Key takeaways

  • Adult learners benefit from gamified vocabulary practice: across 19 studies, both solo apps and group-based tools were associated with improvements in vocabulary learning, motivation, and engagement.
  • Solo apps are strong on personalization, but weaker on the social accountability that keeps adult learners coming back.
  • Group-based, social learning tools add what personalization leaves out: peer accountability, shared progress, and the motivation to not fall behind.

There are no shortcuts to learning a language.

As an immigrant, I know the struggle of learning a new language as an adult. Fitting a lesson into a busy day. Doing homework in the evening when you’d rather collapse on the couch and watch something with subtitles. And since I work in tech, I use all the apps. So when I committed to getting better at French, the promise was clear: a solo learning app can do what my online teacher does for a fraction of the cost, and without the snarky comments about my pronunciation.

So of course, I downloaded one. I could practice vocabulary while waiting for the metro and run through exercises in private, just me and my phone.

But I just… didn’t commit.

I’m not a streak person. Streaks and badges don’t move me. But I do care about actually learning. And here’s the awkward part: when there’s no risk of messing up in front of someone, I’m lazy. I don’t show up. For other learners, that same low-stakes space is what unlocks practice. The freedom to fumble without anyone watching is exactly what a solo app is for. It just isn’t for me.

That experience was on my mind when I read a recent systematic review by Fahad Ameen on gamified vocabulary learning for adult ESL learners. It put words to something that many learners feel.

Both solo and social gamification work, but they do different jobs

The review pulled together 19 studies published between 2015 and 2024, all looking at adult English learners using digital tools to learn vocabulary. The studies split roughly into two groups:

  • Individual, personalized gamification: solo apps that learners use on their own with personal progress tracking
  • Collaborative, group-based gamification: social, classroom-based tools like Kahoot!, with a shared screen, team modes, and live peer interaction

Both approaches helped adult learners. Vocabulary scores went up in most studies. While the review notes that the evidence is still emerging, and that very few studies directly compared the two modes head-to-head, most studies reported improved motivation and engagement across both approaches. Neither mode emerged as the clear winner.

However, each mode showcased its own strengths.

Individual gamification delivered autonomy: learners could move at their own pace, practice without judgment, and squeeze sessions into the cracks of a busy day. Group gamification delivered social interdependence: the feeling of belonging, peer accountability, and the gentle pressure of watching classmates inch ahead.

One of the studies (Gao & Pan, 2023) looked closely at solo language apps and noticed that even though the apps were designed for individual use, the features learners cited as most motivating were the social ones: peer competition, leaderboards, and the sense that someone else was on the same journey.

A fun tool isn’t always an effective teaching tool

Engagement alone is not enough to learn. Not every gamified intervention produced strong learning gains. For example, some of the studies (Panmei & Waluyo, 2023; Alawadhi & Abu-Ayyash, 2021) saw motivation or engagement improve, while academic performance didn’t move significantly.

Gamification isn’t a free lunch. Design quality, frequency, and how well the engagement gets channeled into real, deliberate practice all matter. A tool that’s fun to open isn’t automatically a tool that teaches.

For many learners, the social dimension is key to real progress

For adult learners, people who often carry mixed prior experiences with school and very real economic stakes, the social dimension showed up again and again as the thing that kept them showing up. Across the reviewed studies, classroom motivation kept circling back to peer interaction: “strengthening relationships with classmates” (Ho, 2020), “face-to-face peer discussions” (Liu, 2024), “teamwork and knowledge sharing” (Far & Taghizadeh, 2024).

In other words, the question isn’t really solo apps or social, collaborative tools. Both types of tools can support learning, but it’s important to understand what each delivers for the learner.

Design for both autonomy and accountability – on purpose

If you design learning experiences for adult learners, whether ESL, vocational training, or professional development, the research doesn’t ask you to pick personalized solo apps or social tools like Kahoot!. It asks you to design for both, on purpose.

Solo tools handle deliberate practice, low-stakes review, and autonomy. Group experiences handle motivation, accountability, and the social glue that keeps learners showing up after a long day. Solo apps, especially the ones using AI, are getting genuinely good at the first thing. But for the second, a real human can’t be replaced.

If you’re a learner yourself, pay attention to where you thrive. If practicing alone gives you the judgment-free reps you need, a solo app is doing its job, so keep going. But if learning only with solo apps (it’s convenient, after all) isn’t quite getting you to the level you want to be, you might just be missing your fellow travelers on the learning journey.