ТHE BEHAVIOURIST MODEL AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN GAMIFIED LANGUAGE LEARNING

The study examines the discrepancy between the quantitative indicators of the spread of gamified applications for foreign language learning and their pedagogical effectiveness with regard to productive types of speech activity. The empirical base comprised statistical data from the Duolingo platform for 2025-2026, two systematic reviews, three meta-analyses for the period 2014-2023, and a series of experimental studies with samples ranging from 30 to 5071 participants. A comparative analysis showed that structural gamification produces a stable positive effect on vocabulary acquisition and user engagement, but is not statistically significant with respect to L2 reading self-efficacy and has not been evaluated in relation to spontaneous oral speech. The discrepancy is interpreted as a structural consequence of the beh