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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

#221

Post by satisfice »

dymk wrote: post #189
satisfice wrote: post #183

What is Duolingo? I do realize I can Google it. But isn’t it interesting that Hacker News brings all of us into contact with alien civilizations every day. Whatever Duolingo is, sounds like it became a significant part of you life. For me it has been Wordchums and FastHabit.

Duolingo has 40 million monthly active users. Ball is in your court if you don't know what it is.

You are right of course. Being an author, filing a patent for my invention, having a family, and juggling clients means my court has many balls.

My comment was merely a bit of musing about how big the world of ideas is. Don’t you also find that reading Hacker News you stumble on entire ecosystems you never heard of before?

Anyway, I did look it up. Apparently it’s about learning languages, in case you also didn’t know.

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

#222

Post by herewulf »

meatmanek wrote: post #116
cmg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, this text has been accessible on mobile for over a year now.

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

#223

Post by jhoelzel »

you have restored your streak with money. if its worth money to you, get the super duolingo offering and dont be bothered with it at all.

*once you have a one year streak, you become VIP which means you can 5 days of "vacation" instead of the usual 1. so thats 5 days that recharge once a month. In order to present the number of streaks that this guy has in his screenshots you will need to spend "gems" or "money" whichevever comes more easy to you.

So yeah, its nice that after investing time every day for one year, i get to get a week off in between ;)

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

#224

Post by yieldcrv »

pessimizer wrote: post #148
yieldcrv wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go to a club in that country and figure it out. Takes an me about an hour and a half to observe, and then try. I don't consider myself extroverted. The more stimuli the better, because the less actual talking is expected. Very basic bits of information need to be transmitted. Nobody is going to understand your years of app language, or years of school language, and definitely not your accent. You need idioms and ex…

Come on now. People are definitely going to understand that, and encourage you. You may not understand their idiomatic expressions of encouragement at all, but that's your opportunity to use your app/school language to learn something new.

1 and a half hour immersion is way more efficient than app/school teaching you a different set of irrelevant things for rote memorization across a much longer time span.

I think there are many people that also really just want to "learn to communicate in an area" but think that requires "learning a language". for that group of people that also has the time and privilege to go to the place, use my strategy

for some other group of people, have fun telling your phone how a "young girl eats an apple" for 20 levels.

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

#225

Post by dwighttk »

dwighttk wrote: post #215
david_allison wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typing in the answer is difficult from a UX perspective (on Android at least): Barring Gboard, all Android keyboards that I've tested do not support automatic switching of languages[1]. Even with Gboard, you need to explain to the user how to install the language for the keyboard. This is not trivial. You then may have to deal with another input method, and recommending one to use (for example: do you want Pinyin/Can…

Maybe but they had that as an answer type, they just used it very sparingly.

Just went back and did a lesson. They also have a “translate this sentence” but you are selecting from a word bank and there’s only one verb (declined one way) in the bank…

That is the kind of thing I’m talking about. Just not challenging at all.

The second lesson was a story which was a lot better than what I was seeing before, but I still think they adjust the difficulty so you are missing fewer questions so that you’ll stick around.

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

#226

Post by diydsp »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #167
diydsp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no way. i learned german through immersion, then tried to learn the much simpler Spanish via Duolingo. key problems: 1. not enough speaking practice. speaking is _at least_ 50% of the skill but about 10% of DL. 2. Waay too much time spent setting up each question w animations etc. not enoimugh learning time. much more repetition is required. 3. way too general learning. people have varying needs for language. e.g. wo…

Well, nothing is going to compete with immersion. And immersion isn't going to help you unless you have enough understanding to build atop of. Else you're like a dog listening to steam of human sounds: "Not walk, not walk, not walk, ...WALK!! (I know that one!), not walk, not walk, ..." In my experience, Duolingo and other entry level apps can get you there especially for the person who hasn't learned a second langua…

You're right. My skill was hard-won! And it showed me how to make DL so much more practical! My first 2 suggestions are simple parameter changes to their existing software :)

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

#227

Post by LorenPechtel »

nutate wrote: post #83
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 had the same thing happen in melodics (a finger drumming educational app), went over midnight, lost the streak and just mentally gave up on it. Duolingo (that I have the pro version of) does the same thing, but it 'froze' it for me after the fact, so I kept going. Weird how the motivation can switch to demotivation literally overnight.

And Duolingo appears to base it on your home time zone. My wife has used up a few streak freezes when we were many hours from our home time zone.

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

#228

Post by NoInkling »

sanqui wrote: post #28
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.)

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.

Sounds similar to Clozemaster (https://www.clozemaster.com/), which has a freemium model.

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

#229

Post by NoInkling »

g9yuayon wrote: post #152

Speaking of language learning, I wish Duolingo could come with leveled readers. We build our intuition on languages only when we see words and phrases used in different context. Somehow it's hard to find good Spanish readers, compared with ample readers in English. I was trying to read the reading materials for the Mexico first graders ( https://libros.conaliteg.gob.mx/primaria.html ), oh boy, there are just too many…

Duolingo does have the stories section for low-level, contextful reading/listening material.

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

#230

Post by Superfud »

adastra22 wrote: post #168
rmbyrro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's impressive. Non-avid reader before to almost a year of avid reading, then all lost because of a hook metric. This stuff is a real deal.

It can be demotivating. I use other language learning apps (not Duolingo, which is garbage), and I try to maintain a streak not because I care about it, but because I want the daily habit. Nevertheless, the number goes up… and help but get attached to it. I mean I don’t care about the number per se, but it was a reminder of my good study habit, which as someone with ADHD is an accomplishment itself. Then, like GP, I…

Readwise allows you to “recover” your streak if you miss a day for whatever reason. I’m sure it is for the exact reason you cite here.
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