itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

Lots of people right above the demotion line- and a few right below - have about 440 XPs

Just checked and my buddy has one day each of 2K, 3K and 4K, two 1K days and two other days that average to 1K each. Sheesh!

Spoke too soon. He's headed for another 2K day.

Rounding third and he's headed for home

huh suddenly i got the option to do 'hard practice' (double the points) or 'regular practice' on my competed levels. seems the stories page has changed somewhat too, shows the points possible for the stories (which it didn't before). maybe the language update i accepted finally kicked in.

Hm, that's sounds interesting. What language?

franch

i don't know that the practice is much harder but it does seem to run through some more combinatorial stuff, which is an appreciated change of pace

When do you see that option?

when i tap on a skill, where you would normally see the option to read the tips or take a lesson/practice

Don't see it. Must be in A/B testing.

Or maybe it’s only for a Gold lesson, which I don’t usually bother with as stated earlier.

I have some on Dutch but don't see that option.

But I just read about it somewhere else.

it's only an option on un-stale skills. on the ones that are maxxed out but slipping, i can only practice (for 10 xp) to refresh.

I guess for me I haven’t cared for keeping the tree gold in several years or even red. I’d rather find either a lesson where I am interested in the grammar or vocabulary and can reinforce that lesson by non-Duo means, or find where the sweet spot of difficulty for me is located in the tree and do lessons there.

For some languages I shouldn’t really be doing Duolingo at all, unless maybe for laddering, like Euler is doing learning Italian from French. For others I should be using the hints way less often.

I am leg end.

Good job!
You finished #2 and kept your position in the Diamond League

Got 1200 gems out of that at least. Not sure what to use them for.

Do you pay for plus?

Yes.

On my current leaderboard I see there is one person who got 11KXP last week and another who got 8KXP.

Right now laddering from Spanish to Swedish. Maybe I can broker between Euler and unperson.

Most of the rest have under 2KXP or well under that. There is even a j. on my board this time. Although they are capital J., have 1.3KXP and are studying Spanish so I guess it’s someone different.

I got 1k xp this week

I figure that's a nice, safe reasonable number.

I guess my, um, point is you can check people’s past performance right away to see whether you should even bother to try to come in first or whatever, assuming that is something you even want to do.

Top person already has 900 XP after about an hour.

i wasn't going to try but since they were giving me so many more points i decided to do a little, but the third-place person woke up and made it impossible for me to crack that many points on a sunday night.

still, enough that now i have to compete in a diamond league to not get demoted. : / think i'll wait a day or two and see if i get a shittier league.

What do you mean by wait? Didn't it already assign you a league?

you don't get shown your competitors until you lodge some points during the new week. the screen says you're joining 'this week's leaderboard', but i read somewhere online that given the number of users you are being slotted into leagues at your level only if you begin to score points, not until then. i suppose it could be true that the league you will be joining is already predetermined, though.

trick is supposed to be to wait so you're not immediately vying with ppl who go hog wild on sunday night and ratchet up the competition for the rest of the week.

Right, exactly. You should know what league you are in: it either promoted you, or demoted you or you kept your place. Usually I wait until Monday evening to avoid the crazies but after last week I decided to dive in and try this new thing of looking at past performance. Maybe the best thing is actually to start as late as possible on Sunday night instead of waiting until Monday, then you get a good performance numbers but avoid the more obvious crazies.

Also think maybe some crazies wait until later as well.

Who knows, some may even sandbag on weeks when they know they can’t win so other people don’t see them coming.

Current number one is at 2K XP already

Number two only at 1K

And I’m in fifth with 300 XP.

One thing Duolingo has over most other such apps as far as I know, is that it doesn’t dominate the sound output so one can still listen to music whilst practicing. Actually one can do the same with Drops, but the volume doesn’t seem to be loud enough.

Successfully made it to the Pearl league.

Nice. I made Améthyste.

Well done. I awoke to find the top scorers in on my board with 4K and 3K XP, with the two behind each a little above 1K. Must ... avert ... my eyes.

the french tree got refreshed again and there are like 12 new lessons

I think I still have to same dozen or so new lessons I’ve never bothered to fill in as of yet, didn’t see any mention of new ones, maybe you are A and I am B.

But really came to post that this morning I decided to mess with Hawaiian for some reason and through Drops I learned the local name of the state fish which is kind of amazing.

Top two on my leaderboard now have 19K and 17K XP. Even if I don’t want to try to compete with such craziness it is kind of depressing to even look at, think I will go back to my policy of waiting until late on Monday to restart.

Especially since all their points are from English

i have a bajillion rubies so i have just been buying streak preservers every day and not practicing. might do another one tonight! might take the whole week off!!

i have about 23k xp from two straight months of rather vigorous practice. i don't know how you could even manage 19k in a week! is it like a back to school type situation where they have the guy holding books up to dangerfield when he's on the massage table?

Lol. That’s one for ilx posts with striking imagery

also, that reminds me, if you skip some days at the beginning of the week and use your streak freezes, what is the leaderboard competition like then?