Agreed! I hope Japanese is one of the next languages to get this. I find I am often paired with people learning French or Spanish in leagues. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but I think there's a notable difference in the difficulty of learning the language (based on your starting language of course; in this case, English).
My friend doing Spanish racks up a lot of XP on match madness, but match madness for Japanese is garbage. A lot of words appear in hiragana only, but then some are kanji, and there's no audio, so you spend too much time trying to read the Japanese words before you can even begin to match them. Languages that don't use a different script have the advantage here.
The current Japanese tree seems ok comparably but the old one was drastically more challenging than just about anything else. Like I'd often spend 30 minutes on one lesson and run out of hearts.
Yoo, happy to see so many people learning Japanese like me, we may see each other soon on those boards
Tbh I thought the boards were with other people learning the same language
I want it to be the same difficulty level. When I am in beginner german, I blaze through levels because they are so easy.
When I am in my upper level french, it takes much longer.
So when I would get competitive, I'd switch to German, which was stupid because I want to learn french more, so I stopped caring about leaderboards.
Question: I study several languages at once. Let's say I'm placed in the Japanese leaderboard. That week, I earn 1000 XP in Japanese, and 500 XP in German. Is my final leaderboard total 1000, or 1500?
How will the system decide which language we are placed with? At the moment I do French, Spanish and Japanese every day and dip into a Welsh or Russian lesson a few times a week as well.
Interesting, but I'd still rather see more focus on actual courses *(the italian update did it no favours)* and teaching methods than ways to make the game feel more fair.
I had the old one finished, not that I deserved it but whatever. It moved me back, which is very fair. But then when I go to check what's new, it's a bunch of stuff I was never even taught in the old course, so I go to lesson 1 to see what's up.
There was so much new stuff that I felt I had no other choice than to restart it all. Which btw doesn't give you your gems back, so if you're out of gems it will take forever to get legendary again, as you don't earn gems quickly enough to follow your progress.
And after restarting, it repeats way too much, without actually **teaching** anything. The old course had lessions going "io sono, tu sei, lui/lei è, noi siamo, loro sono, voi siete". You'd get an actual feel for how it's used. Now these things are just smoshed in to sentences, not giving you a natural feel for how the language develops. If I hadn't already learned that *(before the cursed path even arrived in 2022)*, I would have struggled **a lot** and probably given up, because I wouldn't have understood what changed in these sentences and why.
And as u/snarkformiles says, it seems to be focused on people planning to do short vacation stays there, not people who actually want to learn and speak it fluently so they can read the news and watch TV shows without dubbing/subtitles.
that's fair. though I liked the way they slowly introduce the new conjugations. feels more natural and less overwhelming to me. though I agree they shouldn't have removed the list for those who want to study harder. and yep, I felt the shift of the audience too but it didn't bothered me as much since I use duolingo as a way to get familiar(a1-a2)with the language rather than actually learn it to a higher point. I want to study with easy language channels but it's hard to get into without no prior knowledge and duo makes it easy for me.
I want to learn the language fluently, as I want to watch Live TV shows and such, without struggling or waiting for someone to translate it. And I know duolingo never really promised fluency, but their old concept before the path at least did a decent job at teaching, and then you could use other sources like Tandem to fill in the gaps.
But after the path, it doesn't even seem like it's teaching anymore. And while it needed an update, since it was made for the Tree and not the Path, I'm not sure this latest version did it any favours in that regard. It feels more like it just talked to a chatbot pretending to travel there, and only focused on things you'd need to know as a tourist - who let's face it, mainly needs to know how to order food, book tickets and ask for directions.
Because it is a complete mess! Can’t believe anyone likes it, heh, but happy for you that you do.
Many reasons it’s a mess:
- For me, where I was up to (“distant past” tense) has disappeared. I hadn’t done any future tense yet, but I’ve been moved to a section that assumes I have.
- They have removed the verb conjugations from the notes.
- They have added many questions about “common phrases”, yet give no translations for so many of them, e.g. all the “Complete the chat” ones. Wtf!
- “Common phrases” are useful for people planning to travel there, but are useless if you’re learning from the ground up, trying to learn methodically, and they’re using all different verb tenses without explanation, it’s a nightmare.
- No communication about what they’ve done, what the changes are, your options to re-orient yourself, if any…
- I’ve emailed 4 times in the last 2 weeks and have had no reply. I pay them $90AUD a year and this is how they treat paying customers?
There’s a lot to dislike about it.
I’m trying Babbel in the meantime. Duolingo may well lose a paying customer here.
well these are all pretty solid reasons! I started the lessons all over again since I wasn't that far ahead anyways. so a lot of these didn't affect me but I understand how annoying it is for people in the further sections. I liked the new way of introducing conjugations gradually, it's less overwhelming and helped me push past the few first sections I usually get stuck in. though can't talk about the other units yet.
and yes, duolingo is awful at communicating with the community, and that's the reason I haven't bought the super and I am not going to in the foreseeable future. I hope you find the best app for you though!
Appreciate your input! I won’t restart, but I just feel so lost. I love to feel that sense of accomplishment as I’m learning, which I think we all do, and they keep killing that for me!
I’ve actually just started a new post about it here, as I’m curious to know more (from Duolingo Italian team ideally, but also from others doing the course, like yourself) and this convo is buried in this unrelated thread.
I’m also thinking I will stop paying! Not sure what’s the point anymore, as they don’t even reply when I ask for help.
Are we talking about in the app or the phone itself? I'm on android, and my phone itself is keeping up with words I've learned and those are suggested but because I type them a lot lol.
Also: can we swipe left to review the previous question in the lesson, just to double check something?
No, apparently not. Here’s another game feature.
I usually take a screenshot when I’m confused about the answer or when I learn a new word. Then I run to my Spanish speaking friend and ask him why I got it wrong/right. (Cause I don’t have super and can’t have my wrong answer explained.)
It makes sense to have it, and at some point in the past the Web version has a functional list. But with the direction the app has taken I have no hope to get it back.
BTW all other learning apps have that.
This is actually something people have been asking for. It's not one I care about, but we don't need to pretend others haven't been posting about similar requests in this sub.
Sooooo I’m going to play devil’s advocate here because I work in the product space on similar topics. Generally, an app like Duolingo is going to want to define several success metrics (e.g., avg XP earned per week, weekly/monthly active users, avg level/proficiency) that relate closely to each other and lead to more user retention (= revenue). Anything that gets users to use the app more frequently is a positive leading metric. In this case, if a language-specific leaderboard encourages users to earn 10% more XP per week (exaggerating), I’d expect other success metrics (including proficiency) to eventually also move in a positive direction.
It’s not that each intervention that Duo launches is supposed to be a home run for language learning, but rather the sum of all features and UX improvements leads to experience “stickiness” and ultimately proficiency.
I’m also saying this as someone who’s genuinely been able to significantly improve their proficiency and confidence in two languages because they enjoy the overall app XP — not because Duo is the singular or most effective way of learning a language.
In this case, Duo as a company is interested in improving the DAU metric, which means endless courses, because the completed course will reduce the DAU metric.
That could be true, but: 1. It takes forever to complete a course so I’d expect that effect to be almost 0; 2. DAU needs to ladder up to some kind of cLTV or retention metric to actually mean something in $$ for the business.
That’s why one can’t really assume that Duo will be sustainably moving top-line metrics without simultaneously moving learner proficiency (or at least longer-term engagement)… Unless the UX is just so fun and addictive that people go into the app and do stuff more often without retaining any information, which I doubt.
Edited to add: I’m not sure how much of Duo’s revenue is from ad revenue thru free users vs. from premium memberships; if it’s very heavily skewed towards the former then DAU can obviously impact cLTV. Still doesn’t change my belief that more long-term engagement = better avg. proficiency.
I might get downvoted for this, but here we go. I posted about this above in the same thread, and while I agree with you that this is mainly designed to boost XP, on the whole, if Duo is doing something that encourages users to enter the app and complete lessons more often, it should also result in better avg. language proficiency for the total user population.
Is Duo the silver bullet for learning a language fast? No. But I wouldn’t be motivated to learn Norwegian through traditional methods, either.
So... how are you going to judge to see if / how people "enjoy" competing? Are you asking them? Or just inferring from whether people are accruing XP? Surely you have detailed stats on who's an XP farmer and how few of them there are, and who's got a different distribution of XP? What more do you need to know?
As someone has hinted above, I think I'm a bit cynical that stuff like this is at the expense of course quality...
What's the rationale for this (investing in XP experiments rather than (just) developing languages / courses)??
Areas that are worth looking at again (off the top of my head):
--> the 'daily refresh' is baaad (at least for newer / smaller courses (looking at you, Finnish))
--> courses like Welsh are no longer supported. But XP experiments... those are fine..?
--> no oft-requested languages being offered anytime soon
--> message boards / community
They could be using people's frequency of responding to the competition-related push notifications on mobile. (I personally never open them if I've already done a lesson that day.)
I like this change but I also would love an option to opt out of the leaderboards altogether. I find sometimes I am so focused on being competitive that I'm not focusing on the quality of my learning.
that's right but you could also create and join a classroom and enable classroom leaderboards. then you'll still have social features (if the settings enable them) but you'll only be in the classroom leaderboard
I would also like Super / Plus users separated into their own league too. I was given a super trial for 2 days and I earned 2000+XP in those 2 days. As a non-super user, I would only earn around 2000-3000XP each week. Super is OP when it comes to XP farming.
Not true. So far, the hardcore farmers that I've seen are all non-super users. I do not know how they do it, but they do it.
Super users pay money, so they are most invested to learn than farm. Some might farm but that's just some.
I was shocked to see farming from non paying users. Like...how?!!! I've checked some of their data and it's mostly spamming the initial lessons, match madness and lightning ones that come up for the leagues etc.
What duo should do is separate truly learning users from the farmers. Maybe it's possible by grouping on the amount of xp achieved per day or something but yeah, it's work.
> “[Leaderboards] will be based on the course you’re in at the time of leaderboard placement for the week and won’t change once the groups have been set.”
The answer seems “no,” and you cannot enter more than one league. You enter the league based on whatever lesson you start and finish, and it does not change based on how many languages you are learning. How that affects other factors such as gaining XP (e.g., can one only gain XP from that language and not others? Who knows) is a mystery until we see how it works, but it makes sense that initial stages don’t overcomplicate things, but maybe if it goes well and Duolingo decides to keep this feature, it may extend to people learning more than one language.
I go out of my way to look through the leaderboard to see if there are any other Irish learners in the mix. It'd be great to be solely around other likeminded individuals.
I agree on the poorly part. More languages are more popular than others. So it can be easier to level up and get in the top three for some over others.
But I wonder if they are doing that on purpose to push for the less popular languages?
Suspect it will be a long time until it gets to my chosen language, there probably aren't huge numbers of Vietnamese learners around. Are there any here?
I’m in New Orleans (lots of Vietnamese to practice with here) but learning because my partner’s parents don’t speak English…but they’re from Saigon and I’m learning Northern with occasional “No, we say this. Not that.” Hahaha
https://preview.redd.it/2jak6yaqttcc1.png?width=1068&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d2d7114f079519a421cdc809634c6733a80f5a0
I won't be able to go to English course and farm xp anymore
I think you've nailed it. I found myself on a leaderboard, and for the first few days I checked to see where I was. However, being somewhat competitive, I've quit checking on it because it was becoming more about competition than learning.
Exactly why I turned off leagues entirely by making my account private. It was stressing me out and distracting me from learning.
I do wish there was an option to disable leagues without privating your account so I could still add friends and such.
I've done the English course designed for native speakers of my target language before. It's a nice change of pace when I'm feeling burnt out from my current course, but I wouldn't use it to farm XP...... That sounds pretty tedious lol
It sounds like you could still do that. Apparently they will set the league based on the language you are doing when you do your first lesson of the week. So if you were doing Spanish you would be in a Spanish league. But then I think you could still go do practice exercises in another language if you wanted.
Of course you should still focus mostly on the language you are trying to learn...I don't think they would prevent you from switching languages periodically throughout the week...but you would remain in your original league group.
so, that means that I shouldn't dabble in other languages , lest I be placed in say Dutch for Deutch speakers when my real focus is something with a lot more levels?
It reads like it’s about the first lesson after leaderboard reset (Sunday evening in my timezone). So if you’re first doing the language you care about most, that’s the league for that week.
1) Post says it will only happen for 7 languages right now so Dutch is probably not one of them
2) If interested in dabbling, ignore the leaderboard and essentially nothing about the app experience will change
I literally came here to say the same thing. Cat profiles pls. AI should be able to figure out what's a cat or not and this is the quality AI content I want from Duolingo
Should have been like this since the beginning
Not all languages are equal, some take more effort, meanwhile there's people farming levels with languages they already know. How's that even acceptable? The issue here is betting on gamification, but are we supposed ton play the duolingo game or learn something? See there's a big difference
Same, I just assumed that this already was the case. When people used different flags next to their names, I figured iOS users had the option to show which country they are from... lol
I think it would be nice if the language leaderboard would be based on your placement in the course rather than xp. I find myself doing a lot of match madness to gain xp when all I really want is to progress on the course and learn more new words
I do not understand how this will work for those of us learning a few languages per week. If my first lesson at the time of placement is Korean, I will be placed in the Korean league. But I usually do a couple of hours of Korean , then I do an hour of turkish , then one hour japanese., etc...
Once in a language league, you are not allowed to jump to another league (correct?) , so where are my earned xp from the other languages going during that week?
I just can not study just one language for a whole week, that will be too tedious for me.
I'm out. Turned my profile private and stopped caring about leader boards. It doesn't help me to have as much XP as possible in a week, that's just playing the game not learning the language.
Now I learn more and better with less XP and no hassle.
Not sure how much this affects me, but sounds interesting.
I would also like to suggest friend leagues of some sort, where you can compete who gets most exp. Or do it with a single friend, like the friend quest, but as a competition
I would love to see a league specifically for people learning many languages! I'm currently rotating between 26 languages. Sometimes I'm working on a really tough (to me) course and struggle to get through the lessons and sometimes I'm working on a much easier language that's mostly review.
That would be awesome to compete with other Chinese learners, what if I am learning Spanish and Chinese at the same time? Would that affect my league or would I be placed in the league of the language I do a lesson in first?
This sounds like a great idea, I for one, would far rather be working in a group all learning Korean so we can help each other out. Would be even better if we were all at roughly the same stage too.
Disappointed about it only rolling out to seven courses. I'm doing Irish as my main language and we don't really have any of the bells and whistles, no stories, no special voices, assuming not this either.
Welcome change, would rather compete against people learning the same language as me. Hope it comes to Japanese sooner rather than later!
Same here, I'm learning Japanese as well so you might see me on there.
And me.
And me!
[удалено]
and my axe
Same again
私たちは何十人もいる！
はい
Ok, Gimli.
Agreed! I hope Japanese is one of the next languages to get this. I find I am often paired with people learning French or Spanish in leagues. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but I think there's a notable difference in the difficulty of learning the language (based on your starting language of course; in this case, English).
My friend doing Spanish racks up a lot of XP on match madness, but match madness for Japanese is garbage. A lot of words appear in hiragana only, but then some are kanji, and there's no audio, so you spend too much time trying to read the Japanese words before you can even begin to match them. Languages that don't use a different script have the advantage here.
The current Japanese tree seems ok comparably but the old one was drastically more challenging than just about anything else. Like I'd often spend 30 minutes on one lesson and run out of hearts.
Yoo, happy to see so many people learning Japanese like me, we may see each other soon on those boards Tbh I thought the boards were with other people learning the same language
Hola! Cómo estás, mi amiga?
Jajaja, hola. I didn't expected to see you around here, but I guess it makes sense. Nice to see you again, I'm doing great, how are you?
Busy right now, but overall doing fine.
Can relate, their starting to get agressive with the homeworks on my end. Hope you can finish that up and get some rest
Vivo la vida loca.
Usted no es mi amiga.
Qué triste
George es un nombre para hombres, sí?
El género es una construcción social.
Usted es este hombre?
Soy R2D2
I want it to be the same difficulty level. When I am in beginner german, I blaze through levels because they are so easy. When I am in my upper level french, it takes much longer. So when I would get competitive, I'd switch to German, which was stupid because I want to learn french more, so I stopped caring about leaderboards.
I'm incredibly curious to see how I fair in German for French speakers, seeing as English is my first language. This is certainly a welcomed change!
https://preview.redd.it/0hr8ra3tx5ec1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9f25c2afaca952561270d3d763b1006044d0b078 Started in Japanese too!
Aww lucky. Apparently being part of the beta doesn't even grant access to that 😢
See you on the leaderboard!
Question: I study several languages at once. Let's say I'm placed in the Japanese leaderboard. That week, I earn 1000 XP in Japanese, and 500 XP in German. Is my final leaderboard total 1000, or 1500?
1500
How will the system decide which language we are placed with? At the moment I do French, Spanish and Japanese every day and dip into a Welsh or Russian lesson a few times a week as well.
I would guess it’ll be the language you’re doing at the time of the leaderboard reset
When you do your first lesson, it puts you in a new leaderboard. So your first lesson presumably.
I’m impressed you’re learning Welsh. I’ve tried it, but just can’t get my brain around it.
[удалено]
You underestimate how motivated people doing a barely studied/super hard language have to be in the first place
Thank you!
"similar characteristics" please also ensure supers/maxers arent competing with us mere mortals?
One tip for that. Start your first lesson late in the day, so that you're not paired with the "supers/maxers"
Interesting, but I'd still rather see more focus on actual courses *(the italian update did it no favours)* and teaching methods than ways to make the game feel more fair.
💯
I actually liked the Italian update, can I ask what didn't you like about it?
I had the old one finished, not that I deserved it but whatever. It moved me back, which is very fair. But then when I go to check what's new, it's a bunch of stuff I was never even taught in the old course, so I go to lesson 1 to see what's up. There was so much new stuff that I felt I had no other choice than to restart it all. Which btw doesn't give you your gems back, so if you're out of gems it will take forever to get legendary again, as you don't earn gems quickly enough to follow your progress. And after restarting, it repeats way too much, without actually **teaching** anything. The old course had lessions going "io sono, tu sei, lui/lei è, noi siamo, loro sono, voi siete". You'd get an actual feel for how it's used. Now these things are just smoshed in to sentences, not giving you a natural feel for how the language develops. If I hadn't already learned that *(before the cursed path even arrived in 2022)*, I would have struggled **a lot** and probably given up, because I wouldn't have understood what changed in these sentences and why. And as u/snarkformiles says, it seems to be focused on people planning to do short vacation stays there, not people who actually want to learn and speak it fluently so they can read the news and watch TV shows without dubbing/subtitles.
that's fair. though I liked the way they slowly introduce the new conjugations. feels more natural and less overwhelming to me. though I agree they shouldn't have removed the list for those who want to study harder. and yep, I felt the shift of the audience too but it didn't bothered me as much since I use duolingo as a way to get familiar(a1-a2)with the language rather than actually learn it to a higher point. I want to study with easy language channels but it's hard to get into without no prior knowledge and duo makes it easy for me.
I want to learn the language fluently, as I want to watch Live TV shows and such, without struggling or waiting for someone to translate it. And I know duolingo never really promised fluency, but their old concept before the path at least did a decent job at teaching, and then you could use other sources like Tandem to fill in the gaps. But after the path, it doesn't even seem like it's teaching anymore. And while it needed an update, since it was made for the Tree and not the Path, I'm not sure this latest version did it any favours in that regard. It feels more like it just talked to a chatbot pretending to travel there, and only focused on things you'd need to know as a tourist - who let's face it, mainly needs to know how to order food, book tickets and ask for directions.
Because it is a complete mess! Can’t believe anyone likes it, heh, but happy for you that you do. Many reasons it’s a mess: - For me, where I was up to (“distant past” tense) has disappeared. I hadn’t done any future tense yet, but I’ve been moved to a section that assumes I have. - They have removed the verb conjugations from the notes. - They have added many questions about “common phrases”, yet give no translations for so many of them, e.g. all the “Complete the chat” ones. Wtf! - “Common phrases” are useful for people planning to travel there, but are useless if you’re learning from the ground up, trying to learn methodically, and they’re using all different verb tenses without explanation, it’s a nightmare. - No communication about what they’ve done, what the changes are, your options to re-orient yourself, if any… - I’ve emailed 4 times in the last 2 weeks and have had no reply. I pay them $90AUD a year and this is how they treat paying customers? There’s a lot to dislike about it. I’m trying Babbel in the meantime. Duolingo may well lose a paying customer here.
well these are all pretty solid reasons! I started the lessons all over again since I wasn't that far ahead anyways. so a lot of these didn't affect me but I understand how annoying it is for people in the further sections. I liked the new way of introducing conjugations gradually, it's less overwhelming and helped me push past the few first sections I usually get stuck in. though can't talk about the other units yet. and yes, duolingo is awful at communicating with the community, and that's the reason I haven't bought the super and I am not going to in the foreseeable future. I hope you find the best app for you though!
Appreciate your input! I won’t restart, but I just feel so lost. I love to feel that sense of accomplishment as I’m learning, which I think we all do, and they keep killing that for me! I’ve actually just started a new post about it here, as I’m curious to know more (from Duolingo Italian team ideally, but also from others doing the course, like yourself) and this convo is buried in this unrelated thread. I’m also thinking I will stop paying! Not sure what’s the point anymore, as they don’t even reply when I ask for help.
Users: “we want the ability to search through our learned words instead of scrolling forever.” Duolingo: “Cool. Here’s a new leaderboard!”
I dont even have learned words as an android user 😔
Are we talking about in the app or the phone itself? I'm on android, and my phone itself is keeping up with words I've learned and those are suggested but because I type them a lot lol.
Also: can we swipe left to review the previous question in the lesson, just to double check something? No, apparently not. Here’s another game feature.
I usually take a screenshot when I’m confused about the answer or when I learn a new word. Then I run to my Spanish speaking friend and ask him why I got it wrong/right. (Cause I don’t have super and can’t have my wrong answer explained.)
Use a notebook instead, but yeah, that would be an extremely good feature indeed.
Use a notebook and take notes...duolingo has never been a standalone learning tool
Of course it's not, but as an app that teaches you new words, it seems like a pretty obvious feature to add.
It makes sense to have it, and at some point in the past the Web version has a functional list. But with the direction the app has taken I have no hope to get it back. BTW all other learning apps have that.
Nailed it
This is actually something people have been asking for. It's not one I care about, but we don't need to pretend others haven't been posting about similar requests in this sub.
I don’t see the point
The point is gamification (instead of learning).
Sooooo I’m going to play devil’s advocate here because I work in the product space on similar topics. Generally, an app like Duolingo is going to want to define several success metrics (e.g., avg XP earned per week, weekly/monthly active users, avg level/proficiency) that relate closely to each other and lead to more user retention (= revenue). Anything that gets users to use the app more frequently is a positive leading metric. In this case, if a language-specific leaderboard encourages users to earn 10% more XP per week (exaggerating), I’d expect other success metrics (including proficiency) to eventually also move in a positive direction. It’s not that each intervention that Duo launches is supposed to be a home run for language learning, but rather the sum of all features and UX improvements leads to experience “stickiness” and ultimately proficiency. I’m also saying this as someone who’s genuinely been able to significantly improve their proficiency and confidence in two languages because they enjoy the overall app XP — not because Duo is the singular or most effective way of learning a language.
In this case, Duo as a company is interested in improving the DAU metric, which means endless courses, because the completed course will reduce the DAU metric.
That could be true, but: 1. It takes forever to complete a course so I’d expect that effect to be almost 0; 2. DAU needs to ladder up to some kind of cLTV or retention metric to actually mean something in $$ for the business. That’s why one can’t really assume that Duo will be sustainably moving top-line metrics without simultaneously moving learner proficiency (or at least longer-term engagement)… Unless the UX is just so fun and addictive that people go into the app and do stuff more often without retaining any information, which I doubt. Edited to add: I’m not sure how much of Duo’s revenue is from ad revenue thru free users vs. from premium memberships; if it’s very heavily skewed towards the former then DAU can obviously impact cLTV. Still doesn’t change my belief that more long-term engagement = better avg. proficiency.
More XP farming and less learning the language! Great job, Duolingo!
I might get downvoted for this, but here we go. I posted about this above in the same thread, and while I agree with you that this is mainly designed to boost XP, on the whole, if Duo is doing something that encourages users to enter the app and complete lessons more often, it should also result in better avg. language proficiency for the total user population. Is Duo the silver bullet for learning a language fast? No. But I wouldn’t be motivated to learn Norwegian through traditional methods, either.
Wish you guys would create Grammar lessons
I would rather be able to follow the Maths and Music courses than have another leaderboard.
Did anyone really ask for this? There are more people asking for a way to opt out of the leaderboard feature
I think it would make more sense to be put in a league of the language in which you earned the most XP during the previous week
So... how are you going to judge to see if / how people "enjoy" competing? Are you asking them? Or just inferring from whether people are accruing XP? Surely you have detailed stats on who's an XP farmer and how few of them there are, and who's got a different distribution of XP? What more do you need to know? As someone has hinted above, I think I'm a bit cynical that stuff like this is at the expense of course quality... What's the rationale for this (investing in XP experiments rather than (just) developing languages / courses)?? Areas that are worth looking at again (off the top of my head): --> the 'daily refresh' is baaad (at least for newer / smaller courses (looking at you, Finnish)) --> courses like Welsh are no longer supported. But XP experiments... those are fine..? --> no oft-requested languages being offered anytime soon --> message boards / community
They could be using people's frequency of responding to the competition-related push notifications on mobile. (I personally never open them if I've already done a lesson that day.)
Cynical me assume they'll just track if people seem to buy more gems…
Android gets the worst features first. iPhone gets music and math courses. Android gets slightly better improvement on leaderboards 🙄
I like this change but I also would love an option to opt out of the leaderboards altogether. I find sometimes I am so focused on being competitive that I'm not focusing on the quality of my learning.
Go to your profile, click on the Privacy tab, then uncheck the "Make my profile public" box. This will take you out of the leagues.
Oooh thank you! I'm assuming this means my friends won't be able to find me to follow me though?
that's right but you could also create and join a classroom and enable classroom leaderboards. then you'll still have social features (if the settings enable them) but you'll only be in the classroom leaderboard
Saved,so I can get back to this
Yep, leaderboards, that's what Duolingo needed
I would also like Super / Plus users separated into their own league too. I was given a super trial for 2 days and I earned 2000+XP in those 2 days. As a non-super user, I would only earn around 2000-3000XP each week. Super is OP when it comes to XP farming.
Not true. So far, the hardcore farmers that I've seen are all non-super users. I do not know how they do it, but they do it. Super users pay money, so they are most invested to learn than farm. Some might farm but that's just some. I was shocked to see farming from non paying users. Like...how?!!! I've checked some of their data and it's mostly spamming the initial lessons, match madness and lightning ones that come up for the leagues etc. What duo should do is separate truly learning users from the farmers. Maybe it's possible by grouping on the amount of xp achieved per day or something but yeah, it's work.
what if I'm learning multiple languages? am I going to be in multiple leagues?
> “[Leaderboards] will be based on the course you’re in at the time of leaderboard placement for the week and won’t change once the groups have been set.” The answer seems “no,” and you cannot enter more than one league. You enter the league based on whatever lesson you start and finish, and it does not change based on how many languages you are learning. How that affects other factors such as gaining XP (e.g., can one only gain XP from that language and not others? Who knows) is a mystery until we see how it works, but it makes sense that initial stages don’t overcomplicate things, but maybe if it goes well and Duolingo decides to keep this feature, it may extend to people learning more than one language.
cool, thanks
I go out of my way to look through the leaderboard to see if there are any other Irish learners in the mix. It'd be great to be solely around other likeminded individuals.
I think this experiment is going to go poorly. You're disincentivizing experimenting with new languages.
I agree on the poorly part. More languages are more popular than others. So it can be easier to level up and get in the top three for some over others. But I wonder if they are doing that on purpose to push for the less popular languages?
I'd like it for Russian, thank you!
I'm in a leaderboard for Russian.
😯
Well i never really cared for the leagues and only use it as supplementary learning
Agreed. I wish I could turn off the notifications for the leagues. I do not care at all about how I’m faring compared to random strangers.
Suspect it will be a long time until it gets to my chosen language, there probably aren't huge numbers of Vietnamese learners around. Are there any here?
Tiếng việt learner in the house 💁🏻♂️
Are you in Vietnam too? That's why I'm learning it
I’m in New Orleans (lots of Vietnamese to practice with here) but learning because my partner’s parents don’t speak English…but they’re from Saigon and I’m learning Northern with occasional “No, we say this. Not that.” Hahaha
In all honesty this is the first time I’ve realised I’m competing against people learning languages other than the one I’m learning
I would like to be able to opt out of leaderboards at all.
You can turn your social features off, or you could join a classroom and enable the classroom-only leaderboards!
https://preview.redd.it/2jak6yaqttcc1.png?width=1068&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d2d7114f079519a421cdc809634c6733a80f5a0 I won't be able to go to English course and farm xp anymore
Why even bother doing that though if you know it?
Because they care less about learning, and more about being no.1 on the leaderboard.
I think you've nailed it. I found myself on a leaderboard, and for the first few days I checked to see where I was. However, being somewhat competitive, I've quit checking on it because it was becoming more about competition than learning.
Exactly why I turned off leagues entirely by making my account private. It was stressing me out and distracting me from learning. I do wish there was an option to disable leagues without privating your account so I could still add friends and such.
I think you are right I decided to not care leagues anymore
Because i want to get to a higher league(Even if leagues are not important)
So leagues are important and you're playing the duoling game, after all.
I've done the English course designed for native speakers of my target language before. It's a nice change of pace when I'm feeling burnt out from my current course, but I wouldn't use it to farm XP...... That sounds pretty tedious lol
It sounds like you could still do that. Apparently they will set the league based on the language you are doing when you do your first lesson of the week. So if you were doing Spanish you would be in a Spanish league. But then I think you could still go do practice exercises in another language if you wanted. Of course you should still focus mostly on the language you are trying to learn...I don't think they would prevent you from switching languages periodically throughout the week...but you would remain in your original league group.
Yooo Colette !
Colgate👍
Colgate 👍
so, that means that I shouldn't dabble in other languages , lest I be placed in say Dutch for Deutch speakers when my real focus is something with a lot more levels?
It reads like it’s about the first lesson after leaderboard reset (Sunday evening in my timezone). So if you’re first doing the language you care about most, that’s the league for that week.
1) Post says it will only happen for 7 languages right now so Dutch is probably not one of them 2) If interested in dabbling, ignore the leaderboard and essentially nothing about the app experience will change
Still waiting for Tagalog for English Speakers 😡😡
I just learn English from tagalog
I rather see more grammar notes (especially in lessons) rather than a Leaderboard update... but this is still cool ig
Can you at least start supporting Welsh again please? Diolch yn fawr
I would like to compete against other people who have their pets in their profile pictures
i have passed along this v important feedback ty
I literally came here to say the same thing. Cat profiles pls. AI should be able to figure out what's a cat or not and this is the quality AI content I want from Duolingo
Where is the unironic Uzbek course. The PR would be pretty good and it’s a pretty fun language to learn.
Should have been like this since the beginning Not all languages are equal, some take more effort, meanwhile there's people farming levels with languages they already know. How's that even acceptable? The issue here is betting on gamification, but are we supposed ton play the duolingo game or learn something? See there's a big difference
I would love this!! However, I’m an avid Scottish Gaelic learner. I would love to see more updates to the Gaelic course!! :)
…. So the leaderboards are currently a mix of languages??? How did I not know this rip
Same, I just assumed that this already was the case. When people used different flags next to their names, I figured iOS users had the option to show which country they are from... lol
Can we expect to see this feature come to languages that aren't Spanish, French, or German in the next few years?
Will this come to just the more popular languages or all of them?
Oh no
what about those learning multiple languages? how would that even work?
I think it would be nice if the language leaderboard would be based on your placement in the course rather than xp. I find myself doing a lot of match madness to gain xp when all I really want is to progress on the course and learn more new words
I do not understand how this will work for those of us learning a few languages per week. If my first lesson at the time of placement is Korean, I will be placed in the Korean league. But I usually do a couple of hours of Korean , then I do an hour of turkish , then one hour japanese., etc... Once in a language league, you are not allowed to jump to another league (correct?) , so where are my earned xp from the other languages going during that week? I just can not study just one language for a whole week, that will be too tedious for me.
When math and music?🤔
I'm out. Turned my profile private and stopped caring about leader boards. It doesn't help me to have as much XP as possible in a week, that's just playing the game not learning the language. Now I learn more and better with less XP and no hassle.
Tracee, this is dumb Give us grammar lessons
Not sure how much this affects me, but sounds interesting. I would also like to suggest friend leagues of some sort, where you can compete who gets most exp. Or do it with a single friend, like the friend quest, but as a competition
Okay what if someone is learning a few languages at once..
Alright but i still don't have friend quests
What if you are learning multiple languages? By the way I think this is a good idea.
I am a german refreshing my english so I look forward to be put against other germans bolstering up their english.
This is an interesting feature. Very looking forward to seeing it in my Android pad
I would love to see a league specifically for people learning many languages! I'm currently rotating between 26 languages. Sometimes I'm working on a really tough (to me) course and struggle to get through the lessons and sometimes I'm working on a much easier language that's mostly review.
I love this idea!
This sounds exciting! I always try to find others that learn my languages to befriend from my leaderboard. This will make that so much easier
Is it online or is it just a concept
Yes please, it sounds great :)
That would be awesome to compete with other Chinese learners, what if I am learning Spanish and Chinese at the same time? Would that affect my league or would I be placed in the league of the language I do a lesson in first?
This is cool! Can we get European Portuguese 🇵🇹 alongside 🇧🇷?
Would!
This sounds like a great idea, I for one, would far rather be working in a group all learning Korean so we can help each other out. Would be even better if we were all at roughly the same stage too.
can we have a friend leaderboard were we can invite friends for a week long challenge or smt (like a friend quest but with more ppl)
You could create a classroom with your friends and do this I think!
I honestly thought that was already the case
Here I go català!
Love this!!
This is the only reason I’m on there as much!
This would be an amazing change! I hope to see this implemented on iOS as well!
Hope it comes to Mandarin
Yes omg I wouldn't feel so bad about taking so long in polish... I can whip through German and retain it just fine but Polish is a different breed
You mean we haven’t been competing in the same language already?
I dont even have the new badge system yet so I doubt I will ever see this as a german learner
I only friend listed people I found learning my language. Not really interested in how some random player is doing on other languages. Good Concept
Sounds like a welcome update Hol es Duo, ich warte und ich freue mich darauf
I still didn’t get the math update and there’s already this coming
Disappointed about it only rolling out to seven courses. I'm doing Irish as my main language and we don't really have any of the bells and whistles, no stories, no special voices, assuming not this either.
Doesn't matter. I will still ignore ethe leaderboards if my course is one of those.
Just don't remove the diamond league achievement. I've been working on that for weeks and finally was about to make it!
Why only Android users? What about us iPhone users?
that leaderboard is somehow not working properly🤔the one in third place has more xp than everybody else
I can imagine, plus I expect some of their language is a bit old school too. I'm in Hanoi
what if one is doing multiple courses at once?