Students' experiences in using Duolingo to improve their speaking fluency

Duolingo is an English language learning medium that incorporates many gamification elements. One of Duolingo's advantages is that it allows students to gain fluent English speaking experience. However, despite the fact that many studies were discussed on the effectiveness and students’ perceptions toward the usage of Duolingo, there are still limited studies that present the particular descriptions of the students’ experiences in improving speaking fluency with this application. Therefore, this study aims to describe students’ experiences in improving speaking fluency with Duolingo. This study focused on the 22 students of the class of 2023 at SMPN 1 Taman, Sidoarjo, who used Duolingo to explore their experiences, including feelings, perceived benefits, and challenges. This study used a qualitative descriptive method with questionnaires and interviews as data collection, then analyzed descriptively to identify students’ experiences in using Duolingo. The results revealed three main findings. First, students have positive feelings towards using Duolingo, such as increased motivation, self-confidence, decreased anxiety, perceived speaking fluency, and enjoyment of the gamification features. Second, during speaking practice, Duolingo helped students increase vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency without long pauses, and the direct feedback feature helped them recognize and correct errors. Third, some students also experienced challenges when practicing speaking using Duolingo, including network constraints, limited speaking practice features, and insufficient feedback. Thus, this study concluded that Duolingo is a learning medium for supporting students’ speaking fluency by increasing their motivation, confidence, perceived fluency, and speaking ability. However, improvements in technical aspects and learning features are still needed to optimize the learning experience.