3 ms·

Wow, that's impressive. Non-avid reader before to almost a year of avid reading, then all lost because of a hook metric. This stuff is a real deal.

adastra22 4y ago
It can be demotivating. I use other language learning apps (not Duolingo, which is garbage), and I try to maintain a streak not because I care about it, but because I want the daily habit. Nevertheless, the number goes up… and help but get attached to it. I mean I don’t care about the number per se, but it was a reminder of my good study habit, which as someone with ADHD is an accomplishment itself. Then, like GP, I just had a particularly busy day and didn’t get to my reviews until after midnight. BAM- a triple digit streak gone. After that, every time I logged in I got a reminder of my FAILURE (real or imagined) to keep up with my studies. I didn’t like being reminded of that, so I didn’t login. I ended up taking a year-long sabbatical from language learning instead. Developers, don’t put streak counters in these sorts of apps.
- dom111 4y ago
  Out of interest, what other language learning apps are you using? I'm going to Portugal nest year and learning Portuguese through Duolingo at the moment. It's ok and some stuff is sticking, but I can't help but feel some of the why is missing and I'm just learning how to interpret their questions, rather than learning the language (I guess that's your problem with it?)
  - adastra22 4y ago
    The ones I’m using now are specific to Japanese (WaniKani and Bunpro), but if you want to level up from Duolingo I would recommend Memrise for a similar bit more effective experience. They have a Portuguese course. If I were in your shoes, I would do Memrise to fill the little moments throughout the day. But the focus of my studies would be (1) a local community college Portuguese course; (2) the FSI Basic Portuguese course (or another drill heavy course from the 60’s, maybe linguaphone?) for self-study drill practice, 30min a day; and (3) a good sentence deck in Anki, minimum 10 new cards per day.
    - jabits 4y ago
      Idk, I started out using both Memrise and Duolingo in August 2018 for French, used both for a couple of years but now use Duolingo only for French and Italian the last couple of years. I think both are good but prefer Duolingo. But to get conversational I believe you would have to go to more personal methods…
      - adastra22 4y ago
        There’s no app that can build up conversational fluency. You can’t master a thing without actually doing the thing. SRS apps can be good for building up a vocabulary base. Self-study drill based programs like the old FSI series can be great for internalizing grammar rules so that you don’t have to consciously think about it. That does give you a great foundation for developing linguistic fluency though, should you relocate to the country or start immersing yourself in native media.
  - FalconSensei 4y ago
    For German I'm using Speakly. What I like about it is that it goes in order of the most used words, and all phrases are actually realistic and something you would use. There's a streak, but it's so easy to ignore, specially since the app focus on 'learned words', something that duolingo had many years ago. The study is also organized in just chunks of 100. So instead, I focus on how many words I want to learn on the next week/month, or when I'm getting to the next group.
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  > Developers, don’t put streak counters in these sorts of apps. This definitely deserves a deep discussion. Get to the bottom: is it good, bad, is there a better way to implement? I can speculate that, for many people, just getting a triple-digit streak is a big win. Even if they drop for a year, or even forever, after losing it. They wouldn't have accomplished the feat without the streak metric. I don't have any data. As I said, it's speculative, but perhaps reasonably possible to be the case?
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Idk. Data point of me: I’ve kept up with other review apps that don’t have the streak counter longer. But obviously there’s a lot of confounding factors.
- Superfud 4y ago
  Readwise allows you to “recover” your streak if you miss a day for whatever reason. I’m sure it is for the exact reason you cite here.

adastra22 4y ago

It can be demotivating. I use other language learning apps (not Duolingo, which is garbage), and I try to maintain a streak not because I care about it, but because I want the daily habit. Nevertheless, the number goes up… and help but get attached to it. I mean I don’t care about the number per se, but it was a reminder of my good study habit, which as someone with ADHD is an accomplishment itself. Then, like GP, I just had a particularly busy day and didn’t get to my reviews until after midnight. BAM- a triple digit streak gone. After that, every time I logged in I got a reminder of my FAILURE (real or imagined) to keep up with my studies. I didn’t like being reminded of that, so I didn’t login. I ended up taking a year-long sabbatical from language learning instead. Developers, don’t put streak counters in these sorts of apps.

dom111 4y ago
Out of interest, what other language learning apps are you using? I'm going to Portugal nest year and learning Portuguese through Duolingo at the moment. It's ok and some stuff is sticking, but I can't help but feel some of the why is missing and I'm just learning how to interpret their questions, rather than learning the language (I guess that's your problem with it?)
- adastra22 4y ago
  The ones I’m using now are specific to Japanese (WaniKani and Bunpro), but if you want to level up from Duolingo I would recommend Memrise for a similar bit more effective experience. They have a Portuguese course. If I were in your shoes, I would do Memrise to fill the little moments throughout the day. But the focus of my studies would be (1) a local community college Portuguese course; (2) the FSI Basic Portuguese course (or another drill heavy course from the 60’s, maybe linguaphone?) for self-study drill practice, 30min a day; and (3) a good sentence deck in Anki, minimum 10 new cards per day.
  - jabits 4y ago
    Idk, I started out using both Memrise and Duolingo in August 2018 for French, used both for a couple of years but now use Duolingo only for French and Italian the last couple of years. I think both are good but prefer Duolingo. But to get conversational I believe you would have to go to more personal methods…
    - adastra22 4y ago
      There’s no app that can build up conversational fluency. You can’t master a thing without actually doing the thing. SRS apps can be good for building up a vocabulary base. Self-study drill based programs like the old FSI series can be great for internalizing grammar rules so that you don’t have to consciously think about it. That does give you a great foundation for developing linguistic fluency though, should you relocate to the country or start immersing yourself in native media.
- FalconSensei 4y ago
  For German I'm using Speakly. What I like about it is that it goes in order of the most used words, and all phrases are actually realistic and something you would use. There's a streak, but it's so easy to ignore, specially since the app focus on 'learned words', something that duolingo had many years ago. The study is also organized in just chunks of 100. So instead, I focus on how many words I want to learn on the next week/month, or when I'm getting to the next group.
rmbyrro 4y ago
> Developers, don’t put streak counters in these sorts of apps. This definitely deserves a deep discussion. Get to the bottom: is it good, bad, is there a better way to implement? I can speculate that, for many people, just getting a triple-digit streak is a big win. Even if they drop for a year, or even forever, after losing it. They wouldn't have accomplished the feat without the streak metric. I don't have any data. As I said, it's speculative, but perhaps reasonably possible to be the case?
- adastra22 4y ago
  Idk. Data point of me: I’ve kept up with other review apps that don’t have the streak counter longer. But obviously there’s a lot of confounding factors.
Superfud 4y ago
Readwise allows you to “recover” your streak if you miss a day for whatever reason. I’m sure it is for the exact reason you cite here.