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.
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.
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.
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.<p>But they decided one day to just nuke it... for no reason as far as I could tell. My subscription went with it. Shame.<p>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).
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>It's sad really it was quite an accomplishment.
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.<p>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 <i>largest</i> 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).<p>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.<p>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.
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".<p>One of the happiest days in my life was the day after losing the streak on 750words a few years ago.<p>I had a 500+ day streak going but it had not built into an effortless habit (like a cold shower).<p>Surest way to misery is feeling forced into doing something yet not getting enjoyment nor showing any improvement.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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?
I lost my 780 day streak, complained on Twitter and they repaired it:
<a href="https://twitter.com/soheilpro/status/1356677917011365889" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/soheilpro/status/1356677917011365889</a>
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.<p>Do it because you want to, you are getting something from it, not because you have to.
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 (<a href="https://libros.conaliteg.gob.mx/primaria.html" rel="nofollow">https://libros.conaliteg.gob.mx/primaria.html</a>), 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 am doing French and Russian, and there's so much more material for French. I wish there were stories in Russian, at least.<p>Anyway, I try not to look at the points or streaks, my real motivation is to learn the language.
Nobody ever became conversational in a language by using Duolingo. It's IMO a determent to language learners, because it makes you _feel_ like you're learning something without actually putting together the skills needed to understand even basic native content. Rather than spending time with comprehensible input, people get stuck in the Duo well where they're content to collect rubies and points.<p>Drop Duolingo, use a proven method like Pimsleur, grab the Anki Core Vocab deck for your language, and start consuming native content ASAP.
What made me lose interest in Duolingo was (losing the friends whom I conversate with and) 1. The lessons are so sluggish, if I know everything I want to be able to zip through them. But no - apparently these success animations and transitional effects are good for me. And 2. The totally senseless examples and also the sometimes cryptic questions when you don't know what they are asking for because the language is ambiguous.
Yes, but this is certainly a key to their success. They bring people back even after 2, 3, days, or even a month! Duolingo doesn't care _when_ you come back, as long as you _do_ come back. I was an earlier adopter of duolingo, and it's amazing to see how huge they've become. Overall I think it's an awesome platform; they've done very well with the entire design and clean UI of the site / app.
Had a somehow similar experience with Strava.
I am biking these days only to commute - so doing the same boring 15km urban route 2, 4 or 6 times a week (Returns). Each time my performance would be driven by the weather, my load (public library books weight a ton), fatigue state after a long word day or a poor night, traffic, roadwork etc...not by my training consistency or motivation.
Yet the app would keep notifying me of new records beaten each time to keep me engaged by shortening time after time the distances measured,resorting down to timing every single "one block long" segment between traffic lights, stop signs or various landmarks to find new records to beat :(<p>"your best time is now 41sec (instead of 42 2 years earlier)" -> that's when I stopped completely using it.
Potentially amusing related analysis: Duolingo is the Devil by Langfocus: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbmXSR_QiP8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbmXSR_QiP8</a>
This is a well-known play on FOMO - there is that bit about the inherent fear of missing out on being top of leaderboard/in-game items/bonuses/etc. What's fascinating is just how easy this mechanic is applied to so many modern games and apps, and how hooked folks become on it even though they know what's going on.<p>"Ugh... they implemented this for FOMO... but damn I can't skip playing this game for a day because I am going to miss out on the +1 bonus to agility that's gonna be awarded if I log in 7 days in a row."
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.<p>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:<p><a href="https://lee-phillips.org/whyDuoLingoWhy/" rel="nofollow">https://lee-phillips.org/whyDuoLingoWhy/</a>
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.<p>*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.<p>So yeah, its nice that after investing time every day for one year, i get to get a week off in between ;)
I am very pro-duolingo as a product.<p>However, I am not sure if there's a use case for it that Anki doesn't achieve with notably less adverts. Am I just not the target audience?
They need a vacation mode. Though I imagine the fact that they don't include such an obvious feature is because it would interfere with their bottom line.
duolingo (back when I used it years ago) also made it pretty difficult to even get questions wrong. They seemed to shy away from questions where I had to type in the answer (ie come up with the translation out of my own head) when I was out near the edge of my knowledge in favor of multiple-choice (ie they give you the translation but you pick it out of a couple wrong answers)
Quite a few anecdotes here validating the streak so I'll just be an alternate data point. When I used Duolingo regularly it was because there was a goal I intended to learn a foreign language for. The gamifed streaks never really had an effect on me and are quite off-putting.<p>I understand because of that I am not their target demographic. Or maybe I am and they want to engage users like me more. Maybe if the UI felt a bit more immersive--a clip of native French speakers interacting rather than cartoon bubbles and gems, for instance.
What is Duolingo?<p>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.
A) For those that question the apps and are on the fence, consider a traditional methods of language learning, consider a class at a community college. Community college in San Francisco is free for San Francisco residents and they have many language classes! Similar arrangements might be available wherever you currently live, and they're also cheap either way.<p>B) I travel a lot and I realized that I don't actually want to "learn a language" I want to "be able to communicate in an area". So doing a Duolingo speedrun on the airplane is pretty much useless (or even months before). What you really want to do is know how to buy a girl a drink, for example. In a loud situation this may even involve counting to the bartender, "language learning" apps aren't going to show you how to count on your fingers the local way. It really changes the priorities to what you actually need to use.