Cute Digital Mentors— Language Learning Apps For Kids

Exceed Team Blog
11 min readFeb 12, 2021

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Are you planning to create a language learning app that kids will love? Study the main aspects of such a startup before you contact the developers and discuss further details.

Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash

The best way to succeed in learning a language is to start with it as a kid. The age of 5–12 is the most productive time for everyone, as your brain absorbs any information fast and retains it for a long time.

The Market of Language Learning Apps

Statistically, 80% of young Europeans (aged 15–30) speak at least one foreign language. Many of them have learned it or improved their school knowledge with different kinds of apps and websites. The main benefits of E-learning are availability at any time and place, convenience, and low prices.

If you create an app like that, it can bring you a steady income — for instance, the global market of digital English learning solutions is the most profitable, with revenue estimated at over $4 billion in 2018 and predicted to reach $30 billion by 2027.

Duolingo is one of the most successful language learning apps for kids and adults. It has become world-famous and earned over $100 million for six years.

A leaderboard in Duolingo shows the top learners
A leaderboard in Duolingo shows the top learners and their levels

There are lots of other popular apps for children and teenagers helping them learn foreign languages.

For example:

  • EASY peasy — an English learning app for kids aged 5–7 and older;
  • Mindsnacks — a series of language learning apps for kids and adults; it includes popular offers like Spanish and French alongside rarer options, e.g., Japanese;
  • Lirica — a clever app for teens aged 12–13 and older; it helps learn world languages with the lyrics of pop hits.

As you see, language apps can come in different forms. What kind of solution would you choose to create?

In the current market, you’ll find the following types of language learning apps and websites:

  1. Digital courses like Duolingo, Rosetta Stone (both have versions of their products to help kids learn foreign languages), Mondly Kids or FluentU;
  2. Flashcards-based and other repetition apps like Drops, Anki App, or Quizlet;
  3. E-learning games like Gus Οn Τhe Go or Endless Spanish;
  4. Language learning video-based apps like Little Pim or LingoDeer.

Let’s find out how you can create your own language app for kids. There will be common challenges and must-have features. It’s time to learn more about them.

10 Principles of Successful Language Learning Apps

If you want to create a kids’ learning app to promote it in big online stores, getting lots of five-star reviews, you should ponder upon some critical points. We’ve collected ten helpful tips for your future product.

Excellent Language Learning Resources

A mobile app for kids should contain only proven content and apply trustworthy teaching methods.

Keep the best quality of lessons and try your best to avoid mistakes. Remember: if users (parents) find a serious problem, it may disappoint them to the point of losing interest in your language learning app.

Don’t implement many courses at once, you might have a hard time to carefully check their quality. Seek help from experienced teachers, guidance counselors, and authors to create unique educational content that should be in a language learning app for kids.

You can apply the following types of language learning tasks for a kids’ app:

  • listening to a word and selecting a picture for it;
  • listening, repeating and recording, while AI checks you up;
  • quizzes to earn points for correct answers;
  • race against the clock as a more difficult quiz;
  • filling in the gaps in simple sentences;
  • making a sentence from suggested words.

Experienced Teachers

You should hire qualified professionals to create online lessons for your language learning app.

Moreover, you could create a feature that allows parents to find personal tutors for kids. It’s better if these teachers will be native speakers of the languages that you offer on your learning app. The tutors should have experience of working with kids of your target audience’s age.

Highly qualified teachers, as well as top-quality materials and great user experience, are the crucial points for your language learning app’s success.

Quick Achievements

One of the significant reasons for people to choose online learning is their lack of time for traditional classes. And the best learning apps are focused on giving learners a sense of quick achievement.

When people constantly see the desired results, they feel more motivated to continue the process and spend more time on an app. And in the case of language learning apps for kids, the power of quick achievements works perfectly.

Children get distracted more than teens and adults and that’s why they need additional motivation-creating techniques.

It’s also good to provide various separate types of language learning lessons — such intensives give the maximum in the shortest time and keep kids interested.

Gamification

One of the best ways to provide young learners with fast visible results and motivate them is applying as many elements of gamification as possible in a language learning app for kids.

Examples of gamification in E-learning
Ways to implement gamification elements into a language learning app. Image source: Exceed Team

If you carefully study the examples of well-known digital products from the previous section of our article, you’ll find all of them being highly gamified. Language apps like Gus Οn Τhe Go or Little Pim even have an exciting storyline and adorable characters that kids will love playing with.

We advise you to apply scores, progress bars, rewards, leaderboards, and other ways to constantly show real-time results. All these methods help in knowledge retention as well.

Maximum Visualization

This approach works great with teens and adults as well, but for kids, especially the younger ones, visual content is essential. It draws and holds their attention, increases interest in a subject, and better explains difficult parts of language learning.

Nice and informative illustrations are the best to present new vocabulary and any other training program for young learners.

Remember about video content as well. Language learning apps for young kids may consist of video lessons entirely, and those videos should be engaging, informative, suitable for an age group’s psychological characteristics, well-produced, and generally fun.

Professional Design

Remember that kids’ attention is easily distracted and needs constant stimuli, so make sure to hire experienced designers and illustrators to create vivid, appealing, memorable content.

Apart from illustrations for language learning purposes, you’ll need competent UX\UI designers to create convenient, easy-to-use navigation for your app. It’s preferable to hire specialists who already have relevant experience with learning websites and apps for kids.

Modular Architecture

Normally, you launch your app with core functionality and a starter set of courses. This is your MVP, minimum viable product.

Then, you’ll expand and advance your language learning app, adding more courses and options. This is why you make sure to create a sufficient basis from the beginning.

The modular structure allows lots of easy changes and additions. Now, when you update your app, it won’t take much time and expense.

Feedback

You should create two-way communication with users, kids or parents. It helps find possible problems quickly and improve your language learning app. Users often leave feedback via Google Play/App Store.

Another great way is to give them an opportunity for reviewing in-app. Now you can find out why a user didn’t finish the learning process, where they got stuck, and what improvements you may bring to your app to fix these problems.

Make a feedback page easy and quick to use (pop-up window, premade answers to choose from), so that more users will leave their reviews.

Community of Users

Communication and a sense of belonging to a larger group are significant for learners of any language. Children usually participate in language learning activities with a supervising parent. Give kids an opportunity to talk to each other in chats, make new friends based on their shared interests, and even compete with each other via leaderboards and challenges. You can also create a parent forum on your app where you can get useful feedback about the learning process and organize consultations with teachers.

Courses for Everyone

You’ll be able to reach the largest audience if you create a variety of courses on your app aimed at different age groups of kids and teens. It’s also an excellent idea to create separate systems for beginners (younger and older age), or for conversational skills improvement, etc.

You don’t have to add all possible programs at once, however. Remember your app’s modular architecture — with this universal basis, you’ll develop and add new courses and modules subsequently.

Kids’ Language Learning Apps — How they Work

Let’s discover several examples of popular language learning apps for kids aged 5–13. There are some distinctive features and functions you’ll be interested in if you’re planning to create such an app.

LingoDeer:

  • nine languages for kids to learn (German, Chinese, French, Vietnamese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese);
  • interactive games, quizzes, stories, and other activities;
  • paid subscription;
  • a week trial for free;
  • log in with an email;
  • learners can use either the LingoDeer website or the app.

Mondly Kids:

  • 33 languages (including American and British English, Dutch, Arabic, Spanish, Hebrew, Russian, Croatian, Ukrainian, Norwegian, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, etc.);
  • unusual sound effects to draw kids’ attention to language learning;
  • groups of lessons within thematic categories;
  • a chatbot for conversational practice;
  • some free content and a paid subscription giving assess to plenty of unlocks;
  • Romanized spelling or authentic alphabet for languages like Chinese;
  • AR (Augmented Reality) activities.

EASY peasy:

  • customizable flashcards;
  • themed groups of words;
  • parents can choose categories for kids to learn;
  • new words or phrases in sentences;
  • kid-friendly graphics;
  • difficulty levels, multiple-choice quizzes, and other gamified activities.

Duolingo:

  • perfect for kids aged 10–11 and older;
  • plenty of languages (including Italian, Spanish, and German);
  • encouraging and positive gamified system;
  • push notifications (optional);
  • registration via email;
  • level and reward system and other elements of gamification.

The most popular kids’ language learning apps are available on all platforms and devices, including iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Android. This is a fast way to reach the broadest possible audience.

Must-Have Features of a Language Learning App for Kids

There is a list of features you can implement to create an MVP. Then you will simply add new functions to make your app more and more advanced.

Authorization

Typically, a new user registers via email by creating a username and a password. You can give parents an opportunity to create accounts for their kids and for themselves on your language learning app. Everyone uses authorization to get to a User Profile, filled with basic information (name, age, gender, photo, languages to learn, language level, etc.)

Personalization options

Create a space for young learners by personalized features — avatars and story characters, individual design settings, personal vocabulary where they can add new words, dashboard with achievements and goals, and many other features that help kids or teens to better navigate your app and feel at home.

Visualized progress

It’s important for both kids and their parents to see what progress young learners have already made. You can implement progress bars and various kinds of rewards (crowns, gems, stars, etc.) or badges (for completing a course, for non-stop learning, for being active in communities, etc.) to visualize any kinds of achievements on your language learning app.

Online encouragement

You can use chatbots and digital assistants to support young learners through their way to language speaking skills. Artificial intelligence will monitor kids’ progress, help them when needed, and encourage to try again after failure. You can also use push notifications to remind learners to come back to the fun or to finish some tasks.

Clear learning procedure

Invest in creating a well-designed user interface, friendly to learners’ needs and helping them start learning quickly and without problems. A distinctive feature of your app’s interface should be a dashboard. Kids and parents will use it to get all significant information about the whole language learning process — courses, achievements, updates

Transparent payments

When you charge users for some services on your app, it’s essential to apply clear and transparent payment options. We advise you to create integration with Paypal, Braintree, ApplePay, GooglePay, credit/debit cards, and other trustworthy and easy-in-use systems.

Monetization of a Language App

There are lots of ways of making money with your digital platform. The market leaders usually apply a combination of several business models.

  • Paid courses — parents can purchase complete language courses for their kids. Such offers often include lots of exclusive multimedia content, use of VR or AR, etc.
  • In-app advertising — other companies pay you for placing related ads on your app.
  • Freemium subscription — users get the basic functionality and most of the learning activities for free. However, there are in-app ads for them, and some of the exciting content isn’t accessible until they purchase a premium subscription.
  • Paid subscription — users enjoy lots of extra features and additional content while not seeing any ads on your language learning app. Typically, there are monthly or yearly subscriptions.
  • In-app shop — users can purchase digital goods like additional content (games, videos, and other exciting offers for language learning), custom avatar decorations, etc. In the future, you can offer printable books and other learning materials for kids.

Time and Cost to Create a Language Learning App for Kids

When you have an idea, you wish to turn it into the best digital solution. It means turning to experienced developers and designers who can implement all the crucial features of a language learning app for kids, creating a good basis so that later you could expand your project.

It usually takes from four up to six months to build the minimal functionality.

Here at Exceed Team, a kids’ language learning app will go through several important stages of development.

  1. Discussions, analysis, and plans. During this stage, you tell us about your idea of a language learning app for kids, while our business analysts, app designers and other specialists choose the best ways and tools to create the right product.
  2. Design. This stage is highly important in a kids’ learning app, both from the aesthetic and the practical point of view. You’ll attract young language learners with authentic, quality illustrations. Moreover, a helpful and clear user interface will really engage them in your app and boost each kid’s learning progress.
  3. App development. The team of qualified developers will write code to get your language learning app work just how it was discussed and designed.
  4. Quality tests and fixing problems. Professional testers will work alongside a team of app developers to find and eliminate any possible errors. As soon as a language app is ready to be launched, the testers team will have the final check to make sure your app works smoothly and is perfect for kids’ learning.
  5. Maintenance, updates, and technical support. Our team loves to continue working with the projects we once created. Technical support is essential for the correct work of a kids’ language learning app, and it’s easier to apply any future changes when you have a competent development team that knows your app inside and out.
Breakdown of time to create a language learning app
How much time does it take to build a language learning app for kids?

Are you looking for the best quality within a reasonable pricing frame? Hire a development team from Eastern European countries. Depending on a kids’ learning language app complexity, it will cost from $30,000 to $60,000.

In a Nutshell

If you wish to create a language learning app for kids, prepare for a challenging job. You’ll need a well-thought conception, experienced authors of training materials, and a team of qualified app developers.

Invest in professionals’ work to get an excellent end-product for the competitive E-learning market. We hope that our suggestions are helpful for creating a kids’ language learning app. Start with deciding what kind of solution to develop and how much to budget for it.

Here at Exceed Team, we offer top-quality app development services for E-learning and other industries. Don’t hesitate to ask us any questions, and we’ll find the best way to carry out your idea.

Read also:

How to Create an E-learning Website

Gamification examples in education websites

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Exceed Team Blog
Exceed Team Blog

Written by Exceed Team Blog

We write about web & mobile apps that help startups and businesses achieve their missions