Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It's quite hard to lose a Duolingo streak

leejo.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 231 posts

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

#111

Post by Blahah »

leejo wrote: post #16
toyg wrote: post #8

Of course you can refill freezes, but you need enough credits to do so. You accumulate credits as you complete lessons and hit targets. So OP was, effectively, living for a period off the riches he had accumulated over almost 10 years (!) of efforts. That's not easy.

That is a fair point. I went back through my history in the app to figure out the real numbers: First day of use: 11th Dec 2014 First missed day: 19th Jun 2017 (921 days later) First freeze use: 20th Oct 2020 (2,140 days after first day of use) The missed days were down to (IIRC) time zone crossing and patchy internet, I can't recall if Duolingo let you off here or if there was leeway in the streak calculation. Those…

Wow, two and a half years without missing a day is impressive. Kudos to you for having that rigor, and to Duolingo for whatever about their design allowed you to engage so consistently.

Do you have a sense of what kept you going? And what about Duolingo helped?

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

#112

Post by gre »

dan-robertson wrote: post #86
ninkendo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this problem with the Books app on my iPad. I had a nearly 300 day streak going of reading at least 5 minutes every day (and I have not been an avid reader throughout most of my life.) The books app would keep track of the streak at the bottom of the screen in your library view. Then one night I started reading at 11:57 PM, and by the time I was reading for 5 minutes, it was 12:02AM and I technically missed a d…

I wonder what a fix would be? Maybe reset every 30 days and have a separate counter for the number of completed months that doesn’t reset if you fail.

If you start on a day, time it until you stop and count it for both days. What's the downside of someone starting at 11:59 and reading 6 minutes to game it?

Also, days are like 48 hours long from the first timezone to the last timezone.

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

#113

Post by yorwba »

davidzweig wrote: post #59
sanqui wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a paid app, but I enjoyed Speakly's approach of "endless stream of open cloze exercises". It forces you to actually type words in the target language (unlike Duolingo which is mostly translations into the source language), it has a clever spaced repetition algorithm, and it lets you practice for as long as you want and stop immediately at any point, unlike Duolingo locking you into 20 question long lessons.

We made something a couple of weeks ago, you might like it, needs login but is 100% free. Endless (depending on language) listening exercises, sentences are selected (from tatoeba) based on vocabulary (no selection based on grammar yet). It's also integrated with a flashcard system (also free). If you set a small vocab (100 words) and do lots of cards, you start to get a feel for the grammar of a language. Something…

As a contributor to Tatoeba, I'm always interested in checking out how people use our data.

The interface needs work to be usable on mobile, but I guess you know that.

I'm not sure whether the TTS you're using is really good enough to be usable for learning a language. I tried it in German and noticed quite a few TTS bugs, like pronouncing "Tu" as if it were an acronym "TU" instead of the verb "Do", as well as switching to an English pronunciation next to English names (pronouncing "Hallo Roger" more like "Hello Roger").

Tatoeba also has many recordings in quite a few languages (e.g. German https://tatoeba.org/en/audio/index/deu ) You should try using them if possible. For download instructions, see https://tatoeba.org/en/downloads

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

#114

Post by billjings »

hermannj314 wrote: post #48

What I noticed from the sobriety community (specifically alcohol), it is important to make promises to yourself 'one day at a a time'. There is a presumed danger to tying too much of your ego to the duration of your sobriety. I am not sure if it is scientifically proven, but if you relapse the assumption is you would rather have a psychology built around making the right choice today and not one built on pride of a l…

Durable "streaks" are built on worthwhile days.

Focus on the days, and the streak will take care of itself.

Focus on the streak, and one day you might realize that it hasn't been worth keeping for a long, long time.

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

#116

Post by meatmanek »

cmg wrote: post #76
Shacklz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fluent with Duolingo alone? Very unlikely in my experience. From my point of view, you can make it to A1/A2 proficiency in a language with Duolingo alone - after that, it gets quite hard. Teaching grammar and conjugations isn't its forté, without resources outside of Duolingo it will get rather tricky. That being said, I still use Duolingo for my daily dose of language exposure - but without Anki (for vocabulary), yo…

I'm using Duolingo to learn Russian because my spouse is Russian and I want to communicate better with his family (especially his grandmother, who speaks less English than I do Russian). After nearly a year, I can help set up for dinner ("Where are the plates?" "There is bread on the table already" "Do you want tea?") and similar things. Now I'm getting into genitives and such, and that's where Duolingo really seems…

I don't know if they have changed this in the few years since I let my Duolingo streak lapse, but they actually have decent explanatory text for each lesson, it's just not (or wasn't) accessible from the mobile app; you had to use the desktop website to see it.

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

#117

Post by nebyoolae »

billjings wrote: post #114
hermannj314 wrote: post #48

What I noticed from the sobriety community (specifically alcohol), it is important to make promises to yourself 'one day at a a time'. There is a presumed danger to tying too much of your ego to the duration of your sobriety. I am not sure if it is scientifically proven, but if you relapse the assumption is you would rather have a psychology built around making the right choice today and not one built on pride of a l…

Durable "streaks" are built on worthwhile days. Focus on the days, and the streak will take care of itself. Focus on the streak, and one day you might realize that it hasn't been worth keeping for a long, long time.

I really like this thought. Thanks for sharing.

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

#118

Post by waqf »

torstenvl wrote: post #22
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.)

Babbel is the least hated of this kind of app among my linguist friends. Pimsleur is highly regarded by phonologists. I get frustrated by almost all of these tools. In particular, I feel like Duolingo is much less useful if you already know another language, and is almost useless as a way to brush up on a language you already know (my boyfriend has been doing Russian Duolingo for three months and his vocabulary is ju…

Horace Lunt's Fundamentals of Russian is one I found helpful, particularly for being upfront about the actual pronunciation rules.

There are also many similar gripes among STEM tutorials. Why can't this physics/chemistry/economics book assume I know vector calculus/differential equations?

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

#119

Post by meatmanek »

leephillips wrote: post #31

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 ofte…

I used to set my phone's time zone to Hawaii when I needed a little more time to do my streak. The trick is to not open the app after midnight without changing your time zone, otherwise it will lock in your lost streak.

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

#120

Post by mastax »

oneoff786 wrote: post #54
Telemakhos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even after all that I can't speak a single proper sentence now apart from the basic je m'appelle stuff This is the real problem with Duolingo: it doesn't actually teach you to communicate in the language. Rote memorization and communication are two different things, and Duolingo does very little aside from drilling memorization. Streaks and gamification don't contribute to communication, which has its own system of…

I’m not sure I would be so pessimistic. Learning a language is hard and you’re probably correct that you won’t be able to speak it with just duolingo. That doesn’t mean duolingo isn’t providing a substantial amount of necessary foundation. I’ve never tried it but I feel like it’s probably similar to Spanish classes in high school.

It is similar in that Spanish classes necessarily require learning a lot of vocabulary and grammar. However once you have a base level of knowledge you can take advantage of being near real people to practice conversation skills. By the end of my second year of Spanish class we were being tested speaking for several sentences about a topic (with some advance preparation) to the teacher who would ask questions. Holding a conversation, more or less.

Duolingo doesn't put so much emphasis on conversation in my experience. Most of the questions give you the words in one language or the other and have you write out an answer. This allows you to lean on reading. Listening and speaking are the hardest parts so the should have the most practice, not the least.

Post reply on HN