Duolingo 2022 Year in Review

I recently made a post about the Duolingo learning format update. It was my first post about Duolingo despite spending nearly two years of my life on the app. I mentioned that I had no idea ifi/when I would do another post about Duolingo. Looks like everything worked out a lot sooner than I was expecting.

A while ago, I got a notification to see my 2022 report. I've been putting it off because I wanted to get as close to the end of the year as possible, Then I realized that the statistics were compiled on November 30th, so there was no point in waiting.

By The Numbers

As of November 30th, 2022, I...

• ... completed 1003 lessons in Italian with an average lesson accuracy of over 90%
• ... was among the top 2% of all learners this year, earned 28833 experience
• ... spent 3253 minutes learning. That's a little over 54 hours. My longest day was July 31st with 111 minutes. (We had just started our cross country road trip and I don't drive)
• ... learned 702 new words and practiced 2553 sentences.
• ... hit a 510 Day Streak. As I write this post on December 18th, I currently have a 528 Day Streak. Apparently only 5.8% of learners make it into the "Duolingo Streak Society". (My app doesn't have this feature... I had to Google it. Basically, I have a streak lasting longer than 365 days)
• ... made it to the Diamond League more than once. I spent 14 nonconsequetive weeks there.
• ... made 4 friends on Duolingo and congratulated them 54 times.

Duolingo then revealed my learning style is "Galactic Legend". It looks like this has nothing to do with learning practices and instead just puts me in the top 2% of learners worldwide.

Other Updates

I've been using the new learning path update for about a month now, so I think I can start to build opinions.

When I got the update, given my progress I was placed into Unit 21 "Tell others what to do, discuss student life" with everything including Unit 20 "Speak Formally" completed to the legendary level.

Now, on December 18th, 2022, I have made the following progress:

• Unit 21 : Tell others what to do, discuss student life
• Unit 22 : Talk About Travel
• Unit 23 : Give directions, describe your childhood
• Unit 24 : Express Feelings
  • Give Directions
  • Talk about travel (Hard)
  • Personalized Practice
  • Story: An Important Job
  • Express Feelings (2/7)

I am definitely progressing A LOT faster than before, but I'm not exactly sure I enjoy how fast I'm progressing. My original sentiments still ring true. I don't feel like my progress matches how well I understand a topic. One, I'm not getting nearly as much exposure to new content before even newer content is introduced. Two, the difficulty of the lessons has gone down dramatically. I can't tell if this is related to how quickly new topics are introduced, so I'm only getting the "beginner" lessons for each section. It appears as though even the "Hard" lessons are really simple.

I just completed the "Hard" lesson for "Talk about travel". It's still primarily exercises where I'm choosing the right words from a word box. I don't get many opportunities where I'm given a text box to type my answer in, which I prefer because it forces me to remember more. The Unit 22 Guidebook has some "tips" and "phrases", but not nearly enough to be prepared for all the things I'll get mistakes on. There are grammar things that I wish were covered like when to use di vs da vs in vs a. Then also, when referring to countries, it looks like "the" is used a lot more, but it's not clear when to use Asia vs l'Asia. Even for vocab, what's the difference between pullman and autobus. I've also given aeroplano when the app wanted aereo quite a few times. These are just the cognates. I'm definitely struggling even more with new words like valigia (suitcase) and pagella (report card). For me, the word bank instead of an empty text box is making is a lot harder for me to know words. I feel like my reading comprehension is great. Even if I don't know a word, I can still make out its meaning from the words around it. But if I'm speaking or writing, I find myself struggling to remember words.

On a lighter note, I was orignally critical of the way practice is done now. I think I've mostly changed my mind. I do enjoy the Personalized Practice sessions. These aren't like the regular practice to gain hearts which is what I was expecting. These are like lessons where if you make a mistake, you lose a heart. I think the Personalizd Practice does a much better job of combining content from different lessons into one generalized lesson. Instead of having a set of travel exercises, it feels a little more natural to have a travel exercise, then an education exercise, then a formal grammar exercise.

Anyway, I'm proud of my Duolingo obsession. I'm not stopping anytime soon. I just need to find new ways to supplement Duolingo. I have a few physical Italian books I can use. I might try to write more blogposts in Italian too. We'll see.

I do not own any of the images used in this blogpost. All icons used belong to Duolingo, Inc.