And, also to be fair, well-supported languages will accept a good variation of ‘correct’ translations in either direction for each sentence. Some of these, I admit, are not predicated on a paired sentence idea, but lying in the background is that building block. There are tons of variations on this, on how this is accomplished : selecting the words in order, selecting missing words (cloze exercises), selecting correct endings only for targeted grammar, supplying A/B answers in L2 to an L2 prompt, reading into the microphone for a pronunciation check, etc etc. The core activity is “translate sentence X from L1 to L2 or L2 to L1”. Despite all the little features here and there, the fundamental building block of Duolingo courses is paired sentences.So, the last month and the last week in particular has seen me spend way too much time on Duolingo, and I’ll be scaling back to more normal levels from now on. So I would organise my time to complete a level, and then go flat out on maximal XP options for 15min blocks. For the week I was committed to winning, I activated a trial of Duolingo Plus, and liberally used a few competitive tricks: (i) when you complete a level on the mobile app, you typically get a 15mins double XP boost, (ii) some lesson options give you more XP than others. So I had to reactivate leagues, work my way back up to Diamond. Leagues, if you don’t know are randomly assigned groupings of 50 or so users, and the top 10 get promoted. Recently I was taken by a desire to get “all the achievements”, including probably the most difficult, “Finish #1 in the Diamond League”. It’s the only tree I’ve finished, and it’s where I’ve spent the bulk of my actual time. I currently have a 636 day streak, which is in large part thanks to the Scottish Gaelic course. For very long periods I have been inactive. BackgroundĪccording to my account, I first joined Duo in March 2012, so that’s a long time on the app. In this post I want to explore and reflect on these two things in light of recent and long-term experience. The love side is that I actually enjoy and continue to use Duolingo daily, and gain a measurable benefit from it. The hate side, in short, is that I think the way Duolingo models language and thinks/treats language is fundamentally atomistic and inimical to good principles of second language acquisition. I have a long and complicated relationship with Duolingo.
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