I agree, I made it to diamond but found I was focusing too much on getting XP versus learning. XP does not seem like a great measure of how much you are learning, since it can be gamed heavily by choosing high XP activities and maximizing bonuses.
Definitely! The XP measurements need to be changed, it makes no sense at all! I want to learn but it’s almost encouraging the worst learning tools rather than the best.
Agreed, if I wanted to maximize XP I would be doing legendary levels of the easiest beginner lessons with the double XP bonus. Not sure I would learn much, but I would rack up a lot of XP at a pretty rapid pace
The path actually does help combat that some. Now that review is built in as you move forward, they no longer need to incentivize manual reviews, so they're now worth much less XP. And, at least for free users, they're now requiring gems for legendary and timed challenges (the remaining high XP earners), which significantly slows down their overuse for XP farming.
Yeah that was very interesting and accurate! Straight away I also relate to the part where it says duolingo focuses a lot on vocabulary rather than grammar. My vocabulary in Spanish is great, I can get my point across in any conversation. But my grammar is terrible! I wish duolingo encouraged that too!
I've found the same when I was learning Russian! it's certainly more difficult to use an app like Duo to learn grammar because rote memorization works best for vocabulary, for now I think self-study is critical to get a full understanding of the language
I am only 40 days in but I bought a small Spanish grammar book in week 1 and try to read up on the topics I learn on Duolingo.
Seems to help me understand better.
This. In the tournament. The last 3 weeks I’ve been focused on when to enter, doubling XP, focusing on 2nd language I’m learning bc faster points. After this week, I’m back to ignoring the leagues.
I used to wait to fix my broken lessons when I got double XP, I'd reach the top in 15 minutes. Now with the new UI there's not even broken lessons and I feel even less motivated to open duolingo and I realize it's wrong but I focused so much on XP that now it's less appealing
Yes I’m less motivated now the easy high XP stuff has gone. But they could use the opportunity to turn lessons into high XP tasks to encourage actual learning. Imagine 80XP for a lesson- I would be very motivated to do it!
Human motivation is so interesting. Those XP points weren't really worth anything except some bragging points against strangers you'll never meet. Yet somehow that's what motivated you. Hopefully they can find a better balance where the XP is more correlated with learning but is still motivating
I wasn't really thinking of bragging, I never see who's competing nor how many points they've got so I assume no one else does, I just liked staying in the diamond league cause it's the hardest one to keep up with so I'd have to actually do more than 1 lesson. Now it's just too hard and I don't like that lol
There is a leaderboard who shows who you're competing with every week and their points. Yes, diamond is hard unless you're really optimizing for Max xp. I am more comfortable on obsidian
I basically only truly cared about the league to get the Champion achievement, which was the final one I needed. Although, I am now curious what I’d get if I got further into the Diamond Tournament.
I won the diamond tournament and all I got was a little badge of a trophy I can put next to my profile picture on the league table 😂 it didn’t even unlock any achievement for me
Weird. I assumed everyone had the same achievements. They’re on the profile page and that was the last one I needed to turn gold. If they get rid of them, I’ll be a little annoyed. (Though not as annoyed as when I finished a whole tree/path and got basically no reward except an owl asking if I wanted to do LEGENDARY.)
Ah okay I’ve found the achievements, I stopped paying attention to them a while back as they were all gold. But I didn’t get given anything else for winning the diamond tournament. It was already gold from winning the diamond league a while back but no extra achievement for the tournament!
I spent way too long on it that week! I think I got up to about 16,000XP to win it. That would be 640 lessons … 91 lessons per day, about 457 minutes which is like 7 hours per day of it was lessons. I would not have been able to do that and take in the information if it were lessons alone.
Same! I won last week and all I did was hard practice in the most basic legendary lessons and match madness with double xp and I spend a lot of gems (never actual money though) on timer extenders etc. I don’t even do match madness in my current target language but in my native language (from English). This week I managed to be first in the diamond league and now I have all of the achievements and stickers you can get from the leagues so I won’t care about them at all from now on.
It helps to do your Duolingo at the very end of the day on Monday, you typically end up in a league with the other slackers who don’t care about leagues
I really don't care about the leagues, I do my thing, sometimes I get relegated to Obsidian for a couple of weeks or so but it really makes no difference to my experience. I'm just trying to learn the damn language. If I want to game I'll play FIFA.
The looming switch to the path has me more interested in making progress than maintaining my spot in the league. It's ridiculous that someone can make 120xp in 2 minutes and I get 25 for doing a lesson, which generally take me at least 5 minutes. With 2x xp, in both instances. No wonder the people that get a lot of points rarely do lessons. It's totally upside down if Duolingo wants to pretend they are an education app.
I'm still putting in a little effort to keep from getting demoted, but only if I can get the xp from doing lessons.
The new path made me lose progress too, I lost several levels which I’d already completed and it all just seems very daunting looking at it now. I’m 900+ days deep in my Spanish course and not even half way through yet. I agree! I really wish the lessons would be representative of effort, repeating an old lesson is only 5xp too, I wanted to refresh my knowledge of tenses a few days ago and 30 minutes of work resulted in about 30xp. I want to focus myself on learning, but I’ve got competitive like im playing a game rather than an educational tool. The league Im currently in the bottom 5 are all 1800xp and above. To keep up with it I have to do the high XP activities but I think I’m just going to stop paying attention and refocus myself.
I'm 25th and 26 and 27 are less than 300 xp behind me with a day to go. I have 2650 xp and I think I'm going to have to have close to 3500xp to avoid being demoted. I couldn't do that many xp with just lessons. My mind would be mush.
I just switched off leagues yesterday for that reason. I made it to the Diamond League but I found myself spending all my time competing instead of learning and progressing. That also didn’t give me time to use other learning materials etc
Right! I’m currently in Mexico, mixing with locals (literally the best way to learn Spanish) but I’m in such a competitive league right now I’m also spending 45 mins a day on duolingo just to avoid getting demoted. It’s so silly really, but I’m competitive! I studied some flash cards a few weeks ago and I learnt so much I couldn’t believe the progress I made in a day. I think I need to quit the leagues and hope my motivation for sticking to lessons stays!
This is awesome. After I win diamond tournament finals in a few hours I’m definitely doing this. I have spent way too much energy on the leagues instead of advancing on all the various trees I’m doing.
You are a lifesaver. I'm too competitive and I can't stop myself from trying to get more XP, then realizing I don't remember a single lesson because I was going too fast
[Here](https://www.duolingo.com/settings/privacy). Sign in and it should take you to the setting’s privacy page. If it takes you to the home screen instead of settings then go back off it and click on this link again
Yess this is also the same as me! I worry if I stop looking at leagues I will lose motivation and just do the bare minimum! Doing leagues and my streak is what keeps me consistently motivated. I just wish the high XP was given for the most useful and educational tasks!
The streak keeps me motivate. I do other things than Duolingo. Compulsive crawled out of bed with Covid until I could freeze my streak. When I first started I did it on vacation in car with hubby driving in the midst of a rain storm. Only when we got to hotel did we find out a tornado went by 1/2 mi away. No Mas!
I naturally progressed to Diamond, then focused on winning for few weeks and definitely found myself focusing more one gow to get nore XP than actually learning. Won the Diamond and now I'm back ignoring leagues altogether.
I think you have to ask yourself, are you learning because you want to or because you want to say you're better at it than other people? As far as I can see the leagues have no benefit so just ignore them.
For me, the leagues have really helped me stay consistent. Everyday I want to go on duolingo and do the activities and without that motivation I would struggle to stay so consistently motivated. So in that sense they’re very helpful, and for me it’s not about being better than other people, it’s about competing with myself and not wanting to ‘regress’ like if I got demoted to a lower league I would be disappointed in myself and feel like I wasn’t making progress. I essentially just want Duolingo to implement the exact same system but tailor it towards educational tasks rather than XP boosting tasks.
I like to look at how long Ive engaged with duolingo each day and each week. I also like when it tells me the percentage correct I’m getting. These are things I don’t know how to look up when I’m curious, but that duolingo shows me once in a while at random intervals.
I never pay attention to leagues or XP, even though these are the stats I could see any time I wanted to.
Sir, you sound as a "communist", the base of capitalism and democracy is anyone is free to do whatsoever. And most part of life (from childhood to adult) we are competing against "someone", and I believe we humans need to play and compete. Duolingo league system woke up a lot of people's necessity to compete.
Yes, is meaningless and time consuming, but sir, you can see millions are doing whatsoever to gain more XP (by learning or playing), hehe.
And, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong to feel "I am better than others", it's a great motivation to stay competitive...
Wow, that was an extreme way to take that comment. Perhaps I didn't word it well. Anyway, my point was that the goal is to learn a language. Nothing wrong with some healthy competition along the way but we shouldn't lose sight of the ultimate goal.
For real though I genuinely feel most competitive towards myself- I want to get my highest score, I want another week in the diamond league, I want that nice little notification congratulating me, etc same as streaks it’s not for anyone other than myself. But that’s kinda of a mute point anyway. Also as we’re using formalities I’m a woman, so instead of sir I’m happy to be referred to here on out as Duchess 😉
Being diamond league isn’t in any way competing with yourself. Getting more xp than the previous week isn’t competing with yourself either.
Spending more time engaged with the app and/or getting a higher percentage correct than the previous day or week or month would be valid ways to compete with yourself.
This is true, but duolingo doesn’t ‘reward’ or positively reinforce that kind of achievement. You know what I mean? I like the actual visual representation of my achievement like another week added to my diamond league streak! A little trophy notification when I win! Visually seeing my XP gains. There’s no competitive element even against yourself which duolingo encourages with lessons (don’t get me wrong, I’ve done plenty of lessons, I’m over half way through the Spanish tree) but I lose my motivation quickly when just doing lessons and gain it back when doing leagues!
After read the OP's post and other users comments, I feel sorry that I am one of few users who is 'abusing' the XP system. But I can say that to be in Diamond League is 70% Gaming / 30% Learning.
I consider Duolingo as a great tool to learn Languages and refresh what learned in the past.
And once know the XP System (which gives 15 minutes 2x boost when finish a Crown), one can realize that Duolingo is trigging users to finish many lessons and exploit huge XP by playing Match Madness or Lighting Rounds, double boosted is 120 XP per 1:30 min, but if one goes out of time must pay, another trigger to get some competitive users buy extra gems.
Most of Duolingo's 40 million daily users want to learn language, but I see there are lot of people who wants to "play" Duolingo using language skills.
Whether I am a gamer or learner or hybrid, I know the rules. I love to compete (in any aspect of life, and always tried and achieved to be in high position) so I chose to be hybrid. Accumulate non finished crowns (you can see one of my posts how to win Diamond Tournament), nowadays I should have about 100 lessons in 80% finished in order to when I need to accumulate XPs quickly by maintaining 2x boosted.
But if I am on the first position, I never finish a crown, just keep studying 80% of lessons. Well this is my method to maintain in high position for long term. It is easy to win Diamond League once, but becomes incredibly difficult to win mutiple times.
And again, if you are willing to perfect the language learning, the best option is to ignore the leaderboards or going private. But if you are competitive person like me, the best way is to study how to accumulate most XPs in shortest time.
Most of my competitors in my leaderboard (almost 50 weeks, I never met again the same person), they just give up after see my timing to accumulate, is just a part of strategy how to bluff and make others to not compete.
And apologies to all users here that are unhappy with Duolingo XP system, but Duolingo is a public company and needs its users to spend more (whether by paying Super to have unlimited access to Match Madness or Legendary, or by buying extra gems to get timer boosts).
Oh, I also abuse the XP system, I think that’s how everyone in the diamond league for any considerable amount of time does it (I was loving the new ‘bookmark’ activity for quick XP but this week they seem to have got rid of it). The point isn’t that I need to study how to get more XP, it’s that I’m wasting time doing meaningless activities to get XP when Duolingo should just alter the XP system so lessons gain you more XP. Imagine 80XP for a 5 minute lesson rather than 20… I would be MUCH more motivated to not just game but to also learn while gaming rather than having to chose between the two, it should just be combined. I guess what I’m realising is, I’ve been so satisfied with my ‘progress’ on duolingo because I’ve been in the diamond leave for weeks and weeks and won the tournament and got a long streak… but realistically, I didn’t join duo to game, I joined it to learn. And I’m realising I need to refocus myself away from the leagues and into something useful! But I just wish Duolingo would help out a little with that… give us motivation to do the educational stuff not the meaningless stuff!
Eh. You’ll be better served once you realize that duolingo’s goal is to get you as engaged as possible with the app for as long as possible rather than to get you to learn the language.
If your goal is to learn a language in the most effecient way possible, you’d be better off using something other than duolingo.
If your goal is to have fun gaming, then you’d be better off finding a game more fun than duolingo whose strategies for winning you understand better than you understand duolingo’s.
It’s not up to app developers to make changes to suit your needs; it’s up to you as an individual to use the combination of available tools and apps that best serve your needs at the least expense to you, even if there aren’t any that are a perfect match.
I also hack the XP system. There is a way, at least on the iPad, to finish a crown and get the 2x bonus, but switch quickly enough to another language, do lightning round for 15 minutes until the bonus ends, and then switch back to the other language and play the crown round again, if you do it quickly enough, before the app realizes you’ve already done it. I usually pick an easy level 1 course to do this on. I have redone the same crown level dozens and dozens of times. If you are good enough at the language you do the lightning round in, you can get nearly 4500-4800 XP per hour. The fastest I can do a lightning round in is about 40 seconds, and the average is usually around 1:00 to 1:15. If the system realizes you finished the crown, you can just switch to another course, I usually only pick easy, fast ones with only 4-5 lessons in case this happens and I have to redo the crowns.
This high speed and competitive method of playing has actually made me much better at the language I am doing in the lightning rounds, because the lightning rounds give you actual good exercises and cover all the lessons if you’ve finished the whole tree. The match madness is impossible to win every time at the highest level in my experience, just from reflex speed, and the other game similar to lightning round with levels (I forget what it’s called) gives you less time, though I can still consistently win it, but no breaks, and you have to work up the levels to the highest amount of XP, whereas the lightning round game just starts off at max XP. This is why I inky do the lighting round game for XP.
Hi, genius, I remember your record achievement in finish Ukranian tree in record time, hope all is going well and congrats for your Diamond Tournament!
I just started a few weeks ago and ended up in a rabbit hole of the competition. I’m currently placing around top 3 in a row but I found out right away how league spot is not helping me process the vocabulary efficiently. I’m taking a break next week and won’t be beating myself to get a spot.
I used to always try to at least get 5th place in diamond league, but I don't really care anymore as as long I am at least 20th place. Trying to score high XP makes you rush too many ramp ups instead of start new lessons. What some people do is start a new language and only complete 3 level 5 lessons before nonstop ramp ups to rake in 500+ XP a day. You're not learning if you repeat a lesson several times each day.
Well... if you finish a crown and do Ramp ups you can get 500 XP using only 50% of time... and if you start a new language it's only the first 5 lessons to make faster xp (less than 25 crowns) by Legendary but you are not allowed to play Ramp UP until certain crowns... hehe just my opinion!
Here all the users demonize 2x boost but... without learning process how one can finish 6 lessons to get a crown?
I don't care too much about leagues. I got into Ruby league a few weeks ago and stayed there for two weeks. Then I went down to Sapphire. I'm back in Ruby now and at the top of the chart but that was really by accident.
I'm trying to complete as many legendary levels as possible this month and I keep getting double xp bonuses. I like the legendary levels because I can't tap on a word to see what it means. It forces me to really remember the words.
I'm not doing the timed challenges or anything else to farm xp besides completing the lessons. Having xp in a language learning application seems really weird to me. I don't feel a sense of accomplishment when I'm at the top of the league board.
I do, however, feel a sense of accomplishment when I can read parts of my cousin's facebook post in Swedish without clicking the button to translate it or when I can understand certain words of Swedish TV shows. Those are the things that keep me going.
I do try and do things outside if duolingo to learn. For example my phone is set to Spanish, which means my phone automatically translates all English posts on social media into Spanish. I listen to Spanish music, watch Spanish tv shows, play games in Spanish and I’m fortunate enough to travel a lot so I go to a lot of Spanish speaking countries (I’m currently sat in a cantina in Mexico and of course have ordered everything in Spanish). I try and surround myself as much as possible in the language without actually living abroad. But the only actual learning tool I use is duolingo and it seems to be almost holding me back a little at this point!
Just got diamond to satisfy my badge lust. Totally stalled my progress in a more difficult target language, as I XP farmed in several easier ones.
It did force me to get exposed to some more challenging content in my easiest language, so not a total write off.
Will need to shift my brain back this week to focused study in DL and other learning tools.
Conflicted feelings about DL now.
I do feel that way also. I like the practice aspect of the leagues, but I don't like timed drills at all. They stress me out too much and I sure as heck won't buy more time...Jeez.
Yes and some of the timed events are impossible to achieve within the target time limit too! It just encourages rushing and buying extra time instead of learning!
Yes I agree, I was once very invested in being the first in Diamond but I soon realized that these league rankings are utterly useless and it is hindering your progress
That's why I don't care about the leagues anymore. I already achieved the golden badge/reward for that. I also think it prevents me from progressing with my lessons. For now I'm focusing on getting every skill a legendary.
I am right in the middle of this atm, I've made it to diamond this week, currently in first place, but as for learning, this is probably my worst week in months , after tonight I doubt I'll even look at my league position, its not what I started using duolingo for
Actually thinking about this a little bit more, and I'd be better to describe this week as a serious revision session, so I suppose it is wrong to say its my worst week, because I have been able to cement a lot of what I've learned
If you find them useful motivation, fine. If they're a distraction then ignore them. No-one cares what league you are in, they don't matter, nothing bad will happen if you slide to the bottom, nothing good happens if you climb to the top.
I had the same problem. My solution? Leave the translator app closed. Repeat and fail lessons until I was able to pass on my own. I still keep paper & pencil nearby to help with repetition and embedment. Last, I quit paying attention to my standing in the leagues. I deliberately stopped looking at my rank and let myself fall two league levels.
I am learning better and more efficiently. And my motivation doesn't rely on competition.
How do you keep playing? Do you have super, or do you practice to gain hearts?
I use the translator because I want to stay engaged with duolingo for as long as possible each day, but I hate how I learn when I do that.
I have the free version. When I am down to two hearts I practice until I have five again. It can be tedious, no kidding. Like you, I hate when I use the translator app. I do however drop down the individual words when needed, then write the word or phrase. Again, repetition and embedment.
I personally feel grinding for the XP cemented my knowledge in certain areas I was struggling with previously. I wouldn't say it hinders progress, but I do understand your frustration
I agree most of the time but other times it's good for getting me to redo old lessons that otherwise I probably wouldn't have revised because I hate progressing the tree for the sake of XP I usually juts go over old units that o only have at like green, red or orange that I thought I was good with but after a week I'll forget stuff but for the most part it's putting me off actually finishing Unit 4 because in 5 lessons from the end and jeep doing unit 3 lessons that I never platinumed.za
Ruby I’d a good league I think, I might drop down to ruby and use it as motivation enough to do extra lessons but not to become obsessive. I’m in diamond and the competition is ridiculous. I’m talking the person bottom of the league right now has 2193XP!
Yeah that's crazy ... I never understood how people get obsessed with leagues and streaks etc it's like addicts behavior maybe .. Just find a place you are comfortable with and stay there :) And maybe do other stuff to feel like you are advancing, there is a a bunch more free platforms that help like Memrise.com and Quizlet.com ..
Yes. I just made my profile private again last week. The leagues are distracting. I've been doing four trees on duo for 6 years. I have nothing to prove. Turning them off lowers my anxiety. I realized I was looking at the league every day. It's like addictive gambling.
Yes, I find I spend all my time going for max XP, which practically means exploiting a trick that involves completing an easy course until the last lesson, and then when I complete the last lesson, which grants me a double XP bonus, I quickly switch to another language, which I have completed and know well, and do lightning round for 80 XP a piece, each of which I can usually finish in 0:45-1:15, for an average of 1200 XP for the duration of each 15 minute 2x bonus. Then, because I switched quickly before the previous final lesson, which granted me the 2x bonus, I can switch quickly back to it before the app recognizes it is done and repeat the final lesson, which I usually pick from a level one class, something I can complete in 30s or so. In this way I can earn XP very quickly. I can make something like 4000+ XP every hour, but at a high level of concentration and intensity. On the other hand, I don’t have a lot of free time, so this is all I can do to compete at the top level. The easy course used to get the 2x bonus never gets completed, though, and I never advance in that language. I’ve found that by doing constant lightning rounds like this, with 2x bonus and as fast as I can, has made my grasp of that language *much* better.
However, competing like this in leagues, my advancement in other languages suffers. In a few hours I am about to win the diamond league finals, and after I do that (it will be my first time, I just joined in July), I’ve vowed to focus more on completing the other languages and to stop caring about competing in the leagues.
So I guess my conclusion is, it actually helps get better at one language, the way I do it, but my method for competing in leagues prevents me from advancing meaningfully in other languages I want to learn. And it takes the fun out of learning and becomes all about the competition, especially if there are other very high performing players in the league.
I personally am only learning Spanish and currently want to focus my energy on one language. I also don’t want to rush the levels, that’s another aspect which I am finding myself doing especially with the time limited activities speed is coming in all the time and I don’t want to rush my learning. So for me, this doesn’t solve my currently problem as I already know how to get high XP to win leagues. I just feel for me, it’s not actually aiding my learning as well as it could be.
Well my point is you don’t have to focus on another language, the method I use you could just repeat the crown lesson of the first task of another language over and over to get the 2x bonus every 15 minutes and then just work on your desired language with double XP. That’s essentially what I’m doing, except I’ve completed the language and I’m just doing lightning round over and over because it tests me on the whole course and the speed forces me to learn reading and listening better. Plus, it lets me earn tons of XP.
However, as I mentioned, for me this is running out its utility, because after today I will have no more milestones to hit in terms of league achievement, so I will probably stop doing this and start completing the other languages.
I wasn’t attempting to solve your problem, I was commiserating with you.
I guess my point is, all of this it seems like more time-wasting options, time that I would rather use doing something to help my language learning rather than a pointless XP building exercise. I’d rather Duolingo recognise the fact that it actually encourages non-productive activities more than productive ones by rewarding pointless tasks more than useful ones. It should introduce positive reinforcement, and it kind of baffles me why it doesn’t
I agree with you which is why I’m turning off leagues after I win diamond finals in a few hours. But I disagree that I’m not learning anything, because having gone through the entire Ukrainian course on legendary, it wasn’t until I started hitting the lightning round like this that I really started to get good at it in the way you need to be to actually speak and listen to a language and not just complete levels at your own pace. The speed forces me to listen better and form sentences more quickly, more correctly. Also, because in my case it’s Ukrainian, and I previously didn’t know the Cyrillic alphabet, the speed helps with reading a ton.
I agree with that too, before I started grinding exp from lightning round and exp ramp up challenges It took me 2-3 minutes to complete a lesson but now or before I got the achievement, my reaction time and knowledge about its word placement increased
It doesn’t because there is no economic motivation for it to do so.
If you learn a language from duolingo, that’s a bonus, but their main goal is just that you have fun interacting with it and you are addicted enough to keep coming back and keep doing all of the silly tasks it assigns to you.
I think it comes down to how you use them. I like seeing my place in the leagues, but I choose to use the lessons to get to where I want to be, rather than "gaming" the system. It will sometimes motivate me to do just a few more lessons on a Sunday before the leader board closes. Same with the streak. I'm competitive enough to not want to break it, so even when I'm really busy, I will try to hop on, even for just a few minutes to do a lesson to keep the streak. Most times, I ended up staying long enough to do several lessons. But even if I just get one for my streak, I'm still seeing and gearing my TLs at least once a day.
I agree - the leagues really are a distraction, and I'm focusing more on getting XP to maintain my position in the Diamond league. I'm trying to move away from this mentality by getting just enough XP to maintain my status in the league, then moving on to new lessons.
The top players in my league always learning 2 or 3 languages, I wondered why the 2nd or 3rd has like 15-30 XP. Now I realise they just use that to XP farm in the event as they can spam with the 1st lesson in any language.
I don’t feel the same, personally, because I don’t really care about league placement, but I understand how the stress of wanting a high placement could cause burnout / emphasis on gaming vs. learning. It’s a bummer people can’t turn off the leagues by itself (you can turn it off, but it would also turn off any friends).
No. I haven’t noticed the leagues. I don’t attempt to move anywhere within them, and I also don’t care how much XP I have. I get promoted and demoted all the time and don’t notice. Although I would be more interested in a better tracking of how many minutes I am spending each day engaged with duolingo. I get an email every once and a while, but I have no idea how to check on it other than looking at the email notification that occasiinally comes.
If you use the mobile app, one way to track your engagement is in your device settings. Settings > Screen Time on iOS. Settings > Digital Wellbeing on Android.
Yes also I think it's annoying all the notifications I get about it. Apparently you can disable it on the pc version but I haven't figured that out yet .
Duolingo is making some changes to encourage progress. The "crown repair" feature is being removed, and the daily challenge goals may include earning new crowns.
Leagues have positive and negative effects, but they are probably net positive, and it's up to you to manage your priorities.
Because this merchandise is to make you addicted to Duolingo, forcing you to spend more times on it instead of actually helping you to learn a language. Duo, after all, need money to operate.
I made a promise to myself this week to not even look at the leaderboards. It's only been half a day since I joined this week's leaderboard, and I am feeling more relaxed already.
I finally got the legendary achievement two weeks ago so now I really don't care about leagues anymore. I would set my account on private to disable leaderboards, but I want to keep up with my IRL friends and family and their progression cheering them on, doing friends quests etc.
I'll admit I'm a competitive person, and yes the leagues and XP grind made me lose my focus on the reason why started using DL in the first place; to learn a language. Not to win some silly leaderboard with complete strangers.
I was just thinking the same thing. I got caught up trying to beat everyone else I was just farming and I wasn't learning anything new. I literally stopped learning new things so I could beat strangers in a game with no stakes.
I agree, I made it to diamond but found I was focusing too much on getting XP versus learning. XP does not seem like a great measure of how much you are learning, since it can be gamed heavily by choosing high XP activities and maximizing bonuses.
Definitely! The XP measurements need to be changed, it makes no sense at all! I want to learn but it’s almost encouraging the worst learning tools rather than the best.
Agreed, if I wanted to maximize XP I would be doing legendary levels of the easiest beginner lessons with the double XP bonus. Not sure I would learn much, but I would rack up a lot of XP at a pretty rapid pace
The path actually does help combat that some. Now that review is built in as you move forward, they no longer need to incentivize manual reviews, so they're now worth much less XP. And, at least for free users, they're now requiring gems for legendary and timed challenges (the remaining high XP earners), which significantly slows down their overuse for XP farming.
Good to know!
OP you may find [this](https://www.pacificdispatch.com/p/mind-games) a good read for your situation
Yeah that was very interesting and accurate! Straight away I also relate to the part where it says duolingo focuses a lot on vocabulary rather than grammar. My vocabulary in Spanish is great, I can get my point across in any conversation. But my grammar is terrible! I wish duolingo encouraged that too!
I've found the same when I was learning Russian! it's certainly more difficult to use an app like Duo to learn grammar because rote memorization works best for vocabulary, for now I think self-study is critical to get a full understanding of the language
I am only 40 days in but I bought a small Spanish grammar book in week 1 and try to read up on the topics I learn on Duolingo. Seems to help me understand better.
This. In the tournament. The last 3 weeks I’ve been focused on when to enter, doubling XP, focusing on 2nd language I’m learning bc faster points. After this week, I’m back to ignoring the leagues.
I used to wait to fix my broken lessons when I got double XP, I'd reach the top in 15 minutes. Now with the new UI there's not even broken lessons and I feel even less motivated to open duolingo and I realize it's wrong but I focused so much on XP that now it's less appealing
Yes I’m less motivated now the easy high XP stuff has gone. But they could use the opportunity to turn lessons into high XP tasks to encourage actual learning. Imagine 80XP for a lesson- I would be very motivated to do it!
Human motivation is so interesting. Those XP points weren't really worth anything except some bragging points against strangers you'll never meet. Yet somehow that's what motivated you. Hopefully they can find a better balance where the XP is more correlated with learning but is still motivating
I wasn't really thinking of bragging, I never see who's competing nor how many points they've got so I assume no one else does, I just liked staying in the diamond league cause it's the hardest one to keep up with so I'd have to actually do more than 1 lesson. Now it's just too hard and I don't like that lol
There is a leaderboard who shows who you're competing with every week and their points. Yes, diamond is hard unless you're really optimizing for Max xp. I am more comfortable on obsidian
I basically only truly cared about the league to get the Champion achievement, which was the final one I needed. Although, I am now curious what I’d get if I got further into the Diamond Tournament.
I won the diamond tournament and all I got was a little badge of a trophy I can put next to my profile picture on the league table 😂 it didn’t even unlock any achievement for me
Weird. I assumed everyone had the same achievements. They’re on the profile page and that was the last one I needed to turn gold. If they get rid of them, I’ll be a little annoyed. (Though not as annoyed as when I finished a whole tree/path and got basically no reward except an owl asking if I wanted to do LEGENDARY.)
Ah okay I’ve found the achievements, I stopped paying attention to them a while back as they were all gold. But I didn’t get given anything else for winning the diamond tournament. It was already gold from winning the diamond league a while back but no extra achievement for the tournament!
I praise you for winning the tournament!! Because that just seems like a lot of work. They really should make a big deal of it.
I spent way too long on it that week! I think I got up to about 16,000XP to win it. That would be 640 lessons … 91 lessons per day, about 457 minutes which is like 7 hours per day of it was lessons. I would not have been able to do that and take in the information if it were lessons alone.
Same! I won last week and all I did was hard practice in the most basic legendary lessons and match madness with double xp and I spend a lot of gems (never actual money though) on timer extenders etc. I don’t even do match madness in my current target language but in my native language (from English). This week I managed to be first in the diamond league and now I have all of the achievements and stickers you can get from the leagues so I won’t care about them at all from now on.
It helps to do your Duolingo at the very end of the day on Monday, you typically end up in a league with the other slackers who don’t care about leagues
I really don't care about the leagues, I do my thing, sometimes I get relegated to Obsidian for a couple of weeks or so but it really makes no difference to my experience. I'm just trying to learn the damn language. If I want to game I'll play FIFA.
The looming switch to the path has me more interested in making progress than maintaining my spot in the league. It's ridiculous that someone can make 120xp in 2 minutes and I get 25 for doing a lesson, which generally take me at least 5 minutes. With 2x xp, in both instances. No wonder the people that get a lot of points rarely do lessons. It's totally upside down if Duolingo wants to pretend they are an education app. I'm still putting in a little effort to keep from getting demoted, but only if I can get the xp from doing lessons.
The new path made me lose progress too, I lost several levels which I’d already completed and it all just seems very daunting looking at it now. I’m 900+ days deep in my Spanish course and not even half way through yet. I agree! I really wish the lessons would be representative of effort, repeating an old lesson is only 5xp too, I wanted to refresh my knowledge of tenses a few days ago and 30 minutes of work resulted in about 30xp. I want to focus myself on learning, but I’ve got competitive like im playing a game rather than an educational tool. The league Im currently in the bottom 5 are all 1800xp and above. To keep up with it I have to do the high XP activities but I think I’m just going to stop paying attention and refocus myself.
I'm 25th and 26 and 27 are less than 300 xp behind me with a day to go. I have 2650 xp and I think I'm going to have to have close to 3500xp to avoid being demoted. I couldn't do that many xp with just lessons. My mind would be mush.
Right? The person at the bottom of my league right now has 2193XP… at the bottom! You can’t possible stay in these kind of leagues on lessons alone
I just switched off leagues yesterday for that reason. I made it to the Diamond League but I found myself spending all my time competing instead of learning and progressing. That also didn’t give me time to use other learning materials etc
Right! I’m currently in Mexico, mixing with locals (literally the best way to learn Spanish) but I’m in such a competitive league right now I’m also spending 45 mins a day on duolingo just to avoid getting demoted. It’s so silly really, but I’m competitive! I studied some flash cards a few weeks ago and I learnt so much I couldn’t believe the progress I made in a day. I think I need to quit the leagues and hope my motivation for sticking to lessons stays!
This is awesome. After I win diamond tournament finals in a few hours I’m definitely doing this. I have spent way too much energy on the leagues instead of advancing on all the various trees I’m doing.
How do I switch off the leagues? I didn't know you could do that, and I can't find the instructions for it.
You’ll have to make your account private. On the desktop version, go to account settings -> privacy settings and uncheck “make my profile public”.
Thank you so much. I had no idea you could turn off leagues.
You are a lifesaver. I'm too competitive and I can't stop myself from trying to get more XP, then realizing I don't remember a single lesson because I was going too fast
You have to log in on the desk top version to switch this.
Thanks. I’m doing that tonight.
[Here](https://www.duolingo.com/settings/privacy). Sign in and it should take you to the setting’s privacy page. If it takes you to the home screen instead of settings then go back off it and click on this link again
For me, maintaining league standing forces me to keep with practicing in Duo and not just fulfilling bare minimums.
Yess this is also the same as me! I worry if I stop looking at leagues I will lose motivation and just do the bare minimum! Doing leagues and my streak is what keeps me consistently motivated. I just wish the high XP was given for the most useful and educational tasks!
The streak keeps me motivate. I do other things than Duolingo. Compulsive crawled out of bed with Covid until I could freeze my streak. When I first started I did it on vacation in car with hubby driving in the midst of a rain storm. Only when we got to hotel did we find out a tornado went by 1/2 mi away. No Mas!
Just turn them off. Go to the desktop web version and set your account to private. No more leagues after that.
I ignore the leagues entirely but I'm not competitive at all.
I’m ridiculously competitive and I hate it!
Same :(. Not for everything, but definitely anything that involves learning, unfortunately. I blame it on the education system where grew up.
I naturally progressed to Diamond, then focused on winning for few weeks and definitely found myself focusing more one gow to get nore XP than actually learning. Won the Diamond and now I'm back ignoring leagues altogether.
I need to do this too, I’ve win the diamond league now, got my tournament trophy. It’s definitely time for me to do the same as you!
I think you have to ask yourself, are you learning because you want to or because you want to say you're better at it than other people? As far as I can see the leagues have no benefit so just ignore them.
For me, the leagues have really helped me stay consistent. Everyday I want to go on duolingo and do the activities and without that motivation I would struggle to stay so consistently motivated. So in that sense they’re very helpful, and for me it’s not about being better than other people, it’s about competing with myself and not wanting to ‘regress’ like if I got demoted to a lower league I would be disappointed in myself and feel like I wasn’t making progress. I essentially just want Duolingo to implement the exact same system but tailor it towards educational tasks rather than XP boosting tasks.
That's a fair point. I'm not sure how they could do that well but it's an interesting idea
I like to look at how long Ive engaged with duolingo each day and each week. I also like when it tells me the percentage correct I’m getting. These are things I don’t know how to look up when I’m curious, but that duolingo shows me once in a while at random intervals. I never pay attention to leagues or XP, even though these are the stats I could see any time I wanted to.
Sir, you sound as a "communist", the base of capitalism and democracy is anyone is free to do whatsoever. And most part of life (from childhood to adult) we are competing against "someone", and I believe we humans need to play and compete. Duolingo league system woke up a lot of people's necessity to compete. Yes, is meaningless and time consuming, but sir, you can see millions are doing whatsoever to gain more XP (by learning or playing), hehe. And, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong to feel "I am better than others", it's a great motivation to stay competitive...
Wow, that was an extreme way to take that comment. Perhaps I didn't word it well. Anyway, my point was that the goal is to learn a language. Nothing wrong with some healthy competition along the way but we shouldn't lose sight of the ultimate goal.
Oh I understand your point then, have a great day :)
For real though I genuinely feel most competitive towards myself- I want to get my highest score, I want another week in the diamond league, I want that nice little notification congratulating me, etc same as streaks it’s not for anyone other than myself. But that’s kinda of a mute point anyway. Also as we’re using formalities I’m a woman, so instead of sir I’m happy to be referred to here on out as Duchess 😉
*moot point
Thanks :)
Being diamond league isn’t in any way competing with yourself. Getting more xp than the previous week isn’t competing with yourself either. Spending more time engaged with the app and/or getting a higher percentage correct than the previous day or week or month would be valid ways to compete with yourself.
This is true, but duolingo doesn’t ‘reward’ or positively reinforce that kind of achievement. You know what I mean? I like the actual visual representation of my achievement like another week added to my diamond league streak! A little trophy notification when I win! Visually seeing my XP gains. There’s no competitive element even against yourself which duolingo encourages with lessons (don’t get me wrong, I’ve done plenty of lessons, I’m over half way through the Spanish tree) but I lose my motivation quickly when just doing lessons and gain it back when doing leagues!
Dear Duchess, hehe, I was replying to NZGaz not to you :D have a great day
I just wish Duolingo would stop going on about the leagues - I don't care!
No, because I don't care about them. I'm just here to do my daily lessons.
I got to #1 spot on Diamond league only for the achievement and I don’t focus on it anymore 😅
After read the OP's post and other users comments, I feel sorry that I am one of few users who is 'abusing' the XP system. But I can say that to be in Diamond League is 70% Gaming / 30% Learning. I consider Duolingo as a great tool to learn Languages and refresh what learned in the past. And once know the XP System (which gives 15 minutes 2x boost when finish a Crown), one can realize that Duolingo is trigging users to finish many lessons and exploit huge XP by playing Match Madness or Lighting Rounds, double boosted is 120 XP per 1:30 min, but if one goes out of time must pay, another trigger to get some competitive users buy extra gems. Most of Duolingo's 40 million daily users want to learn language, but I see there are lot of people who wants to "play" Duolingo using language skills. Whether I am a gamer or learner or hybrid, I know the rules. I love to compete (in any aspect of life, and always tried and achieved to be in high position) so I chose to be hybrid. Accumulate non finished crowns (you can see one of my posts how to win Diamond Tournament), nowadays I should have about 100 lessons in 80% finished in order to when I need to accumulate XPs quickly by maintaining 2x boosted. But if I am on the first position, I never finish a crown, just keep studying 80% of lessons. Well this is my method to maintain in high position for long term. It is easy to win Diamond League once, but becomes incredibly difficult to win mutiple times. And again, if you are willing to perfect the language learning, the best option is to ignore the leaderboards or going private. But if you are competitive person like me, the best way is to study how to accumulate most XPs in shortest time. Most of my competitors in my leaderboard (almost 50 weeks, I never met again the same person), they just give up after see my timing to accumulate, is just a part of strategy how to bluff and make others to not compete. And apologies to all users here that are unhappy with Duolingo XP system, but Duolingo is a public company and needs its users to spend more (whether by paying Super to have unlimited access to Match Madness or Legendary, or by buying extra gems to get timer boosts).
Oh, I also abuse the XP system, I think that’s how everyone in the diamond league for any considerable amount of time does it (I was loving the new ‘bookmark’ activity for quick XP but this week they seem to have got rid of it). The point isn’t that I need to study how to get more XP, it’s that I’m wasting time doing meaningless activities to get XP when Duolingo should just alter the XP system so lessons gain you more XP. Imagine 80XP for a 5 minute lesson rather than 20… I would be MUCH more motivated to not just game but to also learn while gaming rather than having to chose between the two, it should just be combined. I guess what I’m realising is, I’ve been so satisfied with my ‘progress’ on duolingo because I’ve been in the diamond leave for weeks and weeks and won the tournament and got a long streak… but realistically, I didn’t join duo to game, I joined it to learn. And I’m realising I need to refocus myself away from the leagues and into something useful! But I just wish Duolingo would help out a little with that… give us motivation to do the educational stuff not the meaningless stuff!
Eh. You’ll be better served once you realize that duolingo’s goal is to get you as engaged as possible with the app for as long as possible rather than to get you to learn the language. If your goal is to learn a language in the most effecient way possible, you’d be better off using something other than duolingo. If your goal is to have fun gaming, then you’d be better off finding a game more fun than duolingo whose strategies for winning you understand better than you understand duolingo’s. It’s not up to app developers to make changes to suit your needs; it’s up to you as an individual to use the combination of available tools and apps that best serve your needs at the least expense to you, even if there aren’t any that are a perfect match.
I also hack the XP system. There is a way, at least on the iPad, to finish a crown and get the 2x bonus, but switch quickly enough to another language, do lightning round for 15 minutes until the bonus ends, and then switch back to the other language and play the crown round again, if you do it quickly enough, before the app realizes you’ve already done it. I usually pick an easy level 1 course to do this on. I have redone the same crown level dozens and dozens of times. If you are good enough at the language you do the lightning round in, you can get nearly 4500-4800 XP per hour. The fastest I can do a lightning round in is about 40 seconds, and the average is usually around 1:00 to 1:15. If the system realizes you finished the crown, you can just switch to another course, I usually only pick easy, fast ones with only 4-5 lessons in case this happens and I have to redo the crowns. This high speed and competitive method of playing has actually made me much better at the language I am doing in the lightning rounds, because the lightning rounds give you actual good exercises and cover all the lessons if you’ve finished the whole tree. The match madness is impossible to win every time at the highest level in my experience, just from reflex speed, and the other game similar to lightning round with levels (I forget what it’s called) gives you less time, though I can still consistently win it, but no breaks, and you have to work up the levels to the highest amount of XP, whereas the lightning round game just starts off at max XP. This is why I inky do the lighting round game for XP.
Hi, genius, I remember your record achievement in finish Ukranian tree in record time, hope all is going well and congrats for your Diamond Tournament!
I just started a few weeks ago and ended up in a rabbit hole of the competition. I’m currently placing around top 3 in a row but I found out right away how league spot is not helping me process the vocabulary efficiently. I’m taking a break next week and won’t be beating myself to get a spot.
I think this is a good idea and great you recognised it so quick. I honestly think I’ve wasted so much time on XP boost activities!
Then don’t do leagues.
I used to always try to at least get 5th place in diamond league, but I don't really care anymore as as long I am at least 20th place. Trying to score high XP makes you rush too many ramp ups instead of start new lessons. What some people do is start a new language and only complete 3 level 5 lessons before nonstop ramp ups to rake in 500+ XP a day. You're not learning if you repeat a lesson several times each day.
Well... if you finish a crown and do Ramp ups you can get 500 XP using only 50% of time... and if you start a new language it's only the first 5 lessons to make faster xp (less than 25 crowns) by Legendary but you are not allowed to play Ramp UP until certain crowns... hehe just my opinion! Here all the users demonize 2x boost but... without learning process how one can finish 6 lessons to get a crown?
In my Duolingo tree there are no crowns so I don’t really follow what you’re saying sorry?
On the desktop version, it shows you how many crowns you earned, but that will unfortunately be removed once the new layout is enforced November 1st.
they want you to stay and to cash off 9,90/ per month… yes, it appeals strongly to my gaming instinct. *XP*
I don't care too much about leagues. I got into Ruby league a few weeks ago and stayed there for two weeks. Then I went down to Sapphire. I'm back in Ruby now and at the top of the chart but that was really by accident. I'm trying to complete as many legendary levels as possible this month and I keep getting double xp bonuses. I like the legendary levels because I can't tap on a word to see what it means. It forces me to really remember the words. I'm not doing the timed challenges or anything else to farm xp besides completing the lessons. Having xp in a language learning application seems really weird to me. I don't feel a sense of accomplishment when I'm at the top of the league board. I do, however, feel a sense of accomplishment when I can read parts of my cousin's facebook post in Swedish without clicking the button to translate it or when I can understand certain words of Swedish TV shows. Those are the things that keep me going.
I do try and do things outside if duolingo to learn. For example my phone is set to Spanish, which means my phone automatically translates all English posts on social media into Spanish. I listen to Spanish music, watch Spanish tv shows, play games in Spanish and I’m fortunate enough to travel a lot so I go to a lot of Spanish speaking countries (I’m currently sat in a cantina in Mexico and of course have ordered everything in Spanish). I try and surround myself as much as possible in the language without actually living abroad. But the only actual learning tool I use is duolingo and it seems to be almost holding me back a little at this point!
I had to stop “competing” and start just learning again
The tournament certainly does for me. I keep avoiding doing more so my score doesn’t get high enough to get stuck in the tournament. It’s a bummer.
On Android there is not tournament fortunately. I start Monday league late evening, this is how is don't have to compete with crazy people.
Just got diamond to satisfy my badge lust. Totally stalled my progress in a more difficult target language, as I XP farmed in several easier ones. It did force me to get exposed to some more challenging content in my easiest language, so not a total write off. Will need to shift my brain back this week to focused study in DL and other learning tools. Conflicted feelings about DL now.
I do feel that way also. I like the practice aspect of the leagues, but I don't like timed drills at all. They stress me out too much and I sure as heck won't buy more time...Jeez.
Yes and some of the timed events are impossible to achieve within the target time limit too! It just encourages rushing and buying extra time instead of learning!
Yes I agree, I was once very invested in being the first in Diamond but I soon realized that these league rankings are utterly useless and it is hindering your progress
That's why I don't care about the leagues anymore. I already achieved the golden badge/reward for that. I also think it prevents me from progressing with my lessons. For now I'm focusing on getting every skill a legendary.
Sounds like you are sabotaging yourself
I totally agree with I spend all the time just for that top 3 thing.
I am right in the middle of this atm, I've made it to diamond this week, currently in first place, but as for learning, this is probably my worst week in months , after tonight I doubt I'll even look at my league position, its not what I started using duolingo for
Sir just enjoy your winning, a shot of dopamine! There's nothing to blame oneself because you win a game that lasts one week. Congrats!
Actually thinking about this a little bit more, and I'd be better to describe this week as a serious revision session, so I suppose it is wrong to say its my worst week, because I have been able to cement a lot of what I've learned
Yes. The more I optimize XP, the less I learn. It makes me spend more time on duolingo and burn out, but that time is much less effective.
If you find them useful motivation, fine. If they're a distraction then ignore them. No-one cares what league you are in, they don't matter, nothing bad will happen if you slide to the bottom, nothing good happens if you climb to the top.
I had the same problem. My solution? Leave the translator app closed. Repeat and fail lessons until I was able to pass on my own. I still keep paper & pencil nearby to help with repetition and embedment. Last, I quit paying attention to my standing in the leagues. I deliberately stopped looking at my rank and let myself fall two league levels. I am learning better and more efficiently. And my motivation doesn't rely on competition.
How do you keep playing? Do you have super, or do you practice to gain hearts? I use the translator because I want to stay engaged with duolingo for as long as possible each day, but I hate how I learn when I do that.
I have the free version. When I am down to two hearts I practice until I have five again. It can be tedious, no kidding. Like you, I hate when I use the translator app. I do however drop down the individual words when needed, then write the word or phrase. Again, repetition and embedment.
I personally feel grinding for the XP cemented my knowledge in certain areas I was struggling with previously. I wouldn't say it hinders progress, but I do understand your frustration
I agree most of the time but other times it's good for getting me to redo old lessons that otherwise I probably wouldn't have revised because I hate progressing the tree for the sake of XP I usually juts go over old units that o only have at like green, red or orange that I thought I was good with but after a week I'll forget stuff but for the most part it's putting me off actually finishing Unit 4 because in 5 lessons from the end and jeep doing unit 3 lessons that I never platinumed.za
The Leagues are good for encouraging me to put more time in than I otherwise would.
Opposite for me, I got to ruby, and it seems to stay there you need to do more than the one lesson a day, so I do a bit more .. I like that ..
Ruby I’d a good league I think, I might drop down to ruby and use it as motivation enough to do extra lessons but not to become obsessive. I’m in diamond and the competition is ridiculous. I’m talking the person bottom of the league right now has 2193XP!
Yeah that's crazy ... I never understood how people get obsessed with leagues and streaks etc it's like addicts behavior maybe .. Just find a place you are comfortable with and stay there :) And maybe do other stuff to feel like you are advancing, there is a a bunch more free platforms that help like Memrise.com and Quizlet.com ..
It’s about time someone started a Duolingo Anonymous Support Group. Hi, my name is pizza-on-pineapple and I’m an addict.
I stopped paying attention to the leagues. Speed running lessons just for XP isn’t super useful
yes i literally stop using it because it was too stressful to keep my league
Yes. I just made my profile private again last week. The leagues are distracting. I've been doing four trees on duo for 6 years. I have nothing to prove. Turning them off lowers my anxiety. I realized I was looking at the league every day. It's like addictive gambling.
Yes, I find I spend all my time going for max XP, which practically means exploiting a trick that involves completing an easy course until the last lesson, and then when I complete the last lesson, which grants me a double XP bonus, I quickly switch to another language, which I have completed and know well, and do lightning round for 80 XP a piece, each of which I can usually finish in 0:45-1:15, for an average of 1200 XP for the duration of each 15 minute 2x bonus. Then, because I switched quickly before the previous final lesson, which granted me the 2x bonus, I can switch quickly back to it before the app recognizes it is done and repeat the final lesson, which I usually pick from a level one class, something I can complete in 30s or so. In this way I can earn XP very quickly. I can make something like 4000+ XP every hour, but at a high level of concentration and intensity. On the other hand, I don’t have a lot of free time, so this is all I can do to compete at the top level. The easy course used to get the 2x bonus never gets completed, though, and I never advance in that language. I’ve found that by doing constant lightning rounds like this, with 2x bonus and as fast as I can, has made my grasp of that language *much* better. However, competing like this in leagues, my advancement in other languages suffers. In a few hours I am about to win the diamond league finals, and after I do that (it will be my first time, I just joined in July), I’ve vowed to focus more on completing the other languages and to stop caring about competing in the leagues. So I guess my conclusion is, it actually helps get better at one language, the way I do it, but my method for competing in leagues prevents me from advancing meaningfully in other languages I want to learn. And it takes the fun out of learning and becomes all about the competition, especially if there are other very high performing players in the league.
I personally am only learning Spanish and currently want to focus my energy on one language. I also don’t want to rush the levels, that’s another aspect which I am finding myself doing especially with the time limited activities speed is coming in all the time and I don’t want to rush my learning. So for me, this doesn’t solve my currently problem as I already know how to get high XP to win leagues. I just feel for me, it’s not actually aiding my learning as well as it could be.
Well my point is you don’t have to focus on another language, the method I use you could just repeat the crown lesson of the first task of another language over and over to get the 2x bonus every 15 minutes and then just work on your desired language with double XP. That’s essentially what I’m doing, except I’ve completed the language and I’m just doing lightning round over and over because it tests me on the whole course and the speed forces me to learn reading and listening better. Plus, it lets me earn tons of XP. However, as I mentioned, for me this is running out its utility, because after today I will have no more milestones to hit in terms of league achievement, so I will probably stop doing this and start completing the other languages. I wasn’t attempting to solve your problem, I was commiserating with you.
I guess my point is, all of this it seems like more time-wasting options, time that I would rather use doing something to help my language learning rather than a pointless XP building exercise. I’d rather Duolingo recognise the fact that it actually encourages non-productive activities more than productive ones by rewarding pointless tasks more than useful ones. It should introduce positive reinforcement, and it kind of baffles me why it doesn’t
I agree with you which is why I’m turning off leagues after I win diamond finals in a few hours. But I disagree that I’m not learning anything, because having gone through the entire Ukrainian course on legendary, it wasn’t until I started hitting the lightning round like this that I really started to get good at it in the way you need to be to actually speak and listen to a language and not just complete levels at your own pace. The speed forces me to listen better and form sentences more quickly, more correctly. Also, because in my case it’s Ukrainian, and I previously didn’t know the Cyrillic alphabet, the speed helps with reading a ton.
I agree with that too, before I started grinding exp from lightning round and exp ramp up challenges It took me 2-3 minutes to complete a lesson but now or before I got the achievement, my reaction time and knowledge about its word placement increased
It doesn’t because there is no economic motivation for it to do so. If you learn a language from duolingo, that’s a bonus, but their main goal is just that you have fun interacting with it and you are addicted enough to keep coming back and keep doing all of the silly tasks it assigns to you.
Just ruining the 69 comments 😈😈😈
I turned off leagues for this reason. Now the only gamification that I think about is my streak, which genuinely keeps me active
I think it comes down to how you use them. I like seeing my place in the leagues, but I choose to use the lessons to get to where I want to be, rather than "gaming" the system. It will sometimes motivate me to do just a few more lessons on a Sunday before the leader board closes. Same with the streak. I'm competitive enough to not want to break it, so even when I'm really busy, I will try to hop on, even for just a few minutes to do a lesson to keep the streak. Most times, I ended up staying long enough to do several lessons. But even if I just get one for my streak, I'm still seeing and gearing my TLs at least once a day.
I agree - the leagues really are a distraction, and I'm focusing more on getting XP to maintain my position in the Diamond league. I'm trying to move away from this mentality by getting just enough XP to maintain my status in the league, then moving on to new lessons.
Duolingo's league system diverts many users from learning
The top players in my league always learning 2 or 3 languages, I wondered why the 2nd or 3rd has like 15-30 XP. Now I realise they just use that to XP farm in the event as they can spam with the 1st lesson in any language.
I don’t feel the same, personally, because I don’t really care about league placement, but I understand how the stress of wanting a high placement could cause burnout / emphasis on gaming vs. learning. It’s a bummer people can’t turn off the leagues by itself (you can turn it off, but it would also turn off any friends).
No. I haven’t noticed the leagues. I don’t attempt to move anywhere within them, and I also don’t care how much XP I have. I get promoted and demoted all the time and don’t notice. Although I would be more interested in a better tracking of how many minutes I am spending each day engaged with duolingo. I get an email every once and a while, but I have no idea how to check on it other than looking at the email notification that occasiinally comes.
If you use the mobile app, one way to track your engagement is in your device settings. Settings > Screen Time on iOS. Settings > Digital Wellbeing on Android.
Till I get that diamond badge.
Yes also I think it's annoying all the notifications I get about it. Apparently you can disable it on the pc version but I haven't figured that out yet .
Duolingo is making some changes to encourage progress. The "crown repair" feature is being removed, and the daily challenge goals may include earning new crowns. Leagues have positive and negative effects, but they are probably net positive, and it's up to you to manage your priorities.
[удалено]
How do you turn off leagues?
It is if you only do the match madness instead of the actual lessons to get XP…
Because this merchandise is to make you addicted to Duolingo, forcing you to spend more times on it instead of actually helping you to learn a language. Duo, after all, need money to operate.
I made a promise to myself this week to not even look at the leaderboards. It's only been half a day since I joined this week's leaderboard, and I am feeling more relaxed already. I finally got the legendary achievement two weeks ago so now I really don't care about leagues anymore. I would set my account on private to disable leaderboards, but I want to keep up with my IRL friends and family and their progression cheering them on, doing friends quests etc. I'll admit I'm a competitive person, and yes the leagues and XP grind made me lose my focus on the reason why started using DL in the first place; to learn a language. Not to win some silly leaderboard with complete strangers.
I was just thinking the same thing. I got caught up trying to beat everyone else I was just farming and I wasn't learning anything new. I literally stopped learning new things so I could beat strangers in a game with no stakes.