I love Duolingo. But I really dislike the heart system. For the uninitiated, hearts are essentially lives; get a question wrong and you lose one. Given that you can only have a maximum of 5 at any one time, it’s easy to guzzle through them. And this leaves you unable to work through your Duolingo tree. Duolingo claim that the heart system is designed to “discourage binging”. And while I agree...

XP Ramp Up is a great feature for boosting your comprehension speed and, as you might expect, your Duolingo XP.  It’s currently available in the League section of the iPhone and iPad apps, behind the shiny pink button in the bottom right corner. It’s a useful way of collecting a bit more XP in a short space of time, whether that’s to help you in your last-minute push for promotion, or...

Like many, I’ve had a funny relationship with motivation over the years. At times, finding the energy to carry out even the most essential tasks has been a struggle. The urge to delay and the desire to do something—anything—else has often overpowered even the best of intentions. Sometimes I just can’t be bothered to put the key in the ignition, even though that one simple action is all that’s...

Recently I was browsing the Duolingo forums and saw a question I must have seen a thousand times before: Is Duolingo enough to learn a language? It’s a vague, open-ended question that can mean a great many things. But, no matter which way I look at it, I arrive at the same conclusion: By itself, Duolingo is not enough to comprehensively learn a language. And I don’t think it’s...

There’s a lot of debate concerning Duolingo’s effectiveness as a language learning tool. About how far it can take us. Whether ‘gamifying’ the process is an efficient way to learn. And whether we really need to know the various translations of ‘The spider eats bread’. As someone who’s poured a lot of time into Duolingo, I feel as though I’m conveniently placed to comment. I’ve seen it grow...

I’ve always struggled with perfectionism. Whether it’s academia, sport, gaming, cooking—anything, basically—there’s always been this little voice in the back of my mind whispering: “This isn’t good enough...” It should come as little surprise, then, that I've suffered through its irritating put-downs on my language-learning journey as well. Whether it’s making a mistake on Duolingo, not...

Of all the things to have spiralled out of control in the last few years--whether it be my sleep pattern, my student debt, or my ageing--the one thing I'm happy about is my Duolingo streak. Currently standing at 1,543 days, it's played a huge role in getting me hooked on language-learning. So in this article, I'm going to make the case for why you, too, should consider building your own...

Hi there. I’m Matt. I’m 25... and I’m addicted to Duolingo. As of publishing this article, my Duolingo streak stands at 1,536 days. That means, for the last 4-and-a-bit years, I have spent at least 10 minutes of every day on Duolingo and studying languages. And I have no intention of stopping. In this article, I’m going to unpack the evolution of my Duolingo—and language learning—addiction. We’ll...