Whether you’re studying fractions in the classroom or calculating the tip at a restaurant, math is a key part of our daily lives. But that doesn’t mean people are comfortable using math every day! In fact, many people experience stress when faced with math-related situations—this is known as “math anxiety”. Recent studies found 93% of U.S. adults have experienced at least some math anxiety and half of high schoolers have very high math anxiety.
We felt like it was time to make learning math more fun… for everyone. That’s why we’re so excited to announce the launch of our newest product, Duolingo Math! Here’s everything you need to know about the new learning app:
Duolingo + math = a winning combination
Our math app builds on what makes our language app so delightful and engaging: fun animations, interactive exercises, and a world of characters cheering you along the way! We’re particularly excited about the range of inventive exercises we’ve developed to help teach elementary math topics.
We have two options for new learners when they download the app. Students can focus on elementary math, which covers classroom topics, or adults can focus on brain training, which strengthens mental math skills and covers more advanced topics.
Here’s a list of concepts you’ll find in the elementary course:
- Multiplication (times tables, commutative property, associative property, multi-factor)
- Division (division tables, even versus odd)
- Fractions (fractions with numbers, improper fractions, mixed fractions, comparing fractions)
- Area and perimeter
- Place value (rounding to nearest 10 and 100, rounding operations, magnitude by 10s, adding and subtracting with 3 numbers)
- Geometry (angles, parallel and perpendicular lines, quadrilateral classification)
- Measurement (reading and setting clocks, ruler measurement, metric conversion)
- Decimals (floating point decimals, converting between fractions and decimals, decimal operations, comparing decimals)
The Brain Training course covers similar content with harder numbers and increased difficulty, optimizing for training mental math skills. In this course, you’ll also find the concepts that can be applied to everyday life, like converting between ounces and pounds.
Each of our exercises are uniquely engineered for the content they teach. One way we do this is by having learners manipulate virtual tools, like the clock below. Having learners interact with these tools allows them to focus on the most important mathematical aspects of the objects and deepens their understanding of the underlying concepts. For example, in a clock challenge, we present a simplified version of a clock with the hands set arbitrarily. Then learners can move a minute or hour hand and watch how the other hand moves accordingly, solidifying their understanding of the relationship between hours and minutes. And this is only a fraction of the fun exercises you’ll find in the app! 😉
Expanding beyond language
At Duocon in 2021, we teased the launch of our math app and our ambition to expand beyond language learning. When deciding what to teach, we look for subjects that will improve people’s opportunities in life. That’s one of the reasons we launched Duolingo ABC, an early literacy app that teaches kids how to read in English and combat the global literacy crisis. With Duolingo Math, we are offering a free way to learn math and build foundational, essential skills that everyone can use throughout life.
Making math accessible and fun is the natural next step in our quest to bring high-quality education to everyone on the planet! As our CEO Luis von Ahn said: “As long as there are people in the world who want to continue learning things, we still have a lot of work to do. We haven’t won until we have taught everything there is to teach.”
Ready to get started?
You can… right now! Right now, Duolingo Math is available in an English user interface for iPhone, iPad, and some iPod touch devices. Find it on the App store!
