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.
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 day. I didn’t even realize how important the streak must have been to me, because I stopped reading after that and haven’t picked up the iPad to read a book in almost 2 years since then.
Edit: to one of the flagged replies that assumed I wasn’t reading much anyway (which I can’t reply to)… to be clear I didn’t just read five minutes a night, that was the minimum amount to keep the streak going. I read (iirc) 8 books in that time frame, including the lord of the rings trilogy in there. I wasn’t reading for hours a day, but probably averaging more like 20 minutes. Not a ton, but it’s not like I was barely reading.
I've used Duolingo for about a year and they definitely have a lot of stuff like that built into the gamification. Often times, though, playing the game they designed is counterproductive. I've broken 100+ day streaks twice now because I realized I was only putting in the minimum for the sake of the game. I've found it better to take a month off here and there so that I can come back and focus on my actual goals.
There's also the cracked lesson feature. They aligned cracked lessons to urgency gamification instead of something more sound like delayed repetition. As a result, you'll often have cracked lessons which you've long since permanently committed to memory and will be spending 15 minutes on easy lessons rather than doing the important, harder lessons.
there is a difference here though where you realize that you are meeting the street to an addiction versus your meeting this streak due to something you would like to productively learn
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 large number of consecutive days of sobriety.
Yeah. Because relapsing happens to almost everyone. And even if your "sober streak" resets to zero you haven't lost your motivation to stay sober, the experience of being sober (and knowing you can cope), and the tools you've learned. You're still in a better position than before, all you need to do is get back on the horse. Fixating on a streak just makes it harder to do that.
I've always wondered, if someone has a drink the week before getting, for example, their 10 year pin, do they not get the pin, or is there some kind of duolingo take-back?
I love that Duo streak is hard to lose, unlike other apps where if you miss a day streak is gone. The goal of app is to help you keep learning. In life things are bound to happen because of which you might miss couple of days or more, it make no sense to penalize you for that. I have been trying to maintain streak in other apps but I when I miss a day, I am not motivated enough to go back and start again. Also, streak is only one gamification point in Duo, it's ok if it isn't perfect. Leagues, stories, medals provide enough motivation to keep making progress. I have tried to learn french multiple times and nothing made me stick to my learning routine like Duo has. It might not teach the language to hold a conversation, but I like how much progress I have made reading front.
Dailies are great for getting you to come back, but losing a streak can be enough to make you reconsider your life and never come back; especially when you were doing it out of habit and not really "into" it anymore.
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 saving my exercise. Ah well, I still like my streak even if it's not 100% pure!
One thing I found odd about Duolingo is that they disabled offline lessons. It was the most powerful thing they had -- to me at least. I was able to board planes and just grind for hours, I could travel cross country and do the same. Even in normal travels I was able to use it without constant disconnects -- it was great.
But they decided one day to just nuke it... for no reason as far as I could tell. My subscription went with it. Shame.
EDIT: based on the responses below I did a quick search and it appears that it was silently removed, refactored and then returned slowly back to people depending on their account age/device. This is actually incredible news (to me).
Not with you on that.
I just did your exact usecase on my flight of 9+ hours and it worked just fine?
Maybe they shuffled around the way you set something to download? I can confirm that this feature still exists (atleast on iOS)
Sounds strange - I've been able to do offline lessons as recently as this week. On android with a free account. Maybe this was something temporary in the past?
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.
I've been able to "hack" around the streak loss demotivation by tracking my language learning practice outside of the Duolingo streak measure. I use an app called "Habit" to track good habits I want to follow, such as exercise, meditation and language learning. It has the ability to set up weekly goals such as 3 days out of 7 or monthly goals and displays progress and various stats.
That flexibility has helped me track my streak outside of the gamified experience that is Duolingo. It has helped me stay motivated based on my personal goals and not be artificially motivated by the whims of the App developer & PM who are focused on driving goals such as DAU/engagement and monetization.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t mind streaks alone, but it seems like whenever I open the app I have to click through about 10 pages of animations about League Repairs and Streak Freezes and Friends Quests and Gem Boosts. It’s really frustrating and almost always makes me quit the app immediately. I just want to take a lesson and I’ve paid for the subscription already.
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 stop paying us in a heartbeat.
There is a lot of diversity in instructor-led training. None of our classes are anything like what you would have experienced in highschool or college. Our largest classes have 4 students in them, and that's strictly a cost-cutting scheme that Gov has insisted on for maintenance training. You'll be one-on-one with your instructor. They'll be a native speaker with often decades of experience teaching language. They'll be tayloring a lot of supplemental material specific to you. We even have some of our own apps that we've developed (that's my job), nothing like Duolingo (though nothing you can just use without our curriculum or instructors).
A lot of people say "the best way to learn a language is to live in a country where it is spoken". Clearly, that is unrealistic for the vast majority of people. I would also say it presumes you are a specific kind of extremely extroverted, fearless person. Most people find themselves becoming quite introverted in situations where they can't communicate easily.
For these reasons, I think the most realistic answer for the best way to learn language is private tutoring. The OP take about having used Duolingo for almost 10 years. That seems absurd to me. I would hope they have mastered at least half a dozen languages with that kind of effort. Language training shouldn't take that long.
For these reasons, I think the most realistic answer for the best way to learn language is private tutoring.
For people who have a specific need to learn a language this is of course true. Or even for people who have an amount of time and effort they are willing to dedicate to that end.
The thing is, though - I’m very unlikely to invest in private tutoring in order to learn a language speculatively. The time and financial requirements are too high a barrier.
But Duolingo is an investment of maybe 10 minutes a day at some moment of downtime. I’d estimate that I’ve spent maybe 200 hours over three years with it, which has taken me from not knowing a language to being conversationally fluent in that language - something I would otherwise just never have done.
Duolingo (or other similar systems) are very obviously not the optimum way to learn a language to fluency. And it’s especially obvious that they wont replace a tutoring service for government and military clients. But a lot of the criticism of them completely ignores the fact that they fill an entirely separate niche which is totally valid.
Of course private tutoring is one of the most effective ways.
But you can't have a private tutored lesson while in a queue at the supermarket. Or on a train. Or while you wait for the water to boil.
Of course the government pay for your services. They need people to be trained to be good at languages. Most of the people who use these apps are doing it as a hobby.
> The OP take about having used Duolingo for almost 10 years. That seems absurd to me. I would hope they have mastered at least half a dozen languages with that kind of effort.
Eh, the implication in my post is that Duolingo is minimal effort and the streak doesn't really mean anything other than you may have maintained that minimal effort for a long time.
Besides, very few people are mastering a single language let alone many. I'm a native English speaker and sometimes I feel I haven't mastered that language.
And yes - private lessons are going to offer the most value if you can't live in the country. Even then it's only in this particular part of this country where I would hear something like "On prend le traclet pour acheter du Papet."
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
> For these reasons, I think the most realistic answer for the best way to learn language is private tutoring.
Based on my experience of language learning, I agree with you.
> The OP take about having used Duolingo for almost 10 years. That seems absurd to me. I would hope they have mastered at least half a dozen languages with that kind of effort.
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.
10 years of Duolingo is about the same effort as 1 week with your course. That is effort, not a measure of effectiveness, your tutors are more effective. I'm sure you don't expect much of anyone after a week.
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.)
Duolingo must have psychologists on staff who realized the insidious side of the "keeping the streak".
One of the happiest days in my life was the day after losing the streak on 750words a few years ago.
I had a 500+ day streak going but it had not built into an effortless habit (like a cold shower).
Surest way to misery is feeling forced into doing something yet not getting enjoyment nor showing any improvement.
I am reasonably sure if I had tried to not break the streak in say doing standup ala Seinfeld the results would have been similarly dismal.
On the same note I quit Duolingo when I realized that the modicum of German I was learning was quickly overtaken by my teenage daughter.
She was in a very average German class spending less time on lessons.
One odd feature of many apps that use streaks is that they fail to account or allow for a rest day or a weekend. Even with work one can have perfect attendance and only be there 5 out of 7 days. It's strange that it's normal for apps to demand more engagement than that to maintain a streak.
I find it overbearing that apps create the expectation of participating even when I am in the middle of the forest and mountains with zero network connectivity. It incentivizes unhealthy lives and life patterns of never disconnecting from the internet. Why can't these apps allow users to choose what kinds of streaks they want to aspire to?
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.
I will break steaks in apps on purpose, to fight the gamification. At a certain point it is not really helping and just manipulating you for the application's benefit as the article explains.
Do it because you want to, you are getting something from it, not because you have to.
I discovered this somewhat by accident when I started wearing an Apple Watch.
Ended up with a ~400 day move streak. Yay me, right?
Well. It got pretty annoying toward the end, having to wear the damn thing every day. It kinda creeped up on me, one of those things where the motive to just not wear a watch for a day is low, so why not put it on and keep up my streak?
But cumulatively? There's a huge difference between mostly wearing a watch and always wearing a watch.
It was a relief when I busted it, finally, for two reasons: I could have a normal relationship with the device on my wrist, and I was in no danger of ever setting another record streak.
After that I deliberately bust streaks in apps at a number I choose in advance, something like 50 or 100.
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 new words for me even though I was at Duolingo Spanish unit 5. I used to use a reader called America Today. The book 2 talked about all the natural wonders of the US, and the book 3 talked about the America society: a day of supermarket manager, a day of a big city, and etc. The difficulty of the book was so well arranged that I had no problem progressing through it, and I had no problem with English grammar or day-to-day vocabularies after finishing the series.
My experience is quite different. Pre-pandemic I used to use Duolingo on my public transport commute and I had it more than once that I reached my daily goal only to notice the next day that it hadn't registered properly. This happened quite regularly and with my free account I could only have one streak freeze, so I occasionally lost my streak because of this.
Another issue that caused me to lose my streak is when Duolingo says: "Sorry we encountered an error. Don't worry your streak will be safe." In my experience my streak was not safe.
I don't mean to be too harsh with Duolingo, I think they get a lot of features just right. The streak thing, however, was just an annoyance for me. These failures made me temporarily quit several times. Even if you know you should not become upset about stupid internet points it still hurts when you feel it is not your fault.
Apps like Duolingo IMHO try to sell the illusion of learning.
Far more people like the illusion of learning than actual learning, so it makes sense from a business POV, but if you're really dedicated, textbooks + flashcards + immersion will get you farther ahead.
I think that's partly true, but the other aspect of it is that there are a lot more people who want to start learning a language than those have made it past a beginner level.
Apps like Duolingo and others also completely neglect giving the language learner longer passages of text to read or videos to watch. Most learners do this on their own, but it does take a tremendous amount of prep work to find the appropriate materials.
Once you have the materials, you need a way to re-enforce what you've learned. I was doing this with Anki and found it very cumbersome and time-consuming to do.
[+] [-] needle0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ninkendo|3 years ago|reply
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 day. I didn’t even realize how important the streak must have been to me, because I stopped reading after that and haven’t picked up the iPad to read a book in almost 2 years since then.
Edit: to one of the flagged replies that assumed I wasn’t reading much anyway (which I can’t reply to)… to be clear I didn’t just read five minutes a night, that was the minimum amount to keep the streak going. I read (iirc) 8 books in that time frame, including the lord of the rings trilogy in there. I wasn’t reading for hours a day, but probably averaging more like 20 minutes. Not a ton, but it’s not like I was barely reading.
[+] [-] iratewizard|3 years ago|reply
There's also the cracked lesson feature. They aligned cracked lessons to urgency gamification instead of something more sound like delayed repetition. As a result, you'll often have cracked lessons which you've long since permanently committed to memory and will be spending 15 minutes on easy lessons rather than doing the important, harder lessons.
[+] [-] amrrs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackernewds|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hermannj314|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billjings|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rjh29|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rendall|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|3 years ago|reply
You need both.
The ability to not lose it all because of a break.
But also a reason not to have a break.
[+] [-] jammu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bombcar|3 years ago|reply
Cf: World of Warcraft
[+] [-] jonathanjaeger|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] someotherperson|3 years ago|reply
But they decided one day to just nuke it... for no reason as far as I could tell. My subscription went with it. Shame.
EDIT: based on the responses below I did a quick search and it appears that it was silently removed, refactored and then returned slowly back to people depending on their account age/device. This is actually incredible news (to me).
[+] [-] vulkan92|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] finolex1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] occz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iandanforth|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slickdork|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toyg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cogitoergo_some|3 years ago|reply
That flexibility has helped me track my streak outside of the gamified experience that is Duolingo. It has helped me stay motivated based on my personal goals and not be artificially motivated by the whims of the App developer & PM who are focused on driving goals such as DAU/engagement and monetization.
[+] [-] lttlrck|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] viburnum|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shacklz|3 years ago|reply
... 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.
[+] [-] frutiger|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] udp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Finnucane|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moron4hire|3 years ago|reply
There is a lot of diversity in instructor-led training. None of our classes are anything like what you would have experienced in highschool or college. Our largest classes have 4 students in them, and that's strictly a cost-cutting scheme that Gov has insisted on for maintenance training. You'll be one-on-one with your instructor. They'll be a native speaker with often decades of experience teaching language. They'll be tayloring a lot of supplemental material specific to you. We even have some of our own apps that we've developed (that's my job), nothing like Duolingo (though nothing you can just use without our curriculum or instructors).
A lot of people say "the best way to learn a language is to live in a country where it is spoken". Clearly, that is unrealistic for the vast majority of people. I would also say it presumes you are a specific kind of extremely extroverted, fearless person. Most people find themselves becoming quite introverted in situations where they can't communicate easily.
For these reasons, I think the most realistic answer for the best way to learn language is private tutoring. The OP take about having used Duolingo for almost 10 years. That seems absurd to me. I would hope they have mastered at least half a dozen languages with that kind of effort. Language training shouldn't take that long.
[+] [-] matthewmacleod|3 years ago|reply
For people who have a specific need to learn a language this is of course true. Or even for people who have an amount of time and effort they are willing to dedicate to that end.
The thing is, though - I’m very unlikely to invest in private tutoring in order to learn a language speculatively. The time and financial requirements are too high a barrier.
But Duolingo is an investment of maybe 10 minutes a day at some moment of downtime. I’d estimate that I’ve spent maybe 200 hours over three years with it, which has taken me from not knowing a language to being conversationally fluent in that language - something I would otherwise just never have done.
Duolingo (or other similar systems) are very obviously not the optimum way to learn a language to fluency. And it’s especially obvious that they wont replace a tutoring service for government and military clients. But a lot of the criticism of them completely ignores the fact that they fill an entirely separate niche which is totally valid.
[+] [-] Tams80|3 years ago|reply
But you can't have a private tutored lesson while in a queue at the supermarket. Or on a train. Or while you wait for the water to boil.
Of course the government pay for your services. They need people to be trained to be good at languages. Most of the people who use these apps are doing it as a hobby.
[+] [-] leejo|3 years ago|reply
Eh, the implication in my post is that Duolingo is minimal effort and the streak doesn't really mean anything other than you may have maintained that minimal effort for a long time.
Besides, very few people are mastering a single language let alone many. I'm a native English speaker and sometimes I feel I haven't mastered that language.
And yes - private lessons are going to offer the most value if you can't live in the country. Even then it's only in this particular part of this country where I would hear something like "On prend le traclet pour acheter du Papet."
[+] [-] jfo|3 years ago|reply
It's not nearly enough on it's own to learn a language though, it's very very good as a supplement though, ime
[+] [-] aix1|3 years ago|reply
Based on my experience of language learning, I agree with you.
> The OP take about having used Duolingo for almost 10 years. That seems absurd to me. I would hope they have mastered at least half a dozen languages with that kind of effort.
This completely glosses over the costs involved.
[+] [-] UweSchmidt|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bluGill|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayduo2|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Rerarom|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sireat|3 years ago|reply
One of the happiest days in my life was the day after losing the streak on 750words a few years ago.
I had a 500+ day streak going but it had not built into an effortless habit (like a cold shower).
Surest way to misery is feeling forced into doing something yet not getting enjoyment nor showing any improvement.
I am reasonably sure if I had tried to not break the streak in say doing standup ala Seinfeld the results would have been similarly dismal.
On the same note I quit Duolingo when I realized that the modicum of German I was learning was quickly overtaken by my teenage daughter. She was in a very average German class spending less time on lessons.
[+] [-] murphyslab|3 years ago|reply
I find it overbearing that apps create the expectation of participating even when I am in the middle of the forest and mountains with zero network connectivity. It incentivizes unhealthy lives and life patterns of never disconnecting from the internet. Why can't these apps allow users to choose what kinds of streaks they want to aspire to?
[+] [-] soheilpro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drdec|3 years ago|reply
Do it because you want to, you are getting something from it, not because you have to.
[+] [-] samatman|3 years ago|reply
Ended up with a ~400 day move streak. Yay me, right?
Well. It got pretty annoying toward the end, having to wear the damn thing every day. It kinda creeped up on me, one of those things where the motive to just not wear a watch for a day is low, so why not put it on and keep up my streak?
But cumulatively? There's a huge difference between mostly wearing a watch and always wearing a watch.
It was a relief when I busted it, finally, for two reasons: I could have a normal relationship with the device on my wrist, and I was in no danger of ever setting another record streak.
After that I deliberately bust streaks in apps at a number I choose in advance, something like 50 or 100.
[+] [-] g9yuayon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoInkling|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weinzierl|3 years ago|reply
Another issue that caused me to lose my streak is when Duolingo says: "Sorry we encountered an error. Don't worry your streak will be safe." In my experience my streak was not safe.
I don't mean to be too harsh with Duolingo, I think they get a lot of features just right. The streak thing, however, was just an annoyance for me. These failures made me temporarily quit several times. Even if you know you should not become upset about stupid internet points it still hurts when you feel it is not your fault.
[+] [-] Tainnor|3 years ago|reply
Far more people like the illusion of learning than actual learning, so it makes sense from a business POV, but if you're really dedicated, textbooks + flashcards + immersion will get you farther ahead.
[+] [-] emursebrian|3 years ago|reply
Apps like Duolingo and others also completely neglect giving the language learner longer passages of text to read or videos to watch. Most learners do this on their own, but it does take a tremendous amount of prep work to find the appropriate materials.
Once you have the materials, you need a way to re-enforce what you've learned. I was doing this with Anki and found it very cumbersome and time-consuming to do.
[+] [-] forinti|3 years ago|reply
Anyway, I try not to look at the points or streaks, my real motivation is to learn the language.