“Using Duolingo to learn English at an old age: A case study at the Università della Terza Età ‘Giovanni Modugno’ in Bari”

In spite of a growing interest towards the elderly in the field of foreign language acquisition — as attested by a noteworthy increase in Italy of foreign language classes in the Università della Terza Età — the existing literature is still scant (Cardona, Luise 2018) and needs to be enlarged in order to offer effective methodologies and emotional support to senior learners. Within this context, the purpose of this case study is to reflect on the educational possibilities offered by Duolingo software to support English language learning in the specific scenario of aged people attending English lessons at the UTE “Giovanni Modugno” in Bari; on the basis of their level, UTE offers an English class for beginners and one for intermediate participants. Both groups will be asked to follow a six–week schedule (from mid–January to the end of February 2024) of Duolingo use on their mobile devices, in addition to the weekly lesson at UTE with their English language teacher; after that, they will compile a survey to assess the enjoyment, effectiveness, motivation, desirable improvements and/or possible drawbacks of the whole experience. Results deriving from both groups will be then analysed and compared. Moreover, since Duolingo is an example of mobile–assisted language learning (MALL) exploiting the idea of gamification (Dehghanzadeh et al. 2021; Redjeki, Muhajir 2021; Shortt et al. 2021), this contribution will also explore the potentialities offered by gamification strategies to support the elderly in the complex process of learning a foreign language.