Don't lose your streak

Don't forget your lesson... Never. Forget. Your. Lesson.

Wow just imagine
A friend’s parents were huddled in their hallway 😬

Ngl that damn streak took over my life at one point, I was over 1000 days and climbing. Decided one day to just...let it go on purpose. To no longer be caged by the tyranny of the owl.

Highly recommend it, the sense of freedom is unreal.

Back when I was learning languages, I got obsessed with the steak thingie. Then I found myself without internet for a few days and started to get really stressed and upset about losing the streak.
I then realised that my reaction to it was unhealthy and decided that these streak things are just toxic to me. So now I don't really care about them.
- That and some of the app design caused me to try other apps and I've really liked Seedlang.
- Exactly!
I'm on day 744 and my streak is just an alternating pattern of fire and ice. I hate it but I think I hate the idea of dropping all that progress more. Did you stop using Duolingo altogether or just switch to practicing when you want to?
- I hate the idea of dropping all that progress
  It's not like people learning a new language practice every single day
- Kept it going for a while, making sure to take a day off once a month to avoid building another stressful streak. But I kinda got to the end of its usefulness and wandered off to other things.
  Just started learning Spanish and I thought about firing it up again but the app is such a mess these days I actually can't face it.
  Edit: Remember getting rid of the streak doesn't actually lose your "progress" in learning the language, which is presumably the important part. It's just a meaningless number. You can do it!
I'm at nearly 1500 days. I'm not really dedicated to it anymore and usually just do a single lesson a day, but I keep doing it so that I don't forget I want to learn French.
Someday I'll actually enroll in a French class so that family reunions wouldn't be so awkward...

I have done my lesson. My family is safe for today.

Man, I've gone so long that Duo has forgotten about me.

Duo never forgets. He's waiting for you to come crawling back. When you do, in your time of need, he will scoff and state "한심한".
- Fuck Duo, shouldn't have replaced translators with bots 😤

"The streak" made learning French so much harder in the beginning.

Having a decent grasp of Spanish (Castellano), I thought French would be in the ballpark of difficulty. Well, it's not. It's way more nuanced in vowel sounds, and constantly cutting off the ends of words and then cramming the remains together in to sentences. Such a PITA.

In the beginning I badly needed rest and repetition days, but chasing a streak just made the whole thing so frustrating that I gave up for months at a time. Finally I'm able to keep up a streak, but it's really just a side-effect of how I learn now.

Method: start up a lesson and do a single step. If in the mood, keep going. If not, put the phone down or use another app. Later, if the mood hits you, do another DuoLingo step. Repeat. Result? Somehow my streak keeps rolling on, and I'm actually completing more lessons per day now.

Another tip...you can do a practice lesson where you regain hearts, but I use it just as a stand in for keeping my streak on days I don't want to do lessons. Which is most days tbh. I need a Spanish speaking buddy to practice with 🥲
- ¡Claro que si! Lo mismo aqui.
  IMO the practice lessons are underrated and awesome. I mean, while yeah they nominally replenish your hearts, they also re-drill earlier stuff that might otherwise start to drift out of su cabeza.
  So much of locking in a language is about immersion & repetition, and it seems to me that stuff like Duo's practice lessons genuinely help replicate immersion.
  Anyway, good luck on finding a practice buddy!
  One thing I've learned is to not try to hop between Spanish & French, since it's a great way to get it all jumbled up. :S
Dumb tip: you can totally cheat a missed streak by setting your device's clock back a day and doing a lesson. You can even go back several months and do it. You can also just continue your streak after months of inactivity by doing a single long-ish lesson, so streaks are generally pretty damn pointless.
I do a single lesson a day. Slow...but I give me the time to learn. Additionally I added other sources and apps like memrize, that use video with native speakers and don't fuck up the pronounciation like duo's bots. Also Junior's voice. Fix Junior voice it feels like I'm high by just listening to that.

Fuck Duolingo. I am not sure how anyone gets much out of it anymore these days. Gamified and enshittificated.

I spent so much time learning nonsense in German, and I still never learned how to say "7"
Is there anything better? I'm using it daily and it seems to help, but I'm worried it's not going to be a solid foundation, as it seems to be hella scattered.

If you forgot, then it wasn't important!

The streak!

1269, please send help!

NOOO PLEAASE MR LINGO