Why it may be time to surrender my 550+ day Duolingo streak

After I began utilizing Duolingo to be taught and apply international languages in February 2023, I by no means envisioned myself utilizing the app every day. However just lately, I hit my 550-day streak, which means that I’ve used the app every day for 1.5 years.

Whereas I’m barely impressed by the truth that I maintained my streak for thus lengthy, I’ve additionally been contemplating whether or not it’s time to provide it up for quite a lot of causes, together with the truth that I now not really feel prefer it’s educating me what I have to know. Whereas I at all times thought-about Duolingo one of many best Android apps for language studying, my expertise is making me doubt this.

1. I now not really feel like I’m truly studying

I began pursuing my Duolingo streak as a manner to ensure I didn’t drop off from studying Mandarin. I added a Duolingo widget to my telephone’s dwelling display screen and enabled notifications to remind me to finish my streak.

However the streak doesn’t truly be sure that you be taught something — it’s an engagement metric, just like a Snapchat streak or a Reddit streak. A Duolingo streak requires you to finish a single lesson to keep up it. Relying on the kind of lesson you’re doing, this may be a particularly temporary interval spent within the app. The truth is, this week I completed my lesson and exited the app inside 42 seconds.

Sustaining my streak has ensured I take advantage of the app every day, not that I truly be taught a brand new phrase or character. The truth that you repeat the identical vocabulary throughout a number of classes to memorize the phrases implies that these small chunks of time spent within the app don’t introduce you to a brand new phrase for weeks.

In case you miss a lesson, Duolingo gives you a “streak freeze” so that you just don’t lose your streak. This makes the function extra forgiving in case you’re having a very busy week or simply naturally overlook to do your lesson.

You get a restricted variety of streak freezes at no cost, and from time to time, these freezes refill. However you can too purchase streak freezes to keep up your streak. Duolingo will usually immediate you to refill these freezes to guard your streak — I’ve even gotten the immediate after I nonetheless have freezes outfitted.

The app additionally used to provide me 5 complete freezes (as a substitute of solely two) because of being a part of the Streak Society. However this quantity appears to have been lowered to a few. You possibly can technically earn in-game forex to purchase these refills, however you can too use real-world cash to purchase these in-game gems.

Over time, this has made the streak really feel extra like a pay-to-win mechanic than an precise signal of progress or studying. Sometimes the app additionally doesn’t register a lesson, which prices me additional streak freezes. This, together with the prompts to refill my freezes, has soured my impression of the streak mechanic.

I used to finish a number of classes a day when utilizing Duolingo. However as my days received extra busy and my power migraines received worse, I began shifting in direction of shorter classes to keep up my streak. As a result of I’m studying Mandarin, which comes with its personal writing system, I’ve a tab for studying these Chinese language characters (often known as Hanzi).

I began utilizing this tab as a result of I used to be relying rather a lot on pinyin (the Chinese language phonetic alphabet) to know what I used to be studying. However finally, these quick, repetitive classes turned a technique to keep my Duolingo streak. This has vastly lowered the quantity of recent vocabulary that I be taught over time.

It feels virtually like I uncovered a Duolingo cheat. However as a substitute of boosting XP, it simply ensures I’ve very quick classes. However there’s one other concern that contributes to my lack of variety in classes…

4. Updates to accomplished items disrupted my progress

One thing that has hampered my progress on Duolingo is updates that the app makes to items you have got accomplished. For instance, whereas I’m on Part 2, Unit 17 of my Chinese language course, the app rolled out updates to earlier items. These weren’t the occasional phrase or two, however whole themes and matters of dialog.

Nonetheless, my items in Part 1 are nonetheless proven as accomplished. However after I revise these items, I discover phrases I’ve by no means encountered earlier than. This additionally occurred to my Hanzi classes. I used to be attempting to align my Hanzi apply with my progress for the principle classes, however dozens of recent characters had been added to items I had already accomplished.

I don’t thoughts the course and classes being up to date, however I want you might apply the brand new vocabulary and sentence buildings in separate classes. The truth that they’re merely folded into your accomplished classes makes it actually tough to identify the gaps in my data.

I actually loved Duolingo within the early days of utilizing it, and I actually felt like I used to be making progress. Nonetheless, as soon as the app began including a lot new vocabulary to older classes, I began to really feel an increasing number of pissed off with the expertise.

I attempted to resolve this by attempting to determine if I may reset my programs. But it surely seems the one manner to do that is to delete the course after which re-add it. Nonetheless, doing this additionally erases all of the XP you’ve earned from finishing classes.

I shouldn’t actually care in regards to the XP on my profile, however the gamified strategy Duolingo takes to language studying makes this really feel like resetting this metric can be a loss. I think about I might really feel equally if restarting a Steam recreation from the start erased all of my unlocked achievements.

Presently, I’ve 27,219XP for my Chinese language course. Contemplating classes earn you between 20 and 40XP, erasing all of this might be a bitter tablet to swallow.

However apart from the gamified components making me really feel caught the place I’m, I even have points with the best way Duolingo approaches its classes. The app not often explains sentence construction or grammatical guidelines. The one technique to discover the few grammatical classes and guidelines included in a course is to pick the little e book icon subsequent to a unit’s banner.

I believed Duolingo’s gamified strategy would assist me refresh my data of Mandarin. Whereas I studied it for 2 years in college, I misplaced a number of my data by not practising it for years.

However after I’m solely in a position to select a couple of phrases when listening to Chinese language dialog on TV or my Chinese language good friend sends me texts that I can barely comprehend, I understand that utilizing the app every single day for 1.5 years has not given me the data of the language I’d hoped for. I nonetheless haven’t reached the extent of proficiency I had in college.

Even with pre-existing publicity to Mandarin, I’m miles behind the place I’d prefer to be. The app has failed to increase my data previous a couple of greetings, questions, and phrases. But it surely hasn’t did not get me to log in every single day. So general, it appears like Duolingo is geared extra in direction of repeated engagement than precise progress.

I would take into account switching to Memrise or one other language-learning app to see if a special strategy works higher.

I nonetheless get a notification each night to finish my Duolingo lesson for the day, however as time passes, it turns into much less fulfilling. I’ve began wanting into different methods I can be taught languages and vocabulary in a extra holistic manner. However because of my rising frustration with Duolingo, the immediate to proceed my streak is turning into steadily much less tempting.