DUOLINGO - It is all about "balance!⚖️"
Is it difficult to break free of Duolingo’s gamification elements towards making the best of the App when learning a foreign language? Here's a perspective...
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For those still unaware, DUOLINGO is touted as the de-facto Apps out there to learn a foreign language. When it offers a few subscriptions (SUPER DUOLINGO PLAN, DUOLINGO MAX) exposing premium features like say, “Video Call” where a user could have a conversation directly with one of those characters the App has designed to make learning more interactive & fun aimed at replicating the real-life conversation one would have, most of its features are available for FREE (for now).
⚠️Fair Warning: The addiction levels could indeed be HIGHER than any other game out there. FYI, when I was glued to the App not too long ago, my 4-year-old daughter would come by & name all the characters as they appear. Hey look, “That’s SARI! There’s JUNIOR! There’s OSCAR!”. Yes, it is addictive, although the element of addiction could largely depend on the user’s age group.
Now, to the real thing…
Over the recent past, you may have witnessed a few viral posts on LinkedIn critiquing DUOLINGO because the incumbent wasn’t feeling comfortable with framing basic sentences when conversing with people in a foreign language that they happened to be learning over the App.
Hmm…, alright. And yes, very possible.
But, let’s start with the App itself.
DUOLINGO uses Gamification across various stages of the workflow. In fact, one may not be wrong at all if they tell you that the whole App experience is akin to playing some sort of a game literally split over many small & big milestones. (taking the user away from the learning experience).
Here is a list of some common gamification strategies employed by the App:
The moment of truth:
Personally, I have a 222-day streak on the same platform myself. And with some prior intro to Deutsch (German) over the years & I was able to do all of these:
talk F2F with native Germans
participate with my German friends in conversations on social platforms
comprehend vast majority of elementary to intermediate German content online
understand German news (with a bit of difficulty, I must confess)
read books / magazines printed in German
Did I do something different⁉️
You, betcha! I think the key lies in these 3 things:
1️⃣ the PRACTICE
It’s not enough to go over a lesson on an App & forget it there, more so when the whole learning experience is ruled by gamification, optimized towards scoring rather than being focused on teaching. It’s crucial to find ways to put that into practice, use it over those real life conversations. I started talking in German to my friends & family sometimes to almost an annoying level for some of them.
2️⃣ the INTENSITY
When learning languages, most stop at translating basic sentences from a language they know (/ are pretty comfortable with) to the one they are learning. It’s important to keep stepping up from that point onwards. I went from basic conversations with people to translating in my head [in meinem kopf] whatever I read online & I do read quite a lot. I also used to connect with my friends who are native Germans to help me with my learning. In that way I knew multiple ways to say the same thing & my sentence structure (BELIEVE ME, that’s quite a BIG DEAL in GERMAN especially if you have a mastery over English) improved gradually over time.
3️⃣ the CADENCE
The last thing is the periodic intervals between your practice. Yes, the App would obviously say you are online everyday [as confirmed by the n-DAY STREAKS / DAU]. But the one question that ought to matter is, is there really a point spending JUST 5 - 10 minutes everyday on an App when your goal is to learn a whole language? Needless to say, the shorter that timeframe is between your practice sessions, the better it’d turn out to be, as that would then keep you up in the running & open up a window for quick retrospection - gauge your strengths, weaknesses so as to work on them continuously towards improving thereof.
4️⃣ BONUS: Don’t FALL for Gamification
One of the most important things I did was understand how the App was using Gamification to keep users glued. May not have taken time for someone who is an experienced product manager, one’d think. But I must confess, I did fall prey to the weekly leader boards earlier on, leading me to spend an exorbitant amount of time on the App, especially over the weekends. I snapped out of it pretty quick & restricted my usage to the learning bit, focusing on new words learnt on the day, trying to find ways to employ them in real life conversations. Blurting out sentences in German over conversations with friends & then translating them back to English with of course a pardon (Entschuldigen sie meine fixierung auf Deutsch - [Excuse my fixation on German]), appended in there.
It’s tricky how the concepts around LEARNING & PRACTICE are intertwined. Learning could mean someone spending time on something towards understanding it first-up. But practice is more nuanced. It involves continuously spending time on something so as to keep going over it periodically, refreshing what was learnt whilst also learning new stuff, upgrading & getting better in small iterations.
Also, learning is overrated when PRACTICE is totally underrated. It’s not learning that takes one to the top, it is actually the practice. And you would need a hell of a lot of practice if you want to stay on top.
It is all about the balance. Apps have been there for an eternity & each of them is tuned towards optimizing for some (x) that they think would augur well for themselves. You can’t blame them for it, for a good reason that you would get nothing if you blame them. So… defining your boundaries, attaching an objective around the time you allot & being absolutely clear over your purpose & the value you intend to derive out of it ought to be paramount here. It is that simple & there’s no way you could really go wrong with it.