works in offline mode without the need to use any data.
• Safe: If created for children, the language learning apps should not feature any advertisements and all sensitive information should stay only on the device.
• Free: if created for children, such apps should be free to use.
• Vast Library of Resources: Children should have an option to select the storybooks of their choice, according to category and according to age.
• Learning Games: Including some age-specific educational games can add some fun to the learning process.
• In-App Reading Assistant: This helps children to read out loud and reinforces them to read correctly and help wherever they get stuck.
• Multi-User Profiles: Language Learning App should have an option to make multiple children make use of the same app and create their profiles to track their progress.
• Personalized: Apps for language learning should be able to recommend the right level of difficulty e-books depending upon their reading level.

Generic Features

• The signup and the sign-in process is important to know the details of the user.
• Creating a user profile page helps customize the course.
• The Learn Screen
  • Learning procedure
  • Achievements
• Profile & Settings
• Online Community
• Shop
• Health
• Live Streaming
•  Illustration

Such language learning apps can often have two separate interfaces – one for teachers and the other one for the students.

Teacher’s Interface

• The UI/UX should be interactive and convenient
• There should be a interface where student and teacher can talk
• The dashboard should provide access to a list of subjects
• The teacher should be able to check the student’s assessment
• The teacher should be able to generate reports based on timelines

Student’s Interface

• Students should be able to access the language learning system from any device (better to have a web, android, iOS interfaces ready)
• The app should have multimedia and gamification to attract more students
• Students must be able to contact their teachers via chat, emails
• They should be given milestones with every learning like unlocking the next level or achieving a rank or a badge
• The evaluation should be clear and the student should be able to check his/her progress on their interface
• There should be ways to find the priority of lessons – as to which ones should be completed first, followed by next and so on.

What Benefits Do The Language Learning Apps Bring Along?

• Best learning apps provide maximum learning in lesser time
• Enable Users to Track Their Progress
• Courses across various categories
• Interactive User Interface
• Learn Any global or regional Language
• Learn Anywhere and Anytime

What More Can Be Added To A Language Learning App

• Making the Learning Better – Auditory Practices, Introduce Basic Vocabulary Learning, Chatbot/Pronunciation, Practice, Revision To Remember The Learning
• Keeping Users Motivated for Learn Further – Increase Encouragement, Introduce Gamification, Create Competition
• Helping Users Learn Better-One on One Tutoring, Appropriate tips All Over the App

How Does The Language Learning App Earn?

As people appear on the platform to learn, they often interact with in-app advertisements or fun games. The pay-per-click strategy works well here. A subscription-based structure can also help as people would want to pay more to remove advertisements and get access to only relevant content on the app. Apps like Duolingo often follow this monetization model.

What Technology Stack is Suitable to Create a French Language Learning App? (Illustrative)

• We may use JavaScript, AngularJS, Django PHP Framework, Ruby on Rails, CSS3, Bootstrap for Frontend Development. Android App will require Java/Kotlin/Flutter and the iOS platform can be built in Swift can be used for backend development.
• The database can be created in PostgreSQL, HBase, Cassandra, MySQL and MongoDB etc.
• Cloud Storage will require Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Storage.

How Much Does It Cost To Build A Language Learning App?

The cost to create a German language learning app is directly proportional to various internal and external factors like the selected platform, the number of hours spent, the app complexity, the region of app development, the team size, the client’s demand; based on this combination the average cost to create a language learning app can come around $20000 – $25000 for one platform (native Android or native iOS). The cost may go up to $40,000 in case the app has to be built for both platforms.

Where Can We Go From Here?

Creating a language learning app is easy but it can be typical to bring out something unique that the users might be looking for in existing popular language learning applications in the market. Let us know your requirements; we’ll be glad to help you!