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It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

leejo.github.io

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Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#31

Post by leephillips »

Once, while traveling, I suddenly realized that my streak deadline had just passed, and I managed to cheat by changing the time on my phone. However, when I tried that again at some later date it didn’t work.

Duolingo is pretty good for getting you started with a new language, and can provide some valuable practice, especially if you don’t yet have a teacher. But don’t take it too seriously. Its translations are often poor:

https://lee-phillips.org/whyDuoLingoWhy/

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#32

Post by frutiger »

viburnum wrote: post #26

I wish they had a setting to turn off all the gamification. I’m an adult. I don’t care about streaks or points or gems or whatever.

Use the website from a desktop/laptop. Almost all the gamification takes a back seat there. Also don’t use the word bank - force yourself to do the freeform typing.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#33

Post by jordz »

Lost my 635 day streak last week, offered £5.99 or something to repair it. I was pretty gutted but actually on reflection, the gamification just added undue stress. Duolingo is great for vocab and repetition, it was only with a tutor that I really became conversational.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#34

Post by lttlrck »

I had over a year of completing the health three rings on Apple Watch (maybe failed on two or three day) - but a flight tripped me up and it fell apart very quickly.

The ability to make up the missed days might have led me to carry on. Or maybe forgiveness if you'd gone over in the precious few days.

It's sad really it was quite an accomplishment.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#35

Post by UweSchmidt »

moron4hire wrote: post #27

I work for a foreign language instruction services company. We mostly serve government and military, but we do accept private students. All of our linguists are extremely skeptical of apps like Duolingo. And before anyone replies something like "your company has a vested interest in propping up instructor-led language training", if apps like Duolingo actually worked, the government--especially the military--would sto…

Private tutoring has to be, with a good teacher, orders of magnitude better than anything else. Services that ask you to "request a quote" instead of naming a price are of course not for everybody.

Has anyone had success with finding tutors on platforms like italki.com? I tried for a bit but probably didn't spend enough time to find the right tutor.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#36

Post by jfo »

moron4hire wrote: post #27

I work for a foreign language instruction services company. We mostly serve government and military, but we do accept private students. All of our linguists are extremely skeptical of apps like Duolingo. And before anyone replies something like "your company has a vested interest in propping up instructor-led language training", if apps like Duolingo actually worked, the government--especially the military--would sto…

I live in a country and I'm trying to learn the language. I also take weekly classes and occasionally use private tutoring when I have time. I still get a ton of value out of duolingo, its exercises are easy to do in spare moments and it's a great way to work on vocabulary and passive grammar understanding, I love it.

It's not nearly enough on it's own to learn a language though, it's very very good as a supplement though, ime

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#37

Post by Shacklz »

viburnum wrote: post #26

I wish they had a setting to turn off all the gamification. I’m an adult. I don’t care about streaks or points or gems or whatever.

There's a setting to turn off the "ding" when you get something correct. I thought it's annoying, so I turned it off. Suddenly, the app felt very dull, and maintaining my streak felt hard - I kept forgetting to look into the app. So I turned it on again.

... Pavlovian conditioning works, even when I'm the rat. For the time being, I'm okay with that, because Duolingo does help me learn French, let's see how it goes long term.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#38

Post by ricardobeat »

jonathanjaeger wrote: post #5

My boss stopped learning Spanish on Duolingo when he lost his streak. It's a powerful motivator even if it's not a "true streak" due to streak freezes and such. My streak is at 1436 and if I lost it, I wouldn't stop Duolingo because I actually like it to learn, but the streak does make me happier, haha. I think I've had 2 days in the last few years of streak freezes due to 1 day forgetting and 1 day the site not savi…

That goes to show how easily humans are manipulated. When I read these comments it all sounds incredibly pointless. People cherishing a counter they are allowed to increase.

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#39

Post by LennyWhiteJr »

Faaak wrote: post #4
Rerarom wrote: post #2

What are some good alternatives to Duolingo with fewer dark patterns? (And don't suggest traditional methods, I am very much not against them, I am just curious about apps and such.)

I quite like memrise, and it worked much better for me

+1 for Memrise

Re: It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

#40

Post by needle0 »

Losing a Sojourner medal streak in Ingress (due to being busy due to my own wedding!) made me quit playing the game regularly. Streaks can be effective in keeping the user returning, but once it's broken it can be a perfect moment for the user to churn. Hence, I can understand how the Duolingo devs made the streak less fragile than it would initially appear, but doing so (and having the cover blown) also makes returning to the app not as urgent...thus less effective in preventing churn. Huh.
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