they travel to different places duolingo

I Went on a 60-Day Duolingo Streak Before My Trip to France—Here's How It Went

Immersion truly is the best way to learn a new language

Courtesy of Duolingo

"Shoe-ette," I repeated back in my very American accent. When will I ever need to know the word owl in France? I thought. 

When a representative for Duolingo asked me if I'd be interested in trying Super Duolingo—the app's premium subscription—to nail down the basics of either French or Spanish (my choice!) before putting my language skills to the test in a predominantly French- or Spanish-speaking destination, I was all in. 

I took a semester of French in high school and four semesters in college, but, having only gone to France once before (and nearly 10 years ago at that), my phrases were limited to "Je m'appelle Elizabeth" ("My name is Elizabeth"); "Comment ça va?" ("How are you?); “J’étudié le français pour trois années” (“I studied French for three years”); and “J’aime le fromage” ("I like cheese”). 

Given the opportunity, I chose to brush up on my French. The kicker? I had to go on a 60-day streak. As someone who forgets to drink water and frequently ignores her gentle Plant Nanny notifications reminding her to hydrate, I was a little doubtful of my ability to stick to it.

Last November, Duolingo launched the latest version of its app: a wholly revamped home screen designed as a guided learning path with ordered lessons that are "grounded in [the concept of] spaced repetition," according to the site.  

While frequent app users may initially be confused by the new format, the lesson content has not changed. There are 199 units for French learners. Each unit features a guidebook of grammar tips and key phrases, plus seven or eight "levels" that teach users various concepts such as vocabulary, verb tenses, and number agreement. Some of the levels in a unit are lessons containing a mix of exercises—listening, reading comprehension, speaking, writing, and matching pairs—while others review concepts that had been introduced in prior units.

"It's more effective to space out practice for a particular concept than to cram," wrote Duolingo in a blog post announcing the new learning path. "When you initially learn a concept, you'll want to revisit it fairly soon after, but then you can gradually expand the time between practice sessions. This strategy helps concepts stick in your memory long-term."

The new update also built personalized practice lessons and stories—short vignettes that Duolingo users read before answering comprehension questions—into the home screen's guided path as levels. In doing so, learners can more easily access the stories and review material without jumping around the app, as was the case in its previous version.

At the end of the 60 days, I had completed 21 units, which covered everything from basic French phrases and greetings such as "comment ça va?" (how are you doing?) and "au revoir," to conjugating common verbs like "to live" and "to be" in the present tense, to discussing travel plans and ordering popular food and drink items (think croissants and a glass of wine).

I didn't need to be worried about breaking my streak. Duolingo has been gamified into a competition, with each participant battling it out in 30-person leagues to earn more "XP" points than the rest. There are 10 leagues in all—leagues being Duolingo's version of a weekly leaderboard—and those ranking towards the top each week move onto the next level.

There are a few ways you can earn XP points, the most basic of which is simply completing a lesson. Practicing between 6 a.m. and noon unlocks the early bird chest, which can be "claimed" in the evening to double the XP points earned per lesson for 15 minutes. You can also practice your mistakes in a separate tab and do timed challenges to get more points.

A competitive side of me I didn't know existed came out while I was playing. Occasionally, Duolingo would offer me a surprise 15-minute XP boost, which got me to practice French longer than I had initially planned, hoping to advance to the next league.

Competition aside, the app encourages learners to use the app with monthly challenges that land you an exclusive badge after earning 1,000 XP, and badges won for accomplishing personal milestones: completing lessons without any mistakes, practicing on both Saturday and Sunday, and learning 2,000 words in a single course, for instance.

And if that wasn't enough to encourage me to practice, Duolingo also sent me notifications reminding me to log in and keep my streak going, even late at night, when I was getting ready for bed. While there were times I groggily conjugated verbs close to midnight, I completed the 60-day challenge, feeling more prepared than ever for a un verre du vin (glass of wine).

Elizabeth Preske

I have always said that immersion is the best way to learn a language. I had been to Paris before, but knowing that any attempt to speak French there would be responded to in fold in English, I traveled to France's Burgundy region and Lyon . I spent eight days in France: two days in Burgundy, three days in Lyon, and three days in Paris. 

The experience was, in a word, uncomfortable. It's my personal belief that every traveler visiting a foreign country should learn some essential words and phrases before their trip: Words and phrases such as hi, how are you, I'm doing well, thank you, goodbye. It's presumptuous to assume that everyone you meet abroad speaks English. (I'm reminded of my time in Florence when one Italian food vendor reprimanded my friend who tried ordering a panino in English: "Why are we expected to speak your language in your country when you come to our country expecting us to speak your language?" she lamented.) 

Learning a country's language is a way to respect the culture and the people who live there. But it's easier to say that than to do it. When traveling abroad, I often ask a stranger in English if they speak English. In a place like France, where a good chunk of the people there do speak English, there's comfort in knowing that the likely response to "Parlez-vous Anglais?" ("Do you speak English?") is "yes," and that I can fall back on my native language at any point. 

But I was never going to improve my French if I did that. I needed to be uncomfortable to learn.

My first night in Beaune, when ordering dinner—the cassolette d'escargots (snail casserole) for my partner, some hure de saumon au basilic (salmon head with basil) for me—I recalled Duolingo's unit on ordering food and drink. I knew the words—"je voudrais, il prend" ("I would like," "he'll have")—I had practiced them over and over, but my tongue still got them twisted out of nerves. There's a difference between speaking out loud to a nonjudgmental cartoon owl and to a native French speaker, who I was afraid would not understand a lick of my admittedly terrible accent and whose questions and responses could not be slowed down into clear, compartmental words I could recognize.

The server repeated what I said, correcting my grammar and terrible pronunciation. Unlike in Paris, where I spent four days not long after my fourth semester of college French, my request was answered in French, not English. I was equal parts surprised and flustered. The onus was on me to continue the conversation in French.

"How am I doing?" I asked my partner after our server took down my order and walked away.

"C minus," he said in jest.

The following day, at a pâtisserie a few blocks from my hotel, I ordered a couple of croissants aux amandes , relying on the exact words and phrases I had learned just weeks prior, with just a tad more confidence. “Voudriez-vous la cheque?” the cashier asked.

“Oui, s’il vous plaît” (“Yes, please”). Had she asked me if I wanted the check? Was she speaking to me in Franglais? A line formed behind me, and I didn't want to look stupid. Better to say "yes" to everything, right? 

She handed me the receipt. “Merci beaucoup,” I said. Thanks a lot.

In Dijon, I followed the Parcours de la Chouette , the Owl's Trail, a self-guided walking tour that brings visitors to 22 of the city's biggest attractions, with some 1,600 brass plaques embedded in the pavement leading the way. While I didn't need to know any French to navigate the trail, it was nice to point at plaques—each adorned with a cute little owl—every so often and exclaim, "chouette!" It felt like an accomplishment, however minuscule.

Over the next few days, there was progress—more conversations held entirely in French—but there were setbacks, too. Especially at the end of a long day, when my mental faculties had run dry. I was David Sedaris in "Me Talk Pretty One Day." I was bumbling and inept. There were times when I just wanted to give up. My brain was tired of translating what I wanted to say into the simplest of phrases, from continuously searching my mental Rolodex of essential French words to retrieve the correct phrase for the situation, from the constant feeling of embarrassment. 

At the Gallo-Roman Museum & Amphitheaters in Lyon, I tried ordering two general admission tickets: “Deux billets, s’il vous plaît.” 

The woman behind the admissions desk asked me something I couldn't quite catch. I looked at her dumbfounded. “Desolée,” I mumbled. Sorry . “Je ne comprends pas.” I don't understand.

"Would you like me to speak in English?" she asked.

"Yes, please."

In Lyon, half the time (and in Paris, every time) I tried to speak French, the other person would respond in English. But I wasn't offended. If anything, I felt relieved. They were trying to save both of us the time—and in my case, embarrassment—of trying to communicate in a language I barely understood. 

While Duolingo had taught me how to order wine, to ask which train is going to Paris, and to ask how much something costs, it hadn't prepared me for handling travel grievances, the unpredictable—but inevitable—problems that crop up on any given trip. When checking out of my hotel in Beaune, for instance, I had been charged for a 100-Euro bottle of wine I didn't order, and I didn't have the vocabulary to contest the bill. 

During moments like these, I had to accept defeat and revert to English. I was—and still am—at the beginner level, and navigating conflict when I've yet to re-learn how to count higher than 20 is beyond me.

But I had to keep trying.

It still rings true that immersion is the best way to learn a new language—but if you're a new language learner, you still need to study over and over (and over) to get to a place where being fully immersed helps you grow (and, in my case, to kick off a conversation).

Even though I technically had a leg up, having taken French classes before, I wouldn't have stood a chance trying to make my way around the country had I not downloaded Duolingo before my trip. It helped me navigate airports and train stations; say hellos, pleases, and thank yous to everyone I met; purchase museum tickets; and order off menus. (Even if I couldn't decipher a good chunk of the ingredients, I knew enough to know whether I was ordering chicken or beef, and put my faith in French chefs).

Logging into the app for 60 days straight also ensured that the newly learned lessons stuck in my mind—a much better way to prep for a trip abroad than quickly Googling "how do you say 'how much does this cost?' in French" hours before a flight... and then swiftly forgetting the words the moment you need them.

While 60 days wasn't enough to teach me more than the basics, and there were several moments where I felt, frankly, stupid for my inability to speak fluently, it helped me enter conversations with confidence and show the other person respect for their culture. In my experience, I think the stereotype that French people look down on people who don't speak their language is untrue; if anything, when I tried as best I could, I often was met with kindness and a willingness to either help correct my grammar or switch to English because it was simply easier.

And yes, while there are words like "chouette" that maybe the average beginner doesn't need to know, it makes learning fun , and in all likelihood, I'm never going to forget the French word for "owl."

On New Year's Eve, I asked my partner what was one thing he learned about me in 2022 that surprised me. He told me he was surprised I knew how to speak French—a significant improvement from my C minus.

Duolingo. "Introducing the New Duolingo Learning Path." May 6, 2022.

Duolingo. "FAQ: Duolingo's New Learning Path." Accessed January 9, 2023.

Useful French Travel Words and Expressions

A Honeymoon to Remember on France's Oldest Footpath

How Not to Get a Haircut in Japan

Here's What It's Like to Travel to France Right Now

Typical French Restaurant Vocabulary: How to Order in Paris

Aulani, a Disney Resort & Spa, Ko Olina, Oahu

A Woman, a Mountain, and an Act of Kindness: Connecting Without Language in Japan

6 Easy Ways to Learn a Foreign Language Before You Travel

How to Avoid Rude Service in Paris and France: 5 Key Tips

How to Find an Ethical, Authentic Food Tour

How Paris Has Changed Since the Turn of the 21st Century

Avoid these First-timers France Travel Mistakes

The 9 Best Electronic Translators of 2024

20 Solo Trips in 2020: I Traveled Solo During COVID-19

Italian for Travelers to Italy

"I Felt Seen": Visiting Family in The Gambia as a Black Bisexual Woman

Tips for learning Spanish on Duolingo

Duolingo's Spanish course is a free, fun, and effective way to develop your speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills through short, bite-sized lessons. Whether you're learning Spanish to connect with family, prepare for post-pandemic travel, or keep up with schoolwork, our Spanish course gives you variety and flexibility for fun, personalized learning.

You'll earn points and compete with friends and learners around the world— it might feel unlike any classroom experience you've ever had! And a recent study shows that our course really works, too: reaching midway through in our Spanish course is equivalent to four semesters of university classes, so sticking with your learning pays off!

In this post, we share everything you need to know about learning Spanish with Duolingo: how to get started, our favorite tips and tricks, and all the learning tools you get, all for free. And when you're ready, you can start the course here !

Your language-learning toolkit

Our Spanish course is designed by our curriculum experts and learning scientists to align with the CEFR , international language teaching guidelines that focus on communication and getting learners to use their new language. You can check out all the Spanish vocabulary and grammar we cover here , and we add new material all the time.

On Duolingo, Spanish learners can study in lots of different ways. Check out all of the features and study tools right at your fingertips!

Guidebook. Each Unit Guidebook offers tips about vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation, as well as a roundup of key phrases ! These short explanations help you focus your attention on the most important parts of your lessons. Find them by tapping on the notebook icon at the top of each unit.

Stories. These short, fun dialogues get you reading and listening to conversational language. You’ll be picking up words and phrases without even feeling like you’re studying! If you see levels with the book icon in your path, that means your course has Stories!

Grammar Lessons. Memorizing verb tables doesn't get you using the language, so instead we've made Grammar Lessons feel as fun and game-like as the rest of the course. You'll solve grammatical puzzles in special grammar units, where you'll focus on mastering bite-size chunks of grammar. Read more about our approach to grammar teaching here .

• Personalized grammar tips. After learning about a grammar topic, you'll get personalized grammar pointers right in your lessons! These grammar reminders help focus your attention on the topics that are the most challenging for you.
• Duolingo Classes. It's never too early to join a Duolingo Class to practice Spanish with native speakers and other learners in a fun, casual setting! Look for events especially for your level, and soon you'll be listening, speaking, and laughing with new amigos from around the world. You can find general conversation practice, or you can choose an Event about solving puzzles, playing a game, dancing zumba, or reading Spanish love poetry!

Leveling up your learning

The Duolingo Spanish course also has lots of material for intermediate and advanced learners.

• We add new lessons, tips, and Stories to the course all the time, so be sure to update your app regularly.
• Our Duolingo Podcast introduces intermediate learners to fascinating stories about Spanish speakers across the globe. They're great for listening practice and for learning about culture!
• Later in the course you'll also get more practice immersing yourself in Spanish, in exercises that don't rely on English at all! These all-Spanish exercises get you thinking in Spanish and using the whole range of Spanish vocabulary and grammar that you've studied! Read more about these immersive exercises here!

¿Hablas español? Get ready to say sí !

Our Spanish course will keep you coming back day after day, because our teaching and learning experts have designed a language-learning experience that is both fun and effective.

Check out our other articles about learning Spanish on and off the app. You'll also find ideas for getting creative with your learning!

Ready to start learning Spanish? Click here to download Duolingo and take that first step!

Related Posts All Posts

Dear duolingo: what are the different writing systems around the world, how kpop can teach you about korean culture.

Episode 6: En el camino

Fabián Mauricio Martínez discovered his love for travel through his other passion — literature. So when he first read Jack Kerouac’s novel, “On the Road”, he dreamed of crossing the United States from coast to coast as the main characters in the book had. One day, he decided it was time to make the trip his own.

How to Listen

Listen free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Click here for study materials for this episode.

Martina: Some people can travel to faraway places without ever leaving home. Growing up, Fabián Martínez did this through literature and his own imagination.

Fabián: Cuando era pequeño, me gustaban mucho los libros. Veía las ilustraciones y me imaginaba los países y ciudades de las historias que leía.

Martina: When it came time to actually leave on adventures of his own, he wouldn’t go anywhere without his good luck charm — a photo one of his friends gave him of a landscape in Tibet. On the back, she wrote: “Never stop traveling, even when you’re in your own living room.”

Fabián: Representa la importancia de los viajes en mi vida.

Martina: But this message wouldn’t take on its full meaning, until Fabián found himself on a train, crossing the United States from coast to coast.

Martina: Welcome to the Duolingo Spanish Podcast, where we bring you true bilingual stories of travels with unexpected turns, plans unraveled, and destinations unknown. The Spanish in this story is for intermediate level learners, but if you get lost, don’t worry, we’ll be chiming in throughout the story.

Martina: When he was a kid, Fabián would fantasize about different places around the world. He would spend hours looking through his atlas, dreaming about the Amazon River, the Serengeti plains or the glaciers in Greenland.

Fabián: Años después, cuando fui a la universidad, estudié literatura. Y después de leer cientos de libros empecé a viajar — a otros lugares y a otros tiempos — sin salir de mi casa.

Martina: That’s how he embarked on various trips, without ever leaving home. He sailed with Santiago from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”, and walked barefoot beneath the stars next to Lena Grove, of William Faulkner’s “Light in August.”

Fabián: Pero un día, empecé a leer On the road, de Jack Kerouac. Y todo cambió.

Martina: In this book from the fifties, Kerouac tells the story of two young men as they go on their first trip across the United States. They travel on foot, by bus, and by car, searching for the wild heart of North America. And as they travel, they get to know themselves, too.

Fabián: Cuando terminé de leer el libro, decidí combinar dos de mis pasiones: leer y viajar. Y organicé un viaje en tren por los Estados Unidos. Quería visitar los lugares de los que tanto leí en On the road.

Martina: Since he was fascinated with Kerouac’s book, Fabian decided to go to all the places he had read about in On the Road. He lived in Bucaramanga, a town at the foot of the Andes in northeast Colombia. From there, he flew to Truckee, California. In Truckee, he took a summer job as a cooking assistant to save up money for the trip.

Fabián: Después, pasé dos semanas en San Francisco, una ciudad llena de literatura y música. Pero para realmente vivir la aventura de On the Road, tenía que empezar el viaje de mis sueños — en tren por los Estados Unidos, desde San Francisco a Nueva York.

Martina: A train from San Francisco to New York takes about three and a half days and goes right through the middle of the country. As the train pulled away from the station, Fabián thought about Sal Paradise, one of the characters from Kerouac’s book. During his trip, Sal got to know itinerant workers, jazz musicians and Mexican fruitpickers.

Fabián: Yo saludaba y le sonreía a las personas que entraban al tren. Quería conocer y hablar con gente nueva. Pero casi todos me ignoraban. Solo una persona me miró como si estuviera loco.

Martina: But even though the other passengers ignored him, Fabián was thrilled to be riding with them. The train howled loudly, breaking the silence of a quiet day. He couldn’t wait to meet someone who resembled the characters in Kerouac’s book. Fabián got his first chance when a man asked him if he could charge his laptop by his seat, because the outlet closest to him didn’t work.

Fabián: Dije que sí y también le dije que, mientras, podíamos hablar. Él dijo que solo quería la electricidad. Conectó la computadora y se fue.

Martina: As the stranger walked away, Fabián wondered: Where were the nomads and the free spirits? Where were the travelers who wanted to analyze the world and figure out what they are made of?

Fabián: Todos estaban usando sus celulares o computadoras, sin mirar afuera o hablar con otras personas.

Martina: Meanwhile, Fabián read a passage from On the Road, in which Sal Paradise rides with a group of homeless men who traveled for free on the freight cars. But as he looked around, Fabián only saw regular passenger cars.

Fabián: Encontré a personas dormidas y coches con ventanas enormes. Me senté en uno de ellos y observé la geografía: montañas rojas, rocas amarillas, un cielo sin nubes.

Martina: Next to him, a blonde woman was eating an ice cream and looking out the window. That’s when Fabián was reminded of another character from On the Road: Dean Moriarty. He would fall in love with the women he met on his travels.

Fabián: Miré a la mujer y pensé: “¿Por qué no? Soy un aventurero viajando por el mundo”.

Martina: Besides, this adventurer was getting a little bored. He’d been riding the train for eight hours already.

Fabián: Saludé a la mujer y le dije: este viaje en tren es muy especial.

Martina: He said hello. And then he told her how special it was to be riding this train together.

Fabián: Pero ella continuó comiendo su helado. Sin mirarme, dijo: “Tomo este tren todas las mañanas para ir al trabajo. Lo tomo en la noche para regresar a casa. Esto no es nada especial”.

Martina: Without looking at him, she said she didn’t find the train ride special at all, and continued eating her ice cream. Rejected, Fabián turned his attention to his next meal. Dinner was being served in another train car, and the smell of roast beef and french fries made him hungry. Fabián went back to his seat.

Fabián: En San Francisco había gastado mucho dinero y no iba a tener suficiente para continuar mi viaje en Nueva York. Entonces solo pude comprar pan y una lata de sardinas por día. Por eso comía muy despacio.

Martina: He made a sandwich, and was eating it very slowly when a female attendant came by. She invited him to eat in the restaurant car of the train.

Fabián: Me invitó a probar el delicioso menú. Le dije que no tenía dinero y que iba a comer pan y mis sardinas hasta llegar a Nueva York. Ella sonrió con tristeza y me deseó una buena cena.

Martina: After finishing his dinner, Fabian went to sleep. When he woke up the next morning, the train had stopped and sat empty. He looked all around him, hoping for new passengers.

Fabián: En ese momento, un grupo de niños entró al tren gritando y llorando, junto con sus profesores. También entró un grupo de personas mayores.

Martina: One of the senior citizens sat near him, but when Fabián tried to speak to him, he turned away, seemingly annoyed. The man proceeded to talk to himself, gesturing wildly with his hands. Eventually, he fell asleep.

Fabián: Continué leyendo el libro de Kerouac. Necesitaba leer sobre los músicos que viajaban, los jóvenes aventureros, y los cowboys con olor a whiskey.

Martina: Fabián missed the travelers that crisscrossed the continent on old pickup trucks carrying the only things they needed: their memories and the clothes on their back.

Fabián: Pero yo solo veía a niños llorando, profesores aburridos y viejos locos. Entonces decidí escribir un diario de viaje.

Martina: On the pages of that diary, he wrote: I carry with me my notebook, my camera, and the book my ex girlfriend gave me, the book which is to blame for this journey, On the Road. One thing is to read it under the sheets in the privacy of my own bed, a very different thing is to read it on the road, as if each paragraph were to show you that your place in the world is everywhere and also nowhere.

Fabián: El día siguiente, un pasajero me preguntó por qué viajaba tanto en tren. Me emocioné y le hablé de Kerouac y de On the Road. El hombre no conocía el libro, ni al autor.

Martina: The man told Fabián that he found it strange that someone would choose to travel by train when traveling by airplane was so much more affordable.

Fabián: Le dije que no quería viajar por los Estados Unidos en avión; quería viajar en tren, en coche y caminando.

Martina: The man looked at Fabián as if he were crazy.

Fabián: Me dijo “Buena suerte con eso”. Y se fue.

Martina: Good luck with that, the guy said and left. The romantic journey Fabián had played out so many times in his mind, was not turning out at all like he had imagined. There were no eloquent conversations about the American way, no memorable encounters or quirky characters. The quirkiest thing about this whole trip was Fabián! So Fabián abandoned the other passengers, and found refuge in his journal. In it, he wrote about the fields of corn, the farms and lakes that he saw fly by through his window:

Fabián: A veces veía un pequeño camino de tierra que iba a un campo… Me preguntaba: ¿quién lo camina?, ¿cómo es su vida?, ¿hace cuánto tiempo vive aquí?

Martina: Hunger woke Fabián from his daydream. The bread and sardines were now gone, so Fabián was drinking tons of water from the fountain in the bathroom to keep his stomach from growling.

Fabián: La asistente del tren me vio y me dijo: “Eres como mi hijo. Él también viaja solo y sin dinero. Toma esto y come bien, por favor”. En su mano tenía 20 dólares.

Martina: Fabián said no, thanks. But in the end, she insisted so he took the money and headed towards the restaurant car.

Fabián: En el coche restaurante ordené una hamburguesa con papas fritas y una bebida. Comí lentamente, disfrutando los sabores del kétchup, el queso, la cebolla y la carne.

Martina: He savored that burger as if it were his very first… and then returned to his seat, euphoric from his meal.

Fabián: Me emocioné cuando vi los árboles rojos, verdes, amarillos y naranjas por la ventana. Observé el paisaje hasta que el tren paró por última vez. Tomé mis cosas y salí del tren.

Martina: As he left the train, Fabián opened his copy of On the Road and took out the photo his friend had given him so long ago. He thought again about the message on the back, the one that encouraged him to never stop traveling, even when he was in his own living room. Home was now more than two-thousand miles away, in Bucaramanga, Colombia. He was tired and hungry, and a living room with a couch sounded pretty good right about then.

Fabián: Respiré, agarré mi bolso y caminé junto a los cientos de viajeros que, como yo, llegaban a Nueva York.

Credits & Media

This episode includes recordings from TomchikRec , blimp66 , medialint , InspectorJ , mrbriandesign , arnebuhmann , The_Matt_Freeman , flag2 , davethetech , and barcelonetasonora under the CC Attribution License from freesound.org .

My HONEST Duolingo Review [2024]: Worth the Time?

* This article contains affiliate links, which help run this site at no extra cost to you.

Can you become fluent in a new language with Duolingo, or is it a waste of time? Find out by reading my honest Duolingo review.

When traveling the world and learning about other cultures, I always find myself wishing I were fluent in that language. 

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of language learning. After all, learning a language is the best way to experience a culture.

What’s the best way to become fluent? Is becoming conversational more critical? These are the type of questions that I think about. 

Learning a language on the go is a huge obstacle I’ve had to overcome. That’s where the Duolingo app came into play for me. It’s super easy to use while traveling!

My full Duolingo review will reveal if it has helped me become more confident in speaking a foreign language. Continue reading to find out!

Table of Contents

What is Duolingo?

Duolingo is the most popular and most downloaded education app on the market today. This app turns language-learning into a game. 

Gamified learning helps people (including myself) view language lessons as fun rather than boring. Incorporating games helps keep motivation up. 

There are 5 million Duolingo users each day. With over 500 million downloads worldwide, Duolingo is a massive portion of the app market.  

Duolingo is a free app available for both iOS and Android. There is also a website version, which generates 5.5 million users per month. 

The app provides multiple different learning approaches. You’ll use several language-learning tools like flashcards, matching, listening, and writing. 

Duolingo also has a great community where you can compete against others to help motivate you to learn the language.

A Quick Look at Duolingo as a Company

History of Duolingo

Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker created Duolingo. Luis was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Severin was one of his post-graduate students. 

Luis previously gained recognition for selling the infamous reCAPTCHA company to Google. In 2009 he wanted to start a new project that revolved around education. 

Luis grew up in Guatemala and saw how difficult it was for some families to learn English because of the price. He thought free education would be the future. 

Thus, in 2011, Duolingo was born. By 2012, you could download Duolingo on the Apple app store and, later in 2013, in the Google Play Store.

DOWNLOAD DUOLINGO APP HERE:

How Does Duolingo Make Money?

Since Duolingo is free to use, you might wonder how they make money. 

If you’re using the free version of Duolingo, you will likely have come across multiple ads. 

Ads are a popular way to make money from something free. As of 2021, 94% of its users were using the free version of the app. Since Duolingo’s goal is to make language learning available to the masses, this only makes sense.

In 2021, 6% were using the subscription service, then called Duolingo Plus (now Super Duolingo). 

Even though 6% seems small, paid subscribers account for around 72% of the revenue. 

There are many opportunities for a free trial of Super Duolingo. I highly suggest you try this out! To lower the cost, there’s also a Super Duolingo family plan. 

How much does a family plan of Super Duolingo cost? 

You can either pay $119.99 for the year, which comes out to be $9.99 per month and covers up to six users. No monthly plans are available for this, so once you purchase, you’ll have Super Duolingo for an entire year, and you have to pay upfront.

I chose an individual plan since I didn’t need a family plan. 

The individual plans do have a monthly payment option. You can get 12 months at once for $6.67 per month or one month at a time for $12.99. I chose the year-long membership because I wanted to learn for multiple months. 

The other way Duolingo makes money is through in-game purchases. These come from the shop as gem purchases, streak freezes, or XP boosts (XP stands for ‘experience points’). 

On top of all that, Duolingo is now trying something new with the addition of AI. This new subscription is called Duolingo Max ($168 annually or $30 monthly). It uses the Duolingo AI chatbot to further your language learning.

How Does Duolingo Work?

Choose a Language

When you download the language learning app Duolingo, you’ll first set up your profile. 

After this, it’s time to select a language. I suggest starting with just one language. Practicing multiple languages at once becomes difficult, especially for a beginner. 

There are 43 languages, 39 of which are available to English speakers. The Duolingo Spanish course is the most popular of the language courses available. English speakers have a more extensive selection of languages to choose from. 

I chose Spanish as my target language because I’m in often in contact with a native speaker of this language, and I know it’ll come in handy.

Learning languages is hard, so pick one that you think you’ll enjoy the most. 

You can always switch to other languages if you don’t like it. Adding a language will not eliminate the progress you made on the others.

Finding Your Level

After you have chosen your first of many Duolingo courses, you will have these options: 

• To start at level one (if the language is entirely new)
• Take a test to figure out what level you are

If this is your first time learning this language, click “Start from scratch,” and you’ll find yourself in lesson one.

Even if it’s not a new language to you but it’s been a while, I suggest starting at the very beginning as a refresher.  

The next step in creating your Duolingo account is selecting your goal for how much time you’ll spend learning each day. You’ll have a total of four different options to choose from. 

The time goals per day are either five minutes (casual), ten minutes (regular), fifteen minutes (serious), and twenty minutes (intense). 

Start slow with either five or ten minutes. Things come up in real life, and you want consistency in the early stages. 

If you only plan to do a few lessons daily, you’ll most likely be in the general modules section. These Duolingo lessons have a combination of learning styles in each of them. 

There will be speaking exercises, as well as writing, matching, and listening activities. You can skip the speaking and listening exercises if you’re in a situation where you aren’t able to do them.

You’ll get five hearts daily in the free version of Duolingo. These hearts go away if you miss a question. 

If you run out of hearts during a lesson, that lesson will either be over, or you can do different things to receive more. 

A speaking exercise can help you hone your conversational skills. So I would suggest not skipping these if possible. 

The speaking activities were monumental in improving my speaking skills and being able to order at restaurants. Growing my skills gave me the confidence to talk more with native speakers. 

Each lesson you complete will give you at least 10 XP. The XP used to be for crowns and to show your expertise in all the languages you’re learning.

These days in Duolingo, the XP is for the different leagues you can be put into. 

The types of lessons in these can vary. Examples include learning how to describe your home, ordering at a restaurant, and shopping for clothes.  

There are various units within each section of a language. 

For example, if you’re trying to learn Spanish, the Spanish course has 19 units in section 2 and 20 in section 3. 

At the end of each unit, there will be a review of everything you’ve learned. Once you complete that, you can move on to the next unit. 

Review Mistakes

Duolingo offers more than the basic learning strategy. Clicking the dumbbell icon at the bottom takes you to the page where you can find more learning activities. 

The dumbbell icon is where I started to see the most significant boost in my language skills. 

Free users only have access to see mistakes, but you won’t be able to unlock the practice without access to the Super Duolingo subscription. 

I don’t think this should be part of the Super Duolingo perks, but I understand why. If you have Super Duolingo, you can start the 20 XP activity. 

You’ll review ten mistakes you’ve made recently, which benefited me as I usually struggle with the same concepts. Reviewing what I already know doesn’t help that. 

Streak Freezes

Streaks are one of Duolingo’s most well-known features. You will add to your current streak every day that you achieve your goal. 

This feature keeps people coming back day after day, but I don’t think it’s super beneficial to language learning. 

It sends the wrong message that the biggest goal when you want to learn a language is to do the bare minimum each day. Advanced learners will know that getting where you want to be takes a lot of dedication. 

But, if you miss a day, fear not, as there are streak freezes!

These streak freezes will hold your current streak in place in case you accidentally miss a day. This seems like a huge item in Duolingo, and you’d think it would be hard to obtain, right?

Wrong. Obtaining new streak freezes is super simple. More times than not, if you complete a lesson, the first reward from the chest will be another streak freeze.

You can only have a total of two streak freezes at a time. So if you have both, then you won’t be awarded anymore. 

Other language learning apps don’t have this feature, and I believe they take away from the real reason to learn a language. 

Duolingo Review: My Experience With Using the Duolingo App

Duolingo was the first language app I used. My main motivation for wanting to learn a new language was to have a better experience while traveling. 

Everyone told me to download Duolingo, so I did. I enjoyed the gamified aspect of it. It made me learn vocabulary without realizing I was studying. 

Other language apps can be more intense, which is sometimes necessary. However,  the streaks got me hooked on Duolingo. 

Seeing that number go up every day was a dopamine rush. And then comparing it to your friends was even better (sometimes).  

Once that streak was gone, so was my motivation. When I started learning to speak Spanish again, I only used Duolingo as a supplementary tool, but I appreciated it for the extra practice.

The combination of running out of heart plus only being motivated by the streaks made me seek out other alternatives. These factors can halt your learning progress.

But on the positive side, it was a free education resource with many language courses to choose from. It got my foot in the door, and I’m happy for that!

Free to Use

Luis von Ahn created Duolingo for the soul purpose of making language learning more accessible to the masses. I think everyone can agree that he accomplished this goal. 

Multiple other language learning apps have studied and copied Duolingo’s monetization style. And for good reason – it works!

It’s remarkable how many features Duolingo gives you as a free user. Language learners everywhere should rejoice because many languages are free to learn with Duolingo!

Purchasing Super Duolingo isn’t necessary for your learning process through the app, and I’m happy that my Duolingo Spanish lessons are a great way to jump back into learning and will always be free and available. 

Great for Reviewing a Language

Duolingo is the best language app to review a language you haven’t practiced in a while because it’s free to use and it covers basic concepts. 

The most popular Duolingo alternatives all cost money, which has hindered me when I want to start learning Spanish again and go deeper with the language. 

Picking my target language and going through modules was an easy transition into studying a language again.  

If you’re a beginner, you won’t get bored easily and can get the vocabulary refresh you need. 

Many Languages to Choose From

Being the largest language app on the market brings even more user benefits. One of the benefits is how many languages they offer. 

A total of 43 languages are available on the Duolingo app. As a free user of Duolingo, you can take as many courses as you’d like. I’d suggest sticking with the same language for a long time, but you can do whatever you want. 

And that’s the beauty of it! Sometimes I like to start a new language on Duolingo to figure out if I like the language enough to go deeper. 

Only for Beginners

Duolingo has effectively gamified language learning, which may mean it’s an app that’s only good for beginners. After using other apps for a while, I started to realize this. 

When starting a fresh language, you’ll see a lot of new words. With these come new sentences, but the lack of grammar explanations makes it difficult to use as an all-in-one language app.

I don’t think this style is terrible to have. Yes, there are other resources out there that can get you more prepared to use the language with native speakers. 

Duolingo is great for all ages and serves its purpose in the language learning app circle.

Caters to English Speakers

As an English speaker, you have the most extensive list of languages. And on the surface, this makes sense. English is one of the most popular languages in the world.

But languages like Mandarin and Spanish have millions of speakers worldwide. If you’re not an English speaker and you’re trying to learn a less widely spoken language, you may have some difficulty. 

It takes time to create a learning course in a different language; I get that. But if you want to make the most significant worldwide impact, creating many courses in other languages is necessary.

Encourages Short Lessons to Continue Streak

This next Duolingo con is one I genuinely believe in. Seeing the number increase on your streak is a bigger motive to learn the language than the language itself. 

It has its benefits, sure. 

But many times, I found that when I’ve had a long streak and then I lost it, I didn’t get on for months. I can truly only blame myself for that. 

Even so, it showed me that I was only getting on Duolingo to increase my streak. To become conversational, you must want to learn the language. 

Most language learners would agree with this premise.

If you don’t have Duolingo Plus, you can complete the fastest lesson in the app. Simply click the heart and click “Practice to regain hearts.” 

I have done these lessons in under one minute, which counts towards your streak. 

Speech Exercises are Broken

One of the most important exercises for learning languages is speaking out loud. This is something you obviously need to practice if you want to be able to speak with native speakers. 

Yes, Duolingo has questions in their lessons that ask you to speak. That’s not the issue. The issue is you can sometimes say the completely wrong sentence, and it’ll still say it’s correct. 

This serious glitch simply cannot happen in a language-learning app. The best way to ensure you understand a language completely is by speaking it. 

I love the popular alternative app Pimsleur simply because that’s what they focus on. 

If Duolingo fixes this issue with the speaking exercises, then it can progress beyond a beginner-focused app.

Other Features and Activities in Duolingo

Friends Quest

Other goals can come in the form of a ‘friends quest.’ Once you add some friends, you can start a quest with them. 

Some quests come in the form of activities like “Score 90% or higher in 9 lessons.” You’ll complete this type of friends quest together. Another type of friends quest is going head-to-head. 

Quests motivate and drive you to better your language skills. If your friend needs to catch up in the quest, you can send them a nudge to get them going. 

The nudge will notify their phone, reminding them to practice their target language.

What’s cool is that you and your friend don’t even have to study the same language to complete quests together.

Daily Quests

Besides hitting the daily goal you set for yourself, you’ll also get daily quests to complete. These quests are typically easy to complete, and you can do them at the beginning of your day.

The daily quests can include some of the following: ‘Earn 30 XP’ ‘Get five correct in a row in two lessons,’ and ‘Speak in ten exercises.’  

You’ll receive a reward of gems or a streak freeze when you complete these. 

Duolingo stories are one of the most popular features they have. These are available whether you have Super Duolingo or not. 

The stories are now part of the new learning path Duolingo rolled out in a 2022 update, which “challenge your reading and listening comprehension.”

Along your path in each unit, you’ll find a story. Once you complete that story, you can reaccess it in the section with the dumbbell at the bottom.

The goal here is complete immersion with the new words and phrases you’ve been learning. The stories will be between two different characters. 

After following their conversation, you’ll have to answer questions about what they’re discussing. 

These questions range from filling in the blanks, finishing the sentence, and translating sentences. 

Context helps a lot here and has helped me become more conversational in the process. 

The stories only take a few minutes to finish when you give the correct response. 

To make these stories even harder, you can select the legendary version. 

The only difference between the standard and the legendary version is that you don’t get hints in legendary. In the standard version, you can click on a word you’re unfamiliar with to get the definition.

Here’s a helpful addition for all of those audio-language learners out there. If you want to practice listening activities only, try out this section of the Duolingo app.

Not to be confused with the Duolingo podcast; this is in the same area as the stories. You can specifically choose to practice your target language by listening to audio clips. 

Unfortunately, this feature is only available to those on Super Duolingo. That’s not to say you won’t ever have audio Duolingo lessons– they’ll still be available in the general units.

Each audio lesson is ten questions. They range from new queries to ones that you have missed in the past. 

Being truly fluent is hard. My goal when learning a new language is to become conversational. 

It’s crucial to be able to carry a conversation when you’re traveling and want to experience new cultures. 

Speaking lessons are the last activity you can practice in your review section. These often go overlooked and aren’t as popular because a lot of people are afraid of talking out loud.

For language learning, you HAVE to get over that fear. Each speaking exercise will play a sentence out loud, and you can click on words to figure out the definition. 

Tap the volume icon next to the sentence to listen to the audio again. Once ready to speak, press “Tap to speak.”

You’ll receive ten exercises to complete to receive your XP reward. 

One of the top strategies that Duolingo uses to increase competition and motivation is its leagues. These leagues are a weekly competition against 30 random users. 

Once you complete a lesson in Duolingo, you’ll automatically join a random league. You can view this league by simply clicking the shield button at the bottom of the screen. 

The ranks in these leagues are based on the XP you receive by doing different lessons. The league you’re in and what place you finish will determine if you get promoted. 

There are a total of 10 different leagues, and they are as follows: bronze, silver, gold, sapphire, ruby, emerald, amethyst, pearl, obsidian, and diamond.

The top 20 in the bronze league will get a promotion to the next level, as will the top 15 in the silver league and the top 10 in the gold league.

The top seven finishers in Sapphire leagues will move up a level. Lastly, the top five from the Obsidian League enter the Diamond League. 

If you place outside these zones, you risk demotion to a lower league. You’ll get a prompt asking if you want to repair this when you get demoted. 

It’ll cost you 2,000 gems, but you can stay in the same league for another week. I only see this as beneficial in higher-tier leagues that are much more competitive.

Refill Health

With the free version of Duolingo, you’ll have five hearts that represent your “health.” With each question you miss, you’ll lose a heart. Once all your hearts are gone, you’ll get a couple of options.

You can either buy back your hearts with Duolingo’s currency (gems) or do easy practice lessons to refill your hearts. 

If you choose not to pay to refill them, then the lesson will end. To complete the lessons to regain your health, click the heart in the top right corner. 

You can complete a lesson from here to receive one heart in return. These lessons normally take me one to two minutes to complete. 

Sometimes you’ll get the option to watch an ad to receive one more heart. I normally say yes. 

I’m not the biggest fan of this feature because I think five is a very small number. I see it as a ploy to persuade you tobuy Super Duolingo because you get unlimited hearts when you subscribe.

You can always start a free trial to see if you like the benefits of Super Duolingo.

The least important feature of Duolingo is ‘The Shop.’ 

The Shop is where you can go and spend your extra gems. But there’s one problem…there isn’t much to spend them on.

Currently, only the Duolingo website has the shop logo. If you want to visit it on your app, simply click your gems. 

You can only purchase a handful of things. For starters, you can buy those lovely steak freezes I talked about earlier. 

You can also purchase an XP timer boost if you’re chasing a high league placing. These are great, and I actually use them a lot!

You can also purchase more gems with real-life money, but I don’t see much point in this. 

This whole area of the app has a lot of potential, so hopefully, they will be working on something soon. 

FAQs About Duolingo

Can you become fluent from Duolingo?

No, you can’t become fluent in Duolingo. Fluency (meaning you know the language inside and out) is extremely hard. 

When you’re fluent in a language, you don’t have to stop and search your brain for a word; you know most of the correct grammar. 

It’s generally acknowledged that knowing 1,000 to 3,000 words is enough to have a conversation. 

Passing the 10,000-word mark will place you in the native speaker category.   

Is Duolingo better than Babbel?

There isn’t a simple answer to this. It comes down to personal preference. One has a recurring charge, and the other is free. 

If you want to practice a language free of charge, Duolingo should be your preferred choice. 

Meanwhile, Babbel takes a traditional approach to learning a language with more in-depth lessons. These two aspects make it a better overall language learner.

Is Rosetta Stone better than Duolingo?

Rosetta Stone launched in 1992, so it’s been around for quite some time now. Their approach is simple. Create a fully immersive experience for longer language retention. 

Rosetta Stone also has some of the best speech recognition technology on the market. However, the big concern is the price. Rosetta Stone costs $299 as a one-time fee or $9.99 a month. 

If you want a better immersion technique, choose Rosetta Stone. Duolingo is the better option for casual learners and people who want to learn a language for fun rather than necessity. 

What is the success rate of Duolingo?

If you read many reviews online, Duolingo can’t truly teach you the language. It’s better suited for kids and beginners struggling to gain traction. 

One study on Duolingo’s website says kids who use their Duolingo ABC for nine weeks have a 28% increase in literacy scores. 

How long should I use Duolingo per day?

The longer, the better. Five minutes per day is the minimum goal, but I suggest setting the goal to at least 15 or 20 minutes to see any benefits.

What level does Duolingo get you to?

Duolingo designs their courses to get you to a B2 level, which means you can get a job in that language.

How much does Duolingo cost per month?

The majority of Duolingo is free to use. You can purchase Super Duolingo for 12 months at $6.67 per month or monthly for $12.99. 

How long does it take to become fluent from using Duolingo?

You can’t become fluent in a language solely by using the Duolingo app. It’s better to use Duolingo as a supplemental tool. 

Is Duolingo Plus worth it? Duolingo Super?

Duolingo Plus and Super Duolingo are the same thing. I don’t think Super Duolingo is worth the price, especially if you pay monthly. 

There are better apps with similar prices that’ll teach you more about the language. 

That said, a free trial is a low-risk option to see if it’s something you’re interested in.   

Conclusion: So, is Duolingo Actually Any Good? Or is Duolingo a waste of time?

If you ask any passionate language learner, they’ll say Duolingo is a waste of time. I think this is a tad bit harsh. Duolingo has its benefits, especially in the earlier stages. 

What I love about Duolingo is that they make their language learning app easy and fun. This app has helped me want to learn more and push myself to try more in-depth lessons. 

Features like Duolingo Stories help you feel immersed without making you feel overwhelmed. But if you want to become truly conversational or even fluent, then Duolingo isn’t it. 

Since Duolingo is free to download and use, it doesn’t hurt to try it out for yourself! You never know; it might spark something inside you to get serious with language learning.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phillip Anderson

Phillip Anderson is a freelance travel writer, personal trainer, and adventure enthusiast. With years of travel experience under his belt, Phillip is an expert in finding the best deals through travel apps and websites. He knows how to find cheap domestic and international flights, like a flight to Peru for as low as $350.

When looking for cheap accommodations, Phillip combines his knowledge of websites like Airbnb, Booking.com & Hostelworld with more unique sites like TrustedHousesitters, for even more savings. Whether it’s flights, accommodations, or local experiences, he teaches travelers to make informed decisions, ensuring their adventures are both memorable and economical.

Looking for more travel-related tech? Check out these related articles below!

Skiplagged Review 

Scott’s Cheap Flights Review

Best Travel Deal Sites

Best Travel Guides

Best Airbnb Alternatives

Hopper Review

SnapTravel Review

TrustedHousesitters Review

Momondo Review

Costco Travel Review

GetYourGuide Review

Dollar Flight Club Review

Best Hiking Apps

Pin this image for future reference

Hi, I'm Mimi! I'm an outdoorsy Californian who has spent over 28 years immersed in the incredible natural beauty that California has to offer. My goal is to inspire others to get out and find their next adventure in California. Whether it’s escaping to an alpine lake in the Sierras, finding peace among the giant redwoods, or road tripping down the PCH, there’s always more to explore in this beautiful state.

2 thoughts on “My HONEST Duolingo Review [2024]: Worth the Time?”

Duolingo is a decent (I’m being generous) language learning tool to keep in your “arsenal”, but on it’s own it is not going to get any language learner near fluency, and it has the potential to be significantly damaging or counterproductive to new learners.

A little background: I am a C1 level Russian speaker (native English speaker) who learned the bulk of my Russian on Rosetta Stone. I completed the Russian course on Rosetta Stone, learned about 4k – 5k words there, and then started using every tool at my disposal to continue my education. I probably now know something in the range of 7k – 8k words and have good (not great) grammar. After completing Rosetta Stone, I turned to Russian films and television shows, Russian cooking videos on Youtube, Russian music, and of course other apps to continue my education. I also speak frequently with a group of Russian friends.

At this point (after about 4 years of learning) I finally downloaded Duolingo, and used it (initially) to test my knowledge. However, due to bizarre sentence offerings, a complete lack of regard for colloquial speech patterns, and other techniques grounded in the monetization practices of Duolingo’s product (in other words the fact that penalization of the learner to incentivize the need for a subscription is more important than teaching the learner) I barely scored above the A2 level on my initial testing. This despite the fact that I enjoy complete conversational fluency with my Russian friends.

Since I am not a new learner, I didn’t allow this to discourage me from using the app entirely, but it definitely opened my eyes to exactly what Duolingo is and what it is not. For a new language learner however, Duolingo could be a devastatingly bad experience that turns them off to the language learning experience altogether.

Even today, I will run out of hearts over the course of practicing from time to time. Usually after an hour or so (7 or 8 lessons) I will have made a number of small errors that would seem insignificant or even go completely unnoticed by a native Russian speaker, but which are caught by Duolingo’s super nitpicky and entirely unforgiving standards. This type of punitive teaching is entirely counterproductive, and it is why so many users and former users now despise Duolingo. Myself included.

I will still use Duolingo to practice because, well.. why not. I’ll never pay for it. I have no problem being a drain on their server.. but I always warn new learners to stay far away from Duolingo until they’ve achieved at least some level of fluency (B1 or above) and then incorporate it as a practice tool only. Rosetta Stone on the other hand, is an amazing learning system, and I recommend it to everyone.

Duolingo is a great tool for people like me that want to learn something new to stimulate the brain. You have many opportunities to learn a language and push yourself to increase the amount t of words in that language. You may only have 5 hearts to start with but you can earn more by clicking the heart on the top right to earn more hearts. It will show more of the words you may need more help understanding. It’s fun and entertaining while learning. If your already fluent in a language you just aren’t challenged like some one who isn’t fluent. May you should try a new language. Duolingo is a good start to learning something g new.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

The Atlas Heart is a California travel website dedicated to showing you the best of the Golden State from a local perspective.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

©2024 The Atlas Heart

Duolingo Leagues & Leaderboards – EVERYTHING You Need To Know

• Posted by by Matt
• Last updated: August 28, 2023
• 13 minute read

Duolingo leagues are definitely one of Duolingo’s biggest and most popular features.

These weekly leaderboards add a competitive and motivational edge to your language learning experience, which can push you even harder to complete your daily lessons.

But what exactly is a Duolingo league? How many leagues are there? What’s so special about the Diamond League (and the Diamond Tournament)? Are people cheating? What’s the best strategy for winning? And does your Duolingo league really matter?

All will be revealed — let’s get into it!

This page may contain affiliate links. This means that we may receive a commission for any sign-ups or purchases made, but at no extra cost to you . Learn more

What are Duolingo leagues?

A Duolingo league is basically a weekly leaderboard containing 30 random users from across all platforms, including IOS, Android and desktop.

To join a weekly leaderboard, all you need to do is complete a lesson. Then, head to your league tab and you will see yourself in a leaderboard with a group of other Duolingo users.

League leaderboards are ranked on XP — the user with the most XP at the end of the week will finish top of the leaderboard and get promoted to the next league. 

The promotion zone can cover as many as 20 users, and this will depend entirely on which league you’re in. The current breakdown is as follows:

• Bronze – Top 20
• Silver – Top 15
• Gold – Top 10
• Sapphire – Top 7
• Ruby – Top 7
• Emerald – Top 7
• Amethyst – Top 7
• Pearl – Top 7
• Obsidian – Top 5
• Diamond – No promotions

Anyone who finishes 24th or lower — in what is known as the demotion zone — will be relegated to the previous league.

And if you finish outside both the promotion zone and demotion zone then you’ll stay in your current league for another week.

Follow me on Duolingo!

Up for some friendly competition? Then be sure to follow me on Duolingo!

My username is  DCiiieee  🙂

(If the link doesn’t work then just type my username into the ‘Search for friends’ bar on the app )

How many leagues are there in Duolingo?

There are currently 10 leagues in Duolingo.

When the league system first launched there were only 5, with another batch of 5 being added in a subsequent update.

The leagues are the same across all language courses. So whether you’re learning Spanish or Hawaiian, you’ll compete in the same 10 leagues as everyone else.

What are the different Duolingo leagues?

From bottom to top — with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest — the 10 Duolingo leagues in order are: 

• Bronze 
• Sapphire 
• Emerald 
• Amethyst 

Bronze is the starter league. From there, the goal is to work your way up through the leagues all the way up to Diamond — Duolingo’s highest league. 

Once you’ve done that and you’ve finished every single league, you will progress onto the Diamond Tournament (more on that below!).

Duolingo Diamond League

The Diamond League is the highest league on Duolingo. It differs from the other leagues in a couple of ways.

The first is that only 5 users can be relegated and there are (technically) no promotions.

Diamond is usually the most competitive of the 10 leagues. Although only 5 users can be relegated, you have to be on your A-game to stay in the league for another week.

XP totals are usually really high—often in the thousands—so you may need to do more lessons than usual to avoid getting demoted back to the Obsidian league.

Winning the Diamond league is even harder. I’ve been using Duolingo every day for over 6 years and I’ve only won it a couple of times!

And what do you get if you win the Diamond League? A swanky achievement , some gems and a pat on the back from the owl.

After that, the league resets, and you have to do it all over again (if you can muster the energy!).

the diamond tournament

Back in November 2021, Duolingo introduced something called the Diamond Tournament.

Duolingo experimented with this for a few months before removing it. However, they brought it back a short time later. And now it’s a firm fixture in the league lineup!

So how does the Diamond Tournament work?

Basically, to qualify for the Diamond Tournament, you need to finish in the top 10 of the Diamond League on a week that the Diamond Tournament is running.

That’s because the Diamond Tournament doesn’t run every week, due to the fact that each tournament has 3 weekly phases.

If a new tournament is about to begin, it will say “Top 10 qualify for the Tournament” at the top of the leaderboard.

However, if it says “The next Tournament is starting soon”, then even if you finish in the top 10, you won’t be entered into a tournament at the end of the week…

If you do manage to qualify for the Diamond Tournament, then you’ll notice there are 3 weekly stages:

• Quater-finals
• Semi-finals

Every week the users with the lowest XP totals are eliminated and returned to the Diamond League. Those with the most XP progress to the next stage.

The Duolingo Tournament Finals is the last stage, where those with the best XP totals over the previous two weeks battle it out to be crowned Diamond Tournament champion!

The Diamond Tournament is currently only available on iOS and desktop .

When does your Duolingo league end?

Your Duolingo league will end at some point between 22:00 and 01:00 on Sunday night/Monday morning — regardless of your time zone.

A new league will begin shortly after the last one finishes. Simply complete a lesson to be placed in a new league.

The general consensus used to be that the leagues would reset at 00:00 UTC every Monday. However, it’s clear from Reddit that users across the world tend to see their leagues reset around midnight in their local time.

So if you’re in the UK, for instance, your league will finish several hours before someone in the US. This also means your new leaderboard will begin several hours earlier as well.

Are people cheating in Duolingo leagues?

Because some of the XP totals — especially in the Diamond League and Tournament — are so crazy high, it gets people wondering whether some users are cheating.

All too often (and this isn’t just limited to the Diamond League) there are users that top the leaderboards with seemingly impossible XP totals.

These are often accumulated in short periods of time by profiles that haven’t used Duolingo for that long.

While I don’t think this has been definitively proven, some have questioned whether some users are using dodgy algorithms to hack their way up the leaderboards.

You can see this first-hand in this post and this post on Reddit.

For sure these are some pretty high totals. Certainly wayyyyy higher than I’ve ever managed!

However, it doesn’t necessarily confirm they’re cheating.

In fact, as we’ll see later in the article, there are ways you can hit these numbers — so long as you’re strategic (and you have a lot of time on your hands!).

How to get out of Duolingo leagues

If you find the leagues annoying, or you’re just not that competitive, then you might want to opt-out.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear-cut way of doing this yet.

But there is a workaround.

To get out of Duolingo leagues, you will need to make your Duolingo profile private.

To do this, simply head over to the Duolingo website, hover over your profile picture and click Settings.

On the next page, click Privacy Settings, then uncheck the box that says “Make my profile public” and click SAVE CHANGES.

Be aware though that this won’t just get rid of the leagues — it will also make it impossible for other learners to find or follow you !

How to win your Duolingo league

If you’re desperate to finish top of your leaderboard and win your league, then you’ll definitely want to consider some of these tips.

These tips won’t guarantee you victory, but they’ll definitely improve your chances.

Naturally, you’re going to have an easier time winning the Bronze League than the Diamond, but in any case, these tips will give you a fighting chance regardless of which league you’re in.

wait to join your league

If you want to win your league, the first step is to… wait.

You may think that you need to come out of the blocks charging.

But actually, you’re much better off holding back and biding your time.

Duolingo places you in a new leaderboard once you’ve completed your first lesson of the week.

If you complete your first lesson first thing on a Monday, then guess what? You’re going to be placed in a leaderboard with other early birds.

In my experience, these guys are more likely to be the hardened Duolingo users. These are the guys that will show up on Duolingo every day and pour hours and hours of their time into completing lessons and racking up XP.

Make no mistake — if you want to win your league, then you don’t want to be competing with these guys, even if you’re an industrious learner yourself!

Instead, you will want to wait it out and give yourself a better chance of being grouped with the more casual learners (like me!).

These are the guys that only usually complete a few lessons a day, so won’t be earning crazy high XP totals.

This ensures you won’t need to be earning tens of thousands of XP to come out on top.

If you’re a streak freak, you probably won’t want to wait too long to join because you won’t want to lose your streak.

In which case, I’d recommend waiting until the last few hours of Monday (or pop on a Streak Freeze if you’re not bothered about the purity of your streak).

XP Boosts are absolutely essential in the battle for the top spot.

These handy little power-ups double the amount of XP you can earn in a lesson for anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

There are a few ways you can earn them (Early Bird chests and Friends Quests are two of my favorite ways) so you’ll want to make sure you’ve got one active for the majority of your lessons.

timed challenges

Timed Challenges are pretty much essential if you want to win your Duolingo league.

Lightning Round and Match Madness give you the chance to earn up to 40 XP every couple of minutes.

Better still, if you do them with an XP Boost active, that becomes 80 XP every couple of minutes!

You can see how easy this is in the video below.

You’ll want to do at least a couple of these a day depending on how intense your leaderboard is. They’ll help your comprehension speed loads as well!

perfect lesson boost

Currently unavailable .

Perfect Lesson Boosts don’t ordinarily add a lot of XP to your lesson totals.

But, when used with an XP Boost, you stand to earn an extra 20 XP per lesson.

They’re available from the Duolingo shop, cost 100 gems and last for 15 minutes.

As the name suggests, you only get the boost if you complete your lesson perfectly. So you’ll want to use them when you’re super confident with the skills you’re looking to work on.

legendary levels

Legendary Levels are up there with timed challenges when it comes to earning lots of XP quickly.

They’re not as accessible as timed challenges as they’re mainly for Super / Max members and you’ll need to have completed a level in its entirety before you can go for legendary.

However, if you’re in a position where you can attempt them, they’re probably one the best ways to conquer your Duolingo league.

If you go about them in the right way, you stand to earn as much as 110 XP for every completed challenge. If you know your stuff, you could probably get this done in under a few minutes every time.

harder lesson, double xp

Every now and then as you’re working through your course, you’ll get the option to do a harder lesson for double XP.

It’s not something you can spontaneously activate but you usually get the option every few lessons.

They usually cost 20 gems and give you the chance to earn twice the amount of XP in your lesson.

The base amount is usually 10 XP so this will give you the chance to earn 20.

If you can spare the gems and you don’t mind cranking up the difficulty, you’ll want to accept these challenges every time they pop up.

Recommended strategy

When it comes to Duolingo, I’m really not that competitive. As I’ll explain later, I’m really not that bothered about the leagues — I’m more interested in learning my languages!

However…

I know many of you are. So using the tips above, I’ve devised this simple strategy that will give you a solid chance of coming out on top of your Duolingo league.

Wait as long as you can before completing your first lesson.

Ideally, hold back until 11pm on Monday night.

You won’t get the Early Bird XP Boost, but hopefully, you will get placed in a less competitive league.

This should ensure you won’t need to earn some of the crazy high XP totals we saw earlier!

tuesday to friday

Feel free to jump on Duolingo as early as you want.

In fact, the earlier the better, so you can bag yourself the Early Bird XP Boost.

You won’t get this until 6pm, so you’ll want to pencil in an evening session as well.

Once you’ve done this, focus on completing your current level on your lesson path . This will activate a 15-minute XP Boost.

You’ll then want to dive into a timed challenge (either Lightning Round or Match Madness) or a legendary level and keep bashing them out until your XP Boost has expired.

Continue completing levels and doing timed challenges for as long as you desire.

saturday to sunday

Again, try to jump on Duolingo as early as possible (before 12pm) so you bag yourself the Early Bird boost.

Then go about completing your first level of the day.

Once you’ve done this, instead of jumping into a timed challenge, you’ll instead want to head over to the shop and activate a Perfect Lesson Boost (if available).

Then head over to your learning path and dive into a legendary level. You’ll want to line these up through the week so you have as many to complete on the weekend as possible.

If you manage to complete a legendary level flawlessly, you’ll earn as much as 110 XP (assuming you’ve got an XP Boost and Perfect Lesson Boost active).

I recommend legendary levels instead of timed challenges on the weekend, as the weekend timed challenge (XP Ramp Up) is nowhere near as effective as the weekday ones.

Duolingo league repair

Demoted from your Duolingo league? Worry not — you now have the option to reverse it.

The League Repair tool gives you the opportunity to keep your place in your league for another week. It’s not cheap though — coming in at a mega 2000 gems!

To do this, simply head over to your league tab at the beginning of a new leaderboard. If you’ve been demoted, Duolingo will ask if you want to keep your place for 2000 gems. Simply hit the repair button and you’ll be entered back into the league you dropped out of.

Is it worth 2000 gems? Probably not. I think you’d be much better off saving them for heart refills and legendary attempts.

But if you’re really attached to your league — perhaps it was a really brutal week and you only missed out by a few XP — and you’ve got gems to spare, then it’s definitely a nice option!

Does your Duolingo league matter?

Look, even though I’m not that competitive on Duolingo, I like the leagues.

I mean, it makes sense. Duolingo’s not just a language-learning app. It’s also a game.

So why not have some weekly leaderboards?

Buuuuuuuuut…

I see a lot of people making a massive deal out of their leagues.

They get annoyed because someone they’re never going to meet managed to earn a few more XP than them, denying them victory in a league that — let’s be honest — doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

The most important thing on Duolingo — the thing that brings us all to Duolingo in the first place — is learning languages. Everything else is secondary.

Remember that — and consider some of the following as well:

xp is flawed

The league system encourages you to focus on earning as much XP as possible. This would be fine if more XP equaled more progress in your target language.

But it doesn’t.

As it is, the easiest and quickest way to earn XP is to take shortcuts.

Notice how the tips above do absolutely nothing to help you in your language.

When your focus becomes XP, you naturally gravitate towards things that will give you as much as possible in as little time as possible.

That means rinsing timed challenges every couple of minutes and doing nothing to move forward with your language.

XP, as we’ve seen, doesn’t correspond to proficiency. Someone with 10,000 XP in French could be lightyears ahead of someone with 100,000 — IF the person with 100,000 spent all their time gaming the system.

some users have an unfair advantage

Another reason you probably shouldn’t worry about your Duolingo league is that many have an unfair advantage.

What is that you might ask?

We’ve already covered it — XP power-ups.

John could do 10 Spanish lessons without any power-ups active. With perfect combo bonuses, he earns a total of 150 XP.

Sophie does the same 10 Spanish lessons with perfect combo bonuses. However, she has an XP Boost and a Perfect Lesson Boost active. That means that while John was earning 15 XP per lesson, Sophie was earning 50.

Same lessons, same amount of time.

John has 150. Sophie has 500.

You can say that’s smart. And, sure, it’s part of the game.

But Sophie hasn’t learned anything more than John… yet she comes out 350 XP ahead.

And it doesn’t end there.

Duolingo doesn’t award more XP to those who complete the harder lessons in a course.

Sure, you get the ‘harder lesson for double XP’ thing that pops up every so often.

But I’m talking about the levels in the latter units of a course. The hard stuff.

These levels take longer to complete, not just because they’re harder than the stuff in the early units, but because the questions can be so much longer.

There’s no compensation for this XP-wise. Those who only review the early units or spend their time bashing out timed challenges will almost always come out on top of those who are trying to make progress in their course.

And then there’s the premium membership. No ads. No hearts.

This not only speeds up the lessons but also allows premium users to keep plowing on — even after making 5 or more mistakes.

The bottom line — the leagues simply aren’t an accurate reflection of the thing that matters most on Duolingo: learning a language.

pressure and burn-out

It’s a tiring old business trying to win (or even stay in) your Duolingo league, particularly in the higher ones. The XP totals are often astronomical.

So when your league becomes a priority, this can put enormous pressure on you to rack up huge XP totals in a short amount of time.

This is exhausting and unsustainable in most cases. If you begin to associate Duolingo with fatigue, then, over time, you’ll be less inclined to show up and complete your lessons.

And if you want to learn a language, this ain’t good.

Sadly, I see this happen all the time: users racking up loads of XP for a few weeks and then disappearing, never to be seen again.

This is what happens when the need to be the best overtakes the desire to learn a language.

what i prefer instead

When it comes to Duolingo success, the most important thing (for me at least) is to not lose sight of why you started using it in the first place.

I can pretty much guarantee you didn’t sign up because of the league system. Most likely you signed up because you wanted to learn a language.

So focus on that, and nothing more. It’s easy to get caught up in the gamification of Duolingo, thinking that there’s a correlation between those who finish top of their leagues and their ability in their target languages.

But as we’ve just seen, it’s rarely this clear-cut.

My advice is to take the league system lightly. Don’t prioritize it. Simply see it as a bit of fun that adds to your motivation.

In my experience, it’s better to focus on other things.

On Duolingo, I believe moving forward along your lesson path and keeping your streak going should be your main focus. Moving through the units is a clear sign of progress, and a solid streak shows you’re developing a strong language-learning habit.

And don’t forget that fluency in your target language will depend as much on what you do away from Duolingo as what you do on it.

Innovative Language , for instance, offers high-quality content in over 30 languages — including Spanish , French , German and Italian — that, when used alongside Duolingo, will take your listening and speaking abilities to crazy new levels.

A quality VPN, such as NordVPN , will open the doors to an almost endless supply of movies and TV shows in your target language.

And LingQ will help you turn your favorite content — such as books, blog posts, song lyrics, and even Netflix shows — into your most effective lessons.

It’s here that the learning takes place — not at the top of your Duolingo league. Don’t forget that!

Have your say

The league system is definitely a massive part of Duolingo.

But what do you think of it? 

Does it motivate you to do your daily lessons? 

Has it helped you progress in your target language? 

Are there any changes you’d like Duolingo to make? 

What are your thoughts on the ‘cheating’ debate? 

Let me know in the comments! 

Hey! I'm Matt, the Duolingo-nut behind duoplanet. I started using Duolingo back in 2014, and my current streak stretches all the way back to May 2016. Using Duolingo I've reached a comfortable level in Italian and acquired a basic understanding of Russian. I've also gone deep into the Spanish, German and French courses, and intend to explore more languages in the years to come. Needless to say, I'm obsessed with language learning!

Post navigation

100 of the best (and weirdest) Duolingo sentences EVER

Duolingo Stories in 2024 - EVERYTHING You Need To Know

76 comments.

I NEED to get the achievement!!! I crave it! I lust for it!

That’s the spirit!

Thank you for the article. I just finished grinding out diamond league and finished number 1 because I wanted the achievement badge but was immediately surprised to see the 3 week diamond tournament which I’m definitely not gonna do, so I came here to see how I could withdraw or exit the tournament but I think I’ll just do a couple lessons everyday and let myself go down through the leagues.

Tshe exact reason why I care for the leagues xD I only want that 1 achievement, so I can have all achievements. That is it.

(Also, let me just add, the timed challenges helping me to memorize japanese and chinese characters more, doing them 100 times a day to earn xp as well xD)

Duolingo at best is only a small part of learning a new language. The drills are good, the explanations and depth poor, especially after Check Point 5. Sometimes wrong and clunky in my first language. Speak it with a good native speaker!!!

I think that learning with Duolingo is fun. It beats learning from a textbook. I like that it is interactive meaning that Duolingo learns what I miss and gives me a chance to try again. Like you, I really enjoy it. I am motivated to learn everyday because of the league aspect. I’m in the sapphire league. Yes, it has helped me progress in my target language (Spanish). I started learning as a kid, took some in high school and college, and now I’m picking it up again just for fun. I teach in a school where the students primarily speak Spanish. Learning their language helps me to connect. Would I make changes in Duolingo? I would make the app and desktop application more the same. It would be fun to play games in Spanish to help with learning new words and phrases. About cheating, I think it isn’t fair that people can cheat and not really learn. Then those of us, who try to play by the rules, are not rewarded. I’ll continue. Maybe I’ll make the diamond league in the future!!!!

Thank you! This really resonated with me. I am studying German, Italian and Russian, in equal amounts. I started all three simultaneously, having previously studied Russian and German in college. I find the Italian course to be horrible. I have to resort to using an online translator half the time to get the correct answer- which is sometimes not even accepted as correct. I’ve read in other forums that Italian for English speakers is really bad, but is better if you are doing Italian as a French speaker. I might drop it and find a better system just for Italian. By contrast, the German course is stellar. They have four or five different speakers, including two children. You hear a variety of voices. There seems to be triple the amount of stories to listen to and it is much better paced than Italian. Russian has no stories, unfortunately, but is much better than Italian for understanding the language. Italian threw out dozens of words and no explanation as to its quirky sentence structure. I’m not learning it well nor very much, and am discouraged. I won the Diamond league, 1st place, multiple times. I got disgusted two weeks ago due to an obvious bot. How can one person study only Spanish and have over 600,000 XPs without completing the entire course? It makes no sense. I dropped out the final day that week and made my profile private. That’s the only way to get out of the leagues completely. I was too motivated to win each week and was learning less. It was too much stress and not helpful.

Excellent write-up! Outlines the pros and cons so clearly. I’m relatively new to Duolingo, started less than 3 months ago, and I’m focusing on just one language for now- Chinese. Having no background whatsoever in the language, it’s a slow slog for me, trying to master the Chinese characters and pinyin in addition to everything else that goes with tackling a totally unfamiliar language. I’ve never been to China or even had a Chinese pen pal! I didn’t pay any attention to the leagues until this week and after reading your informative writeup, I’ll shift my focus back to where it was before, after this week. I’ll go back to focusing on learning my chosen language. Where I fall in the leagues doesn’t really matter! So long as I’m happy with my language progress.

Thanks for this post Matt. I have a 560 day streak and only recently found myself getting super competitive in the leagues. I’m in the Pearl league now. My goal is to win the Diamond league once and try to stay in the upper leagues after that. I also used to just do a random lesson a day for the streak but now I’m focusing on completing the course and improving my French skills. Have you completed all ten units of a course? Its very daunting.

Glad you enjoyed the article. Definitely a good approach to prioritise completing the course.

Nope, never completed all 10 units of a course. Although as far as I’m aware the only courses for English speakers with 10 units are French and Spanish. I made it to the end of the original French course a few years ago, but obviously that was before they added all the new content.

Try not to let it put you off though. The higher the mountain, the better the view. The French course is probably Duolingo’s best, so you can rest assured that if you make it through all 10 units then you’re going to be pretty bloody proficient!

Bonjour! I started using DuoLingo to see how one would learn Korean, but quickly tried German, Hungarian, Italian, Swedish, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew and French. I’ve stayed with French, as it was the language I took back in high school. In reading a few of Matt’s blog posts, I stumbled across the comment about making it through 10 units to become proficient– but my French course has 209 units! Maybe there was a reorganization of DuoLingo, so I was wondering… how many units, under the current organization, will I have to complete before I will feel moderately comfortable trying to speak to a person “en francais”?

One way to massively boost your xp is to do a level up to legendary while under 2x boost. Each legendary level is worth 45 if you do it perfectly which doubles to 90. You have to do like 4 or 5 to get legendary and you can usually do them all in under 15 minutes giving up to 450 xp in a single boost. Just FYI…

Thank you for the great guide.

Actually earning high XP is quite easy. Whether this is cheating or not depends…. Personally I think XP is not a good measure of progress. Crowns are better.

Right now there is a bug on Android. So Android earns twice as much XP as iOS and you get +5 correctness bonus. If you also patch a broken skill that is another +5XP. So for a Legendary skill with a x2 multiplier on Android you can score 100XP per lesson which can be completed in about 80 seconds or so for a practiced user. This is not speculation. This is me sitting down with an Android and iPhone together side by side with my account. This is also much easier than doing a real lesson and faster. It’s possible to do 10 of these inside the 15 minutes double XP boost time window. So that is 1000XP for 15 minutes effort. But you obviously still need to trigger that bonus time from a real lesson. Like I said personally I think this is really broken but that’s how it works.

Leagues also have the 40XP timed lessons for gems from the leaderboard. This is another good way of racking up XP fast if you have lots of gems. Again 40XP/minute. Some people do this hours on end. I kid you not. (Check their duome.eu stats).

Honestly people waste time on duo doing real lessons if all you want is XP to win leagues. It’s broken. Don’t waste your time.

There are other “legal if not moral” ways too. The only way to win is not to play. That is play your own game and learn. Ignore leagues. Downside is Duo is doubling down on this broken system. I only respect users who have collected all gold badges/maxed out level 5 everything and 1000+ crowns. Anything else is gravy.

One thing not mentioned is that this is a world wide course with people learning in every possible time zones. I am never quite sure if when I finish on Sunday night whether people on the otherside of the world still have 8 hours left to rack up XP points? Do their points they earn on their “Sunday” carry over to my Monday as they are hours behind? Otherwise I completely agree not to take it too seriously. Ps. I’m doing Welsh and get xp boosts for two lessons when I level up and get xp ramp ups.

To answer your question, I’m a duo plus member and I am doing Greek and Arabic and I get boosts like you do for 15 minutes after I’ve levelled up on a crown. I’ve also discovered lately that if I go in early like before midday and do a few lessons I earn a 15 minute boost that I can release in the evening.

I do think that the leagues pressurise us to work too fast. I’ve taken to screen shooting sentences I want to take my time to study or write out by hand later. And in a way I think I want to stop trying to compete in the leagues because I’d like to practice speaking the sentences and when I’m rushing to complete as many as possible in 15 minutes I don’t do that, so my language study suffers.

I’m interested that one of your commenters reported that by making your profile private you don’t end up being put into a league and I might try that out so that I concentrate on my studies but it is fun as well.

I love Duolingo. I am 58 and have been trying to learn Spanish “off and on” for most of my life. I even took Spanish classes in grade school and in college for 3 semesters. I have learned more on Duolingo in a couple months than I did my whole life of trying. I am currently in the Pearl league and will most likely be in the Diamond league in 6 days. I tried my hardest for hours each day to get #1 in the last league I was in, but I kept being beat by over 200 pts by someone as soon as I passed them each time, and it only was taking them about 5 minutes each time to do it. I’m exhausted from trying that hard again. I’ll go back to using it to learn instead of compete.

As for the cheating topic — Sometimes Duolingo freezes when it says I can earn a heart by watching an ad. I got frustrated when nothing happened as I clicked Watch an Ad, and I started hitting it repeatedly. As I did, I realized the XP counter was going up with every angry hit. I never got to watch an ad nor did I get the heart I was after. I did, however, get a lot of XP by accident! This is a glitch I hope Duolingo can correct at some point. The freezing issue is frustrating, but luckily doesn’t happen often.

I really enjoyed the “cheating” section above. I’m about to leave Duo once and for all, for a variety of reasons, one of which is the company’s refusal to do anything about the blatant cheaters. I got my Legendary badge and have managed to stay in Diamond for about 40 weeks so I don’t really have a dog in the fight when it comes to Diamond placement. But watching people cheat like mad to “win” the league over and over again, is something I think Duo ought to address if only to give a fair shake to users who enjoy actual, fair competition.

Yesterday I was knocked out of first place in an easy Diamond by a user that clicked through more than 100 stories over 2 days. To “win.” The Diamond I’m in right now started last night and the leader clocked 4000 XP in the first 6 hours by (somehow) doing 40-point ramp-ups at a rate of 1 per minute. It’s hard to believe an actual human was doing that, but it’s what their Duome data shows.

And then you have the “luck of the draw” effect where some people get their Legendary badge with a 1000XP while others are perpetually doomed to end up in leagues with cheaters.

I don’t know the answer, but as a paying customer, my money is going elsewhere when this subscription runs out.

I have 16,752XP in Diamond league this week (I think it ends tonight) and I haven’t cheated. I used duolingo for Indonesian back in 2013 (and haven’t been on it for years), and when I began Spanish last week I was put in Obsidian league. So I am in Diamond league on my second week of learning Spanish. I haven’t purchased the Plus subscription or done the free trial. I have purchased other Spanish learning learning resources but turns out they are immersive language resources & I am struggling to get started with them due to not knowing any Spanish. I have had the time this week to invest on Duolingo to begin to learn enough Spanish to use the other resources I have purchased. I have studied for hours the past two weeks in order to learn the basics & increase the number of Spanish words I know not to win. I go over the practice sessions regularly & have redone practice session even when there is no XP reward. I do the Ramp Up / Lightening Bolt challenges when they are available & when I have enough gems as I do think the time challenges help with fluency – improves faster response/need to work out what what said or read quickly/automatically. I have completed the Ramp up challenges in around a minute multiple times. Duolingo does throw in new words/new phrases when you do the ramp up challenges multiples times. I do often time out when they do that but I do wish they would add new words/phrases more often to help with learning the language (or have the option to opt in to be more challenged). Duolingo also uses only your harder questions/newer completed lessons after doing multiple time based challenges so Duolingo is challenging those that are doing multiple time based challenges. In the lightning bolt challenge you receive XP during the challenge 5xp when you answer 5 or so questions, then another 20XP half way through & the remainder XP at end. So yes you can earn 20xp every 30 seconds. Double XP means I have earned 87XP by completing one legendary practice session. I go on duolingo just to get the free chest of gems when I don’t have time to practice so I have the gems to do legendary levels/time based challenges when I have the time. My goal is to make sure I have the basics down rather than work my way through the tree as I know use other resources more than duolingo. I do need to do the practice sessions repeatedly to get the hang of verb tenses etc. I do compete all the levels & don’t skip levels when duolingo offers that. I did 2 days this week where I focused on stories only, stories currently available to me earn less XP than I would doing new or practice sessions. My weekly XP could be higher if that was my goal. But as learning the basics is my goal I have spend time on both lower XP things & no XP reward things as well as the new & practice sessions which have higher XP. Just because someone has a really high weekly XP score doesn’t mean they have cheated, or are doing it only to win the league. They could be needing to learn a language quickly as they as are traveling soon, need it for work, they are studying the language at school/college/university, they have a heap of time due to injury/illness/another reason or just wanting to get the basics down quickly & have the time to do so. Or they could be doing more than one language on Duolingo (I have only done Spanish the past two weeks, but do plan on practicing Indonesian on Duolingo once I have done at least 2 Duolingo units of Spanish so not to confuse myself). I have only use the Andriod app this week & haven’t experienced any glitches like the comment above.

This week I decided to go for #1 in the diamond league and I didn’t cheat although maybe some people think I did? I bought paid this year during the new year sale. I am at 9371 XP right now.

All I did was use my double XP rewards on the lightning games. The matching one that’s been around the last couple weeks let me do 9 sessions in 15 minutes for a total of 720 XP. I always managed at least 2 double XP rewards per day (the one for an AM lesson you get to use after 6pm and then the one for getting a star in regular lessons).

I’ve seen people with 20k+ and I imagine that is how they’ve done it. They probably just spent gems to extend double XP time when available and spent more time in general on the app.

I don’t remember if lightning rounds were a thing for unpaid but if they aren’t and Duo isn’t already doing it, they should have separate leagues for paid and free folks.

People can do that. Someone in my league did 9,000 XP in 1 day, and that’s actually normal for the leagues I’m in. In the end that person ended up 3rd. And once I had to go up to 51,384XP to win against a cheater. Ugh.

You can rack up 800 points without cheating in about 15 mins. Here’s how:

1. (the hard part): Get good enough to beat the timer on the word matching game in the league page.

2. Start that double bonus timer. There are several was to get one, and one of them is repeatable.

3. Cycle through the word matching game as quickly as possible. If you get fast enough you can get ten games in and each one is worth 80 points. And that 80 points can take 90 seconds(?) so it’s faster than the 40 pts / minute you mention above.

I can do this two, maybe three times a day if I’m pushing for leagues. But it’s exhausting and though it’s great for vocab, it slowed me down on the grammar / syntax part, and without those it’s hard to progress through the course, and I’m here to learn Spanish not beat a league of random people over and over again.

You can’t go that fast without a paid subscription because you keep getting interrupted with ads. Also, without a paid subscription you run out of hearts if you make too many mistakes so I go a bit slower to check my answers are right if I’m short on hearts (I can practice to earn more hearts and get XP doing it but they are not as many points as doing some of the challenges). Also, it’s really hard to get enough gems to do all the high value challenges. Someone suggested separate leagues for paid and unpaid subscribers, that would be great but I would think that Duolingo would really like us all to become paid subscribers.

On top of that, that tactic works only with some languages and at easier units. I am studying Japanese (unit 10) and beside not having stories, it’s impossible because of the structure of the language to finish the highest levels of the word matching game (a native speaker friend of mine tried and couldn’t either). As the article says, it’s not about cheating, it’s about unfair competition.

I joined Duolingo back in 2013 and really struggled to get on with it. I tried French and Spanish (both intended as refreshers as I had studied them at school) but I was frustrated at the pace having already learned the basics beforehand. I picked up Italian a few years later but dropped it after a couple of weeks when life got in the way. This time I’m learning Norwegian and have stuck with it for a few months (although I did take a couple of weeks off when I wanted to). It helps that I have a Norwegian friend to practice with in real life. I like the new features such as the power ups and I am quite competitive in the leagues (I’m super pleased with myself for just getting promoted to Amethyst!). I paid for the plus as I was getting frustrated at getting so far but then being blocked for making mistakes when I just wanted to learn. The desire to keep up my streak is beneficial as it forces me to practice but I tend to focus on learning and not necessarily progressing. If I don’t think I’m ready to learn a new section, I stop and keep practicing what I’ve already covered. The timed exercises do help with this as I really get to understand what I’m just winging and what I actually understand. I like the fact you can follow people and see how they are progressing, it motivates me. But I’m only following a few people. A small group to cheer each other on. I hadn’t realised there were bots but that would explain what happened in a group I was in a few weeks ago. 35000 XPs in a week just seemed too intense! For the past week I’ve been lazy and not writing down new words and phrases as I’ve gone along and it really shows as it’s a struggle to remember them. I’m going to go back and write down what I’ve missed. Writing helps me remember. I’ve no idea what the stories are but perhaps that’s because I’ve not passed the first checkpoint yet (I’m slow I know, but learning a new language from scratch at my old age is a pleasure not a race!). I’m hoping to finish the full course by the end of the year. Who knows, I might then go back to the French and Spanish and nail them too!

Also, people on the internet also have an unfair advantage because they don’t use the heart system, they get unlimited hearts.

But at the same time no boosts and other similar features

In regards to the cheating topic. I myself can quickly garner between 300 and 500 XP within 15 minutes utilizing the double experience after leveling a lesson.

Something that I believe few people know is that you can gain XP doing practice to gain hearts. (No hearts if Duo Plus) If you are quick enough you can repeatedly practice and gain XP utilizing this method. When the double XP runs out I simply return to leveling up another lesson and repeat the practice process.

This in effect helps maintain high XP and betters your understanding of the language through repetition. I know of very few people utilizing this method which may cause others to think one is cheating.

Hey Matt, how do you change the icon on your profile? I remember being prompted to set it a while back, but now I can’t figure out how to change it. Thanks!

Hey David! I take it you’re referring to the emoji next to your profile pic on the leaderboard? There should be a blue bubble in the top right of your pic, just tap on that and you’ll be able to pick an icon. If you’ve already got one selected, just tap it and you should be able to change it

Trying to understand the idea that there are 10 leagues with 30 people each. ONLY 300 people are in the system?

It’s probably just run on like different servers. Like let’s say there’s 2,089 people in the Ruby league. There’s 100 different servers hosting 30 people each, with a few missing some people. When someone joins the league, they get randomly put in one of the servers without all 30 people in it.

Those accumulating XP rapidly may be running multiple sessions at once–on a phone, laptop, and PC. If going for Legendary status for a skill, they could be running it on all three devices simultaneously. That’s potentially 120 XP in a very short period of time.

This is really useful – I’ve been trying to figure out how the scoring system works. Right now (a Tuesday p.m.), I am #9 in a diamond league … but if I click on the person who is #8, I have more XP than her each of Sunday, Monday and today – so how is it possible she’s ahead of me overall? To be clear, I know I shouldn’t care about it, and I appreciate the comments above about how the league system incentivizes you to go too quickly and not actually learn. But I also want the league system to be fair and transparent…!

I was very into Duolingo a few years ago. I used it to learn Polish and Italian and also as practise for my other learned languages French, Spanish and Portuguese. Then I started following the polyglot crowd on social media and as there’s such a snobbery over Duolingo among them I started to think negatively towards to it too. Added to that new job pressures meant I kept missing days and losing my streak. I dropped using it though left the app on my device. Now I’ve come back and noticed all the new and different challenges there are I’m completely hooked. I’d never paid much notice of the league before; I was more interested in amassing gems. I’d done quite well in doing that so I had all these gems I could spend on lightning round, timer boosts, refill hearts, legendary. It was great! Of course my gems fell away and now I’m struggling to get them back. Stories are great! They weren’t available for Italian when I was last on. I powered through them earning loads of xp in the process. That’s when i took note of the league. I was in pearl and there were only two leagues left to unlock. Any spare minute I got I was on Duolingo. Made it through to Obsidian. I read up on what gives the most XP and discovered the most points come from placement tests. Now here’s my unfair advantage – I already have knowledge of a few different languages so I joined on new courses : English for Italian Speakers, French speakers, Spanish speakers, Portuguese speakers, Polish speakers, Italian for French speakers, Spanish speakers etc. I ramped up my points and got to a high level in Obsidian. Still I hadn’t quite reached top 5 and it was a real battle til the end but just managed to scrape in. Now I have no intention of topping the Diamond league. I’ve used up all my advantages and don’t have time to get to those high scores people are accruing at the top. I am trying to stop from falling through demotion zone though. It’s been a fun couple of weeks. But now I’m going back to concentrating on the lessons themselves instead of the winning.

How do I get out of these leagues? I need to focus on the lessons and reading forums to get the reason behind the answers. Duolingo is lacking in the area of teaching certain grammar. They just put it out there and you miss it because there is no lesson on it. Then, you must go to the forum snd see if there are answers to help understand why your answer was incorrect. I want out if the leagues!!!! I would not have joined had I known that this is what duolingo had become. I may quit and request a refund.

The article tells how to get out of leagues. Subsection early in article How to get out of Leagues. You just change your profile settings to be private. But you can also just ignore the whole league thing. If you drop down a league or two, who cares?

Ignore them

Hi. Can anybody please confirm for me the following? Am I correct in thinking that you can remain in the “Demotion Zone” all week, and if you want to advance to the next league, or remain in your current league, then on Sunday evening you should spend the most amount of time earning points to remove yourself from the Demotion Zone, because Monday at midnight is when the system resets your League standing…correct? So I do not have to be concerned remaining in the Demotion Zone all week as long as I make sure to advance out of that zone before Monday at midnight?

Am I cheating? I don’t use a program to rack up xp, I do it myself, but what I do to grind xp is I reset my English (from Dutch) course, then take the placement test, then repeat. I don’t get as much xp as the bots, but I do get around 100 xp per cycle, and unless there’s a cap to how much you can earn from the test, I should keep getting more as I learn more Dutch. I just want to know if this would be considered cheating or just outsmarting the system.

How can you reset a course?

I want to do it for some courses to start over again and to write down all lessons.

And I would also like to get rid of some courses, which I only started out of curiosity.

Hey, Matt. Loved reading your post! I came here bec I am currently struggling in the obsidian league and was wondering how many leagues there are. Since you asked: (I’m learning DANISH using DL on iOS) Completing one crown gets me 15 mins of XP boost right away, too. I’m also getting 15 mins of XP Boost when finishing one lesson as ‘early bird’ in the morning. I may then come back after 6pm to claim it. Can’t say if it is the same wiht portuguese, yet, which I only started to learn recently. I wouldn’t consider this ‘cheating’ since I sensed that android users earn a differend amount of XP in their lessons. Maybe that compensates in some way.

It’s definitely possible to get from 400+ to 700+ in 5 minutes. I’m playing in the diamond tournament right now and I want to see how far I can go. So I get the double xp boost and play Match Madness, which is normally 40xp per game, but with the xp boost you get 80xp. I usually average a little over a minute a game, which means I can get at least 320xp in 5 minutes and up to 400xp if I play well and fast.

I appreciate your post, especially regarding how to accrue XP points, and leagues. I’ve been learning Turkish and brushing up with French since this past March, and am already in the Diamond league. The impetus to compete and rise in the ranks can really take over, and is to the detriment of actually learning the language. Learning a language also requires off-line study. I have a few questions about how Duolingo awards XP points or gems. Firstly, are gems and XP the same? I am doing the free version primarily on an Iphone using the App. When I initially began, you could open a chest, and watch an ad every 20 minutes for varied Gems. Now it is once per hour. In completing each ordinary lesson, the XP awarded is added to the total in the leagues, and until very recently was added to the gem count as well. Over the past few days, completing lessons has not increased the gems. So, in the free version it becomes harder to complete the sections, given the final 4 crowns requires 100 gems each! Is this Duolingo’s way of cornering you into paying for extra gems, or subscribing to Super Duolingo? I wish there were more consistency between the App, desktop, and Duolingo on a phone without the App. Navigating between them is confusing…gems, XP, and lingots! Tips on the desktop and not the App?? Yeesh! I really am enjoying using the site, but am not going to subscribe. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I’m an Android user and I’m able to get these same boosts and ramp ups you mentioned, so I think it has nothing to do with the system we run, which is a fair, obvious and natural thing as the program is the same. The big deal and is being a premium (plus) user, that’s when ou really get the advantages, like unlimited hearts, 4x boost and expanded tips.

Leagues turned learning a language into a sport. And that’s bad. It gets more serious when you realize Duo is not a real learning language system. It’s more of a try-and-guess game. Duo fails miserably in teaching the basics and the foundations of an idiom. The method is based on “baby learning” system but it lacks basic explanations. I’m currently learning German, and luckily I’ve already had a background, otherwise I’d be completely lost in the (hard) German structure of articles, genres and verb conjugation. Duo gives you not a clue about that, except in that limited and poor Tips tab. Yes, you can reach an upper-basic or even an intermediate level, but it’ll take years.

Like many, I am hoping to earn a Legendary badge by winning a diamond league-seems like I am facing bots half the time with 25k+ winners. Last week I got put in a diamond league tournament. I won it and thought the badge was finally done and I could stop chasing it. Unfortunately winning a round of the tournament does nothing for the Legendary Badge. That is, winning a Diamond League Tournament is not the same as winning a Diamond League – very disappointing because I put in a huge effort to win and it was meaningless. At least I got a top 3 finish, just no legendary badge.

ok I was in the diamond tournament last week. I scoped out my opponents and none of them had done the 15k the previous week that I always run into so I thought i had a chance. I went like crazy and there was one other person that was near me so I put in a ton of time and broke his spirit.. so I had the high score for the week. But I got neither the legendary nor the winner achievement. Is this because the diamond tournament doesn’t count as a league? or does it take a couple of days to record this. i won the week by like 5k.

My thoughts on the cheating is that when u hit a 7 day streak u get 3 days of plus and if u get everything to level five then when u get the plus u get free ability to do legendarys which can add up at 40 xp per legendary part which using free plus is free with all the level fives u can abuse the legendary like this week I went from level one to six on three and now I’m at 1.5k and I only did 5 minutes each on two days and 40 minutes on the rest except today where I did 20 there are people who will abuse this VERY hard and be able to get tons of xp so my thought is not cheaters, abusers

I am learning Spanish and am really enjoying Duolingo. I don’t really care about the leagues, however I’m finally going to be in the top 10 of the Diamond league so I wanted to find out what the ‘tournament’ deal was. FYI – I did rack up some nice points by listening to the podcasts. I just wish they would add the latest podcasts to the app. Thanks for the article. Gracias!

The leagues really don’t matter but are an encouragement if you keep it in proportion. However where there’s a scheme there are schemers but, personally, I can’t be bothered with all that. We are here to learn languages, not look good in front of a bunch of people we will never meet!

What do you mean by only the top three positions in diamond league are “relegated”? My understanding is relegated means demoted to a lower position.

I don’t think he said anywhere that the *top* three get relegated. He said that in the Diamond league only three get relegated, meaning the bottom three (instead of the bottom five as in other leagues).

What puzzles me about that is that on my Android, in the Diamond League, it shows the bottom five, not just three, in the Demotion Zone. Perhaps it’s different for paid vs free accounts. Mine is free.

Something about the Diamond League baffles me. I try to stay in the Diamond League every week. I have learnt that I need about 3000 XP a week in order to avoid getting sucked into the relegation zone. But I know of someone who has been in the DL for over a year with less than 1000 XP week in week out. Can any anybody explain that?

If you do legendary lessons with the double XP bonus and the perfect bonus, you can earn 130 XP per lesson. 40 XP for the lesson + 5 XP combo bonus + 20 XP for the perfect lesson X 2. I usually save my legendary lessons for when I have the XP boost.

Stories are definitely a great way to quickly rack up some XP quickly if you turn on the perfect lesson bonus. You earn about 40 XP for relatively short lessons.

I have an absurd amount of gems from when they used to give them willy nilly (pre-league), so it’s pretty easy for me to always have a perfect lesson bonus on.

As you point out, when I’m in XP earning modes, I’m not really learning new information in whichever language I’m in; however, I like to think it is engraining some of the topics I covered earlier.

hello! I was just wondering if the dimaond tournament still exist? I finished top three in the diamond league but never got the option for the diamond tournament?? It just put me back into the leagues. hoping you could help answer my query, thank you! thank you so much for your support through this article too, appreciate it a ton <3

Thank you for this article matt. It cheered me up right after fucking losing the Diamond tournament in the finale. I’m not lying when I say I smashed my phone into the wall several times because I was so frustrated to see the last three weeks of effort following exactly the strategy you’ve posted here basically go poof. At least for the league part. And yeah, you are right, after a long time being in Diamond I kinda got used to being in the top leagues, which sort of makes you forget the original goal of starting that course… So again thanks, this was good to read after today’s defeat.

Just one thing I’d like to add about the new learning path: I think it really really sucks now that it is impossible to choose what kind of lessons you want to do, at least on the mobile app. Also with super duolingo making all the challenges and the legendary levels much more available in comparison to a standard user (due to being for free for super learners) – let’s be honest, that’s pretty much pay2win regarding the league thing. Currently I am seeing this app/game going into a wrong direction…

I agree 100%

Definitely one of Duolingo’s worst and most discouraging features.

I can’t see the leagues anymore 🥹 My profile is public, but the leagues disappeared. Whyyy???

Leagues always motivate me. I am at the Emerald league currently, and I enjoy it! Talking about racking up XP, the leader in my league is crazy and is just taking shortcuts (I saw him earning 80XP every 2 minutes!) at Ramp Up challenges. But this does not make be burn out and give up Duolingo.

I always try my best to be the leader while making progress on my course (I am learning French). Leagues are a fun motivational game for me to keep learning. The leader in my league have 6300 XP and I have 5000 – placing at the 2nd place – and I’m not going to rack up XP to chase up.

To be honest, timed challenges are usually boring if you rinse on them.

Thanks for your post! It was wonderfully written!

My username on Duolingo is “Justthespudlol” 🥔

But please don’t judge me for getting the level 5 Challenger achievement – I just got it today and it’s 1/6 of my total XP!

I JUST joined (late October, 2022) and wasn’t at ALL concerned with my league status UNTIL I noticed I ranked #1 (in the Bronze League of course, as I joined a week ago). I’ve ALWAYS been competitive – in the classroom, playing sports, etc.,…even in TRAINING COURSES with work colleagues 🤣 but NEVER “virtually”. That is – “Never virtually” UNTIL it appeared that a woman (a woman who HAD previously ranked SO LOW on the Bronze board that she’d BARELY qualify for advancement) APPARENTLY spent SEVERAL HOURS of our last day in the Bronze League working her butt off to become #3. She changed her status to “shady” and I IMMEDIATELY thought, “Oh HELLLLL no, HEIFER!! THAT title is MINE!” and SUDDENLY, INSTEAD of focusing SOLELY on learning Japanese & Latin, I was determined to earn so many XP that it’d be IMPOSSIBLE for ANYONE to catch me before we were advanced to the next league. This did NOOOOT help strengthen or increase my language learning. It did the OPPOSITE, because my focus was shifted to something that, as you noted in your article, DOESN’T effing MATTER in the LEAST. It’s merely an ego trip; a pride issue; whatever… for those of us who are genetically wired to be competitive & serves ZERO purpose educationally. I’ll wrap up with my thoughts on XP. Firstly, I wholeheartedly believe that the of XP awarded should directly correlate with the difficulty of the lesson/the language, etc. Second, with regard to cheating: As soon as I became aware of the point system, I perused profiles of users with, what I considered to be, RIDICULOUS numbers of points racked-up, and saw that MANY of those people had attained their status by “studying” their NATIVE LANGUAGES. I’d undoubtedly ANNIHILATE the competition if I added ENGLISH to my language list, but WhyTF would ANYone CHOOSE to WASTE valuable time doing that??? Yes, I’m most definitely COMPETITIVE, but I’m NOT an idiotic arsehole.

HAPPY LEARNING to all the HONEST, GOOD-HEARTED people out there! 💜

So when I’ve been number one in the Diamond League a couple times, that didn’t mean I was number one in the whole Duolingo world–just whatever grouping I was put in for the week? I was wondering, because my friends will post when they’re number one in the Diamond League and I never saw them on the leaderboard. That may also explain why my week ends early, so Sunday evening I’m actually starting the next week. I just figured maybe Duolingo was a British thing and the time was set for their zone.

There are loads of new leagues now, right Matt? One of them was Moonstone and Crystal. There is also a group event where everybody in your league has to get 25,000XP altogether to get 2,000 gems or so.

Think I read something about that on the Fandom page, but haven’t seen it on my app yet. I’ll keep an eye out!

Hi when I went on it late in the morning the leader boards were like this 809,452,437,397,395,360 and then me, does this mean that some people are cheating because this is only 1 day, I think this is to much

Hi on day 2 I managed to get second place but struggled because the winner has gone over 7000XP and don’t seem to stop, I am on 6700, believe it or no5 I am not cheating but it’s just breath taking and I wan5 to win the award, can you give me some tips on how to win. Also I went on it late at night but I think everyone has got the same ideas so I’m with a load of early birds. Help me please I really want to win the award and not have to waste another week, and I want to get extra gems for coming first.

Also I had to use 3 XP boosts on day 1 and day 2 to keep up with this guy Beverly frustrating trying to get them, one o& them is the early bird award though. Please help me though I’m begging you.

Also I used 3 Xperia boosts in order to keep up

To gain points you need to finish fast on some exercises? But some lessons require you to type in the answers. In Spanish it would be helpful to have the punctuation. You go faster without punctuation or capitals which is daft, especially in German when nouns have capital letters. I would like to have the reverse upside down question mark. In some system you have to type the answers in another typeface such as Cyrillic or Hebrew, with no indication how to install it, and in the early days I gave up. Another way of cheating is to have duolingo translate open and instead of guessing the anwers you have the common words for that lesson so you don’t get wrong answers

I might add that none of these boosts are available to people like me who use the web version. I did briefly use the app but it was taking up way to much space on my admittedly cheap phone, so I uninstalled it and returned to the website. With that in mind, web users only real option is to power through as may lessons as they can. This week I finished 2nd in the Diamond League with 7600 points. I’ve got a top three finish sometimes with under 3000. A few weeks ago I was relegated with 1500.

I agree with much of what you say about XP being flawed. If I see that I’m in with a chance of a top 3 finish then I’ll give it a go. But I won’t grind myself to the bone if I see its hopeless. And I’ll happily resign myself to relegation if I see that trying to stay up is hopeless. After all, I have no problem whatsoever getting promoted from the Obidsidan League, so it’s one week down the next week up. I have fun with the leagues. This week I watched the table as a user moved up a place and stayed in the Diamond league by one point after completing a handful of lessons in the last half hour or so. I just don’t don’t take it too seriously.

The comments and posts on Reddit about high XP make me anxious. I’m on my second week (well, day 15!) of learning Greek and I inadvertently topped 2 leaderboards before I even realised what it was. Easily done in the early leagues, but currently I’m on Emerald with 12302XP and 3 days to go!

I’m disabled so can’t work, so I have a lot of time, and a friend gifted me a Super subscription. Im fairly sure that without ads and with infinite takesy-backsies, it’s not very hard to hit those crazy highs you mentioned! Possibly relevant is the fact I’m autistic, so have a high threshold for repetitive action!

I also find that grinding the review sessions is how I learn to read the actual letters in Greek, rather than simply recognising the shapes of words, which is how the lesson path teaches me. So while you say it doesn’t enhance your learning, I disagree! But this may vary depending on how familiar you are with the target alphabet.

Diamond tournament is now available on Android.

I stumbled into winning diamond since I have been a slow and steady learner over the summer and my leagues got easier so I only needed 2,000 XP to win!

I also I realised when I was switched to the new legendary levels being each step, not each unit that I’d lost loads of progress so I just redid a whole unit with my XP boost to bank extra points. Doing stories to legendary is a crazy easy way to get XP since there’s so few questions.

I wish there was a minimum XP to allow all players to stay in their league. It bugs me that every week someone gets pushed down.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

related posts

• Miscellaneous

What Is Duolingo Gold? What We Know So Far

• 4 minute read

Duolingo Legendary Level Challenges – What You NEED To Know

• 7 minute read

Duolingo Podcasts – Here’s What You NEED To Know

• 3 minute read

Duolingo VIP Status – What Is It, How Do You Get It, Does It Matter?

Many people visit museums when they travel to new places Why do you think people visit museums Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer

Many people visit museums when they travel to new places. Why do you think people visit museums? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

When we go to travel to new place, visit of museums is one of the important part of our travel. Museums are a background of every city or country culture. Most of the people, when they go to new place, in one of the day that they are in travelling, they planning for go to museums for two important reasons.

First, they can inform of cities or countries culture, because in every museums in the world, there are some important symbol of their history and the culture. For example, when I go to the Malaysia and Singapore last year, one of the day in our trip, we went to many famous museums with our leader in those countries. Also I could get a lot information about history for many years ago and well-known person that efficient for themselves country and world. Every thing in museum is originate of culture, history background of every city.

Second, it is very amusing to visit of museums in every new place, and we can keep one day of our travel to visit of this place and have a nice and memorable day. For instance, when I was at university in Tehran, our history teacher decided to made a some group to visit of famous and best museums in Tehran. Therefore it was one day of my life, that I never forgot, because I had a nice day with my classmates and our teacher in that museum, and moreover our teacher explained about important things such as coin, carpet or painting that were in that museum, I remember that he explained with detail about every things that were in that museum, just we could not take any photo of that museum because in the most of the museums, take photo is forbidden.

We can conclude that visit of museum is one day in most of traveler people that travel to new place for inform of the city or country culture, that this is very amusing day.

• Log in or register to post comments

Sentence: Also I could get a

Sentence: Also I could get a lot information about history for many years ago and well-known person that efficient for themselves country and world. Description: A pronoun, plural, reflexive is not usually followed by a noun, singular, common Suggestion: Refer to themselves and country

Sentence: Every thing in museum is originate of culture, history background of every city. Description: The token is is not usually followed by a verb, base: uninflected present, imperative or infinitive Suggestion: Refer to is and originate

Sentence: For instance, when I was at university in Tehran, our history teacher decided to made a some group to visit of famous and best museums in Tehran. Description: The token to is not usually followed by a verb, past participle Suggestion: Refer to to and made

Sentence: We can conclude that visit of museum is one day in most of traveler people that travel to new place for inform of the city or country culture, that this is very amusing day. Description: The token for is not usually followed by a verb, base: uninflected present, imperative or infinitive Suggestion: Refer to for and inform

flaws: No. of Different Words: 128 200 No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2

Attribute Value Ideal Score: 20 in 30 Category: Satisfactory Excellent No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2 No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2 No. of Sentences: 11 15 No. of Words: 331 350 No. of Characters: 1411 1500 No. of Different Words: 128 200 Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.265 4.7 Average Word Length: 4.263 4.6 Word Length SD: 2.225 2.4 No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 89 100 No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 61 80 No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 30 40 No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 22 20 Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0 Avg. Sentence Length: 30.091 21.0 Sentence Length SD: 18.073 7.5 Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.545 0.12 Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.437 0.35 Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.637 0.50 Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.159 0.07 Number of Paragraphs: 4 5

Best Duolingo Alternatives For Learning a New Language

Duolingo has become one of the most popular apps for learning languages, but are there better options out there? Join me as I review the best Duolingo alternatives to help you learn a new language!

Embarking on a thrilling journey to a new country? Maybe for an exhilarating adventure or to  teach English abroad ? Congratulations! But, wait, a language barrier looms. 

Mastering the local language can be your bridge to immersing in the culture. It helps you have a memorable stay,  travel on a budget , and avoid potential scams.

Duolingo has gained great fame and become one of the most popular language-learning apps. This is primarily thanks to its interactive teaching methods and one-of-a-kind marketing. We've all seen the Owl's humorous social media! 

But Duolingo's lessons aren't perfect if you need to become fluent in a language. Don't get me wrong, Duolingo is a remarkable app, but I noticed it's not ideal for complete fluency or quick learning before traveling to new countries. 

Luckily, there are lots of alternatives to Duolingo. I've carefully curated the best ones into different categories. I'll show you their unique features, teaching methodologies, and how they can enhance your language learning experience. So, let's begin! 

TripLingo: Best Duolingo Alternative For Travelers

TripLingo specifically targets travelers, as the name may suggest. The thing with most language apps is they teach you proper grammar and increase your comprehension skills gradually. 

Although that's usually the right approach to mastering a language, it's not always necessary for travelers. You may not need to learn an entire language if you only briefly travel to a new country.

What Stands Out

TripLingo is the Duolingo alternative that gets it. Not everyone needs to be a native language speaker when they travel. It's all about those handy phrases, not diving into the nitty-gritty of grammar. 

So, whether you're ordering  street food in Tokyo  or haggling at the market, TripLingo's got your back with the words and phrases you actually need.

Other Features

TripLingo also includes a translator for when you get stuck somewhere and highlights the country's culture.  

The Catch  

The phrases are enough to help you communicate basics to the locals. However, you can't have a full-blown conversation with them. 

TripLingo offers 19 languages, out of which 6 have only partial content. There are in-app subscriptions, starting at $20/month, though it does offer some content for free. I suggest purchasing the app if you want efficiency because the free version isn't much help. 

Glossika: Best For Speaking 

Glossika  is all about nailing that pronunciation game. Inside this Duolingo alternative app, you've got a treasure trove of phrases, all recorded by native speakers.

With Glossika, you can learn a new language in your native language! This is rarely seen in Duolingo alternatives, as most are only for English speakers. 

With the 'learn new items' feature, the phrase is once read in your native language, and then the translated version is read by the language's native. You can adjust the speed at which the sentence is read and replay. You must then record yourself while reading the phrase and comparing it to the native's pronunciation. 

Other Features  

Glossika uses AI to procure a schedule based on your needs and progress. Hello?? Awesome!

The pricing for Glossika is comparatively higher than any other Duolingo alternative. 

$16.99/month for one language and $30.99 for all 60 languages it offers. Also, it offers free learning for six endangered languages in an attempt to preserve them!

Rocket Languages: Best Duolingo Alternative For Grammar

Grammar often stands out as the primary reason people seek alternatives to Duolingo. And  Rocket Languages  is just it! The platform provides a seamless learning experience that guides learners through a proper curriculum. 

Through the integration of audio, speech, and cultural lessons, Rocket Languages ensures you have a well-rounded linguistic skill set.

What Stands Out  

The ingenious 'play it' feature allows you to play a conversation between two native speakers. What's more, you can even become one of the characters! 

While it is a scripted dialogue, this innovative feature presents a fresh perspective and gives your learning a different direction. It also provides several extra resources for practice. 

Rocket Languages' 'benchmark' feature allows you to assess your progress at your convenience and gauge your current standing in your language learning journey. By offering insightful feedback and tracking your advancements, this tool is an invaluable compass guiding you toward proficiency.

The course offerings fall short when it comes to less common languages, and the curriculum primarily caters to English speakers.

Rocket Languages features resources for 14 languages with a different pricing system. The app costs $99.90 - $449.85, depending on the course's language, level, and duration.

Babbel: Best Overall Alternative to Duolingo

When talking about alternatives to Duolingo, how can you forget  Babbel ? Some may even say it's   better than Duolingo! While Duolingo has a persistent owl, Babbel has its own aesthetically pleasing illustration, which I have become a dedicated fan of! 

What Stands Out 

Babbel rocks 14 languages and covers all the language-learning bases: speaking, writing, and reading. Like Glossika, Babbel tailors lessons based on how you tackle previous ones. This means no 'one size fits all' approach, just a uniquely tailored experience.

Impressively, Babbel isn't just fixated on English speakers, which, as I mentioned earlier, is rare. The lessons are super user-friendly and have their own unique flair. 

But you know what else gets me hooked? Those snazzy 2-minute stories! They're captivating and help you get the hang of the phrases in a real-life context. 

The content is a bit inconsistent, and some languages have way more comprehensive courses than others. 

Babbel's pricing starts at $13.95 for 1 month, $29.85 for 3 months, and $83.40 for an annual subscription. Or, you can pay $299.99 for lifetime access to the app.

Italki: Best Online Classes 

If you thrive in one-on-one settings,  Italki  is your new BFF! This platform hooks you up with real tutors for online sessions. This is helpful as no amount of app-jumping can replace the real deal when achieving language fluency.

At Italki, you can choose between two types of tutors: community folks and the pros. Very few platforms teach you slang and those everyday chit-chat locals throw around. 

With an Italki community teacher, you're in for all that and more. And for more advanced learning, hire their professional tutors that help you master your linguistic skills.

The content can be hit-or-miss since actual people are involved. 

$4 to $30 for each 30 to 60-minute lesson. It is an absolute win when considering how much you can learn from the natives and professionals! 

Lingvist: Best For Vocabulary 

Have you ever found yourself lost for words while chatting in another language? Join the club! Not knowing enough words is possibly the most common setback when communicating in a different language.

That's where  Lingvist  swoops in. It's all about the vocab game for them. They're convinced that if you ace vocab, grammar comes naturally. They also claim their approach is 10 times more effective than others!

Lingvist pulls out all the stops with their flashcards that make learning new words feel like a victory lap. The flashcards are planned according to your weaknesses and strengths with the help of an AI module. 

Lingvist offers 8 languages, including Spanish, German, and Russian. It isn't helpful to advanced speakers because their target audience is beginners. Plus, the words use automated pronunciation rather than native. 

A monthly subscription costs $9.99, and an annual subscription is available for $79.99. 

The Best Free Duolingo Alternatives

Memrise: learning with mnemonics.

Memrise  incorporates memory techniques into its language learning approach, making vocabulary and phrases stick better in your mind.

The platform uses spaced repetition and mnemonics, ensuring learners remember and recall words and structures effectively.

Besides languages, Memrise also provides art, math, and history courses. User-created courses offer content in many different languages and topics.

While Memrise has many courses, not all are of consistent quality due to user-generated content.

The basic plan is free, while the pro plan costs $9/month.

Busuu: Social Language Learning

Busuu  offers a unique approach, connecting learners with native speakers for real-world practice.

After going through lessons, users can practice their skills by conversing with native speakers. You'll even get real-time feedback and corrections.

Busuu covers 12 major languages, offering courses that take learners from beginner to advanced levels.

Though it has a free version, many advanced features, including the conversation practice, are behind a paywall.

The basic plan is free, while a premium plan starts at $9.99/month.

BBC Languages 

BBC Languages, a part of the BBC's online offerings, provides resources for learning 33 different languages.

With a vast collection of videos, audio, vocabulary, and grammar explanations, the platform is a comprehensive resource for learning a new language.

BBC Languages also offers news in multiple languages, making it perfect for intermediate and advanced learners to immerse themselves.

The platform's design is a bit dated compared to newer apps, but the quality of content is undeniably high.

Apps Like Duolingo for Math

While I'm mainly focusing on language-learning apps, there are also general educational apps that make learning fun. 

Although there isn't a direct equivalent to Duolingo for math, platforms such as Khan Academy, Brilliant, and Prodigy are similar. They offer interactive math lessons and challenges to help users hone their mathematical skills.

Ready to Test Out Your New Language Skills?

Visiting a country whose language and culture you have been avidly studying is an unforgettable experience. Now that you know which app you can learn the language on, you can start to craft your ideal travel experience for you, your family, and your friends.

Disclosure : Pilot is supported by our community. We may earn a small commission fee with affiliate links on our website. All reviews and recommendations are independent and do not reflect the official view of Pilot.

Satisfy your wanderlust

Get Pilot. The travel planner that takes fun and convenience to a whole other level. Try it out yourself.

Trending Travel Stories

Discover new places and be inspired by stories from our traveller community.

Related Travel Guides

Plan Your Trips Better With the Best Travel Apps in 2024!

The 8 Best Trip Planner Apps to Help You Travel Better

Best packing apps backpackers use that you should too! [2024]

10 Best FREE Hiking Apps You Should Download in 2024! + Honorable Mentions

Make the most of every trip

You won’t want to plan trips any other way!

The trip planner that puts everything in one place, making planning your trip easier, quicker, and more fun.

Another Republican joins effort to oust Johnson, putting the speaker in real peril

WASHINGTON — A third House Republican has signed onto an effort to oust Speaker Mike Johnson from power, giving his opponents the votes they would need to remove the Republican leader unless Democrats step in to save him.

Rep. Paul Gosar, of Arizona, signed onto the " motion to vacate " authored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, both Republicans said Friday. If brought to the floor as a privileged resolution, it would force a vote within two legislative days on whether to oust Johnson as speaker. A simple majority vote would be needed to succeed.

Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, joined the motion to vacate earlier this week but has said he doesn't want to force a vote on it, instead pushing for Johnson to resign. The three Republicans and other hard-right members of the conference are furious at the speaker for bringing up votes to provide aid for Ukraine, particularly without U.S. border security provisions attached.

“We need a Speaker who puts America first rather than bending to the reckless demands of the warmongers, neo-cons and the military industrial complex making billions from a costly and endless war half a world away,” Gosar said in a statement Friday.

If brought to the floor, those three Republican votes would be enough to remove Johnson as speaker if all Democrats vote against him. Some Democrats have indicated they would step in to save Johnson , but Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Friday that "the pre-requisite to the conversation" about saving Johnson is that the foreign aid bills pass "in totality."

The addition of a third Republican on the motion to vacate is a huge blow to Johnson, raising the likelihood that he is either ousted from power or that he's saved by Democrats, which could further undermine him within the conference.

“Johnson is done," said one Republican who supports the speaker. "It’s sad.”

Greene "has the votes," said another Republican. The member said they believe Democrats will vote to save Johnson — especially after the way the aid packages were structured, which drew the ire of some conservatives.

Massie said the intention isn't to force a vote to oust Johnson but instead to show their numbers and get the speaker to resign on his own. That would avoid weeks of chaos on the floor, where the House must hold consecutive votes to install a speaker, and instead allow Republicans to meet behind closed doors and choose a new leader before Johnson voluntarily vacates the chair, Massie told reporters.

“The strategy all along has been to ask the speaker to resign in a fashion like John Boehner resigned, where John Boehner cleaned the barn and said, 'I’m leaving and you’ve got plenty of time to replace me,'" Massie said. "So, in that circumstance, we didn’t end up with the speaker-less House. ... Just like when you leave a job, you give two weeks' notice, we’re looking for Mike’s notice.”

Massie suggested that a vote to oust Johnson could result in Republicans ending up in the minority; the balance of power is so close in the House that it wouldn't take much movement to elect Jeffries as speaker. Voting to remove Johnson would lead the House to hold vote after vote "sometimes two times, three times a day," Massie noted. Thus voting for Jeffries just to end the chaos might start to look appealing to a handful of Republicans.

“If Johnson would do it in the manner that John Boehner did it, there’s no chance to go into the minority because it’s not fought out on the floor. ... Jeffries is not on the ballot when we do this in conference," Massie stressed. "And so that’s the goal.”

He added that he had 12 people in mind who could do a better job than Johnson.

Greene has not indicated if or when she’ll try to force a vote on the motion to vacate.

Gosar announced that he had joined the effort to oust Johnson just after the House voted to advance the package of four foreign aid bills — one for Ukraine, one for Israel, another for Taiwan and a fourth that attempts to counter China by providing a pathway to ban TikTok in the U.S. as well as other national security priorities.

Johnson called the House package of foreign aid bills “the best possible product that we can get under these circumstances,” noting that Democrats control the Senate and the White House.

He said that a discharge petition from Democrats to force the House to take up a Senate-passed foreign aid package would have “happened imminently” if the House had not acted.

“The reality here is that if the House did not do this ... we would have had to eat the Senate supplemental bill,” he told reporters.

Kyle Stewart is a field producer covering Congress for NBC News.

Julie Tsirkin is a correspondent covering Capitol Hill.

Ali Vitali is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News, based in Washington.