To give up my Duolingo streak

[outofofficeagain]

I’m on 520 days but enough! I’m over it. I find myself doing a hurried match madness at 11:30 which I’m not sure is teaching me very much.

I burn through a lot of streak freezes.

Will I be sad if I just say sod it!

These streak things are beginning to own me! I feel I need to take back control.

I'm at just under 2,000 days and my phone will need to be prised out of my cold, dead hands before I relinquish my streak. I am a true believer.

You can always use streak freeze if you fancy a day off.

I let mine go when I’d finished the course I was doing. I still don’t speak that language very well (it’s one of the shorter courses though).

I think Duolingo has been somewhat debunked as a method of learning languages - maybe can give you a start but won’t get you all the way.

Can you speak the language you've been learning on it though. My problem with it, it's just an app. It's like playing a game and doesn't actually teach you the line unless you pay.

For those wanting to move on to something more challenging have you tried Busuu. Basic package is free too. It pushes you a bit more. I do it in tandem with Duo and sometimes its like learning two different languages as the levels are so different.

You do know that's not the last you will hear of it don't you? That owl will pester and threaten for days.

And if you leave the app on your phone then open it one day, even if it was accidental and you close it immediately, it will have another go. "I can't believe you contacted me only to just ghost me again"

I have been having proper language lessons for years, so the Duolingo has just been an extra top up - but recently I've found it annoying and need a break.

I don't believe you can learn a language just doing that alone.

I need less things nagging me for me time. I've also removed the Mumsnet app from my phone - now that is a bold move.

I really do not like the way Duo has changed - it explains next to nothing now - it's about as useful as an effing mime artist teaching you quantum mechanics. It seems to me they are deliberately obstructing the learning process to keep you needing to renew or take out a subscription and even if you do - if you want your wrong answers explained you need to buy the next level of subscription.
@larkstar
From what I heard the company who run Duolingo sacked nearly all the staff a while back and the material now is nearly all generated by AI and any support by volunteers

AI makes sense. Why else would I'd be learning sentences such as the cat eats the pizza.

Human would know, you are never going to use that sort of sentence in daily life. I've never said it in my own language.Let alone a foreign one.

Block the emails and notifications and keep going. I'm on 1500 day, and sometimes I really cba, but I like the fact that I'm learning a new skill. Switch to a different language if you are bored. My dd has about 4 language tabs.

Yeah. Last year DD was giving it another go and she said she had one lesson that had sentences about there being a ghost in the clock

Could she actually use any of those languages effectively if she visited the country?

I’ve heard that the Welsh one is obsessed with parsnips.

I quite like Jumpspeak for forcing me to be more verbal than Duolingo requires.

You're all making me want to give up my streak now.

The pressure!

Not leeks?

Owen fights the parsnip farmer then sells the parsnips behind the nightclub. It’s a long running saga.

Yes, do it. It's just a cynical ploy to keep you going back.

A woman joined our, quite advanced French group, because she was doing really well on Duolingo. She was t even close to our standard.

One, I can, yes. The other, I am learning. Use DL just to supplement by learning with grammar/vocab reinforcement.

I’m almost on a 2000 day streak in French - I may give up when I reach 2000 days as I find I am hurriedly doing it at almost midnight and not really learning anything as I keep repeating lessons to just get my daily streak ticked off

And saying good morning to a dragon

That must be extremely useful for a weekend break.

For listening practise, have a look at Dreaming Spanish. Has videos right from the basics to advanced, the idea is you listen first, then when your brain and ears are tuned in, speaking follows on pretty easily. There's a paid membership with extra content but there's plenty available free

I'm at over 3,200 days now :-)

I must say that the degree of enshitification over that period has been considerable!

Obviously I've been working on different languages throughout that period! And with different goals in mind for different languages, including for example as simple as understanding shop signs and simple interactions in the area I live which has many many Turkish speakers.
Finished quite a lot of the courses, though others I stopped part way through because they were so abysmal. Hungarian was one of those... which I had actually taken at university, and did it just to refresh my memory, but really it was just unusable.. Maybe they've changed it since (?)

There is, in my experience, one language that, if you learn it through Duolingo, you will be able to use with moderate competence. That is Esperanto. Which is of course an artificial language created over 100 years ago specifically to be easy to learn and use. But it does have the advantage that there are people all over the world who still learn and use it (and who also tend to be extremely encouraging and supportive as very very few people have it as a mother tongue - though they do exist- so they know what it's like to be a learner and not fluent).
I went through the whole course about two years back, went - fairly gingerly - to an Esperanto meet up in my home town, was actually able to communicate (!) and progressed from there in leaps and bounds. New people often come along to the meet ups who have also learnt ONLY via Duolingo, and yet we can communicate. Quite a lot say that it's the first time they've actually spoken it with others, and yet they can hold pretty sophisticated conversations.

Concentrating on Greek right now. Which is actually not bad. Despite them doing things like introducing 25 brand new verbs in a single lesson. But I'm really only getting a benefit in conjunction with LanguageTransfer, which is free and I can't praise enough, together with "Do You Speak Greek" on YouTube, and a grammar textbook.

Whenever I'm on a thread about Duolingo, I like to remind people that the grammar explanations they used to have as part of each course have been saved onto Duome, and that there is still a discussion forum there to ask about grammar, incomprehensible sentences, etc.

Long ago turned off/ignored all "reminders", animations, friend requests, sound effects, etc, on Duolingo, though I do appreciate that Duolingo offers different experiences to everyone, so if that is not an option open to you, my commiserations.

To actually answer your AIBU: you should use it to serve you. If it helps you, use it, if it doesn't, don't.

And all the rest, streaks, friends etc is merely guff to try to addict you. F... them :-)

Wow that's so helpful about Duome. I've no idea why they removed the grammar explanations, that made literally no sense.
Duo used to be such a helpful tool when it had explanations and an area to chat to others learning the same language.

I can remember counting down the days to the release of the Turkish course, first it was hatching, then it was in beta. Now it's been changed so much.