Until what limit is it worth it to continue working on a course?

[pj1506]

For a given course, some people have reached level 25 since a long time ago and continue to score up to 200k XP or more for the same course.
Is there any value in doing that, are there still new sentences coming up or are they eternally repeating and reviewing the same sentences?

Wouldn't they be better off working on some other more advanced non-Duolingo material or with real life material like newspapers, magazines, books in the corresponding language, or starting language exchanges in this language?

In that case, what would be the optimal level from which to switch out of Duolingo? Is it "all lessons completed and at least 30000 XP i.e. level 25"?

I have the impression this is the main trap in using Duolingo, i.e. losing your purpose in learning a language and becoming obsessed with scoring high XPs instead of shifting your studies into the real world..

By the way, the level of some courses can be pretty low, and even when you have scored 200k XPs in that course you might still be in CEFR B1+ territory in my opinion.

This might also be what I hinted at when I asked about (mild) personality disorders among Duolingo users in a recent post.. viewtopic.php?t=7075-personality-disorders-on-duolingo

What do you think?

[BlahBlah]

I have the impression this is the main trap in using Duolingo, i.e. losing your purpose in learning a language and becoming obsessed with scoring high XPs instead of shifting your studies into the real world..

Well, you kind of answered your own question.

You should use Duolingo as long as you are learning new words, new grammatical concepts, as long as you are making and correcting fundamental writing mistakes. Once you get comfortable with the course, once you are answering all the questions and getting 90+% right, you should move on and focus on listening and speaking practice and such.

Even though it's hard to get away from XP and streaking concepts, I try to set my own goals and basically to ingore all of that superficial progress tracking. It might be helpful to block the XP progress element with uBlock Origin, although it's always tempting to look at the graphs, especially when you are on the roll.

[luciennet]

The amount of xp is irrelevant. I have almost 75k in xp, but am only one quarter of the way through the course.

[pj1506]

The amount of xp is irrelevant.

Sure I think the amount of crowns is what matters most to measure your level of advancement.

[b05aplmun.ca]

For the longer trees, I believe most users hit level 25/30,000 xp well before finishing the tree. (The 1-25 level system is a remnant of an outdated system that was in place before the introduction of crowns and the addition of massive amounts of new material to some of the trees.)

Many Duolingo participants are also using other resources in addition to Duolingo. Personally, I take a Spanish class, read full-length novels written for adult native speakers, and occasionally dance to reggaeton, for both exercise and Spanish practice. Many other folks use an even greater number and variety of outside resources.

In that context, the question is not so much when to move on to more advanced material, but at what point to drop Duolingo from the resources in active use.

Like everything else, the answer is going to be very individual, but I find it worthwhile to use Duolingo, even after finishing the now much-expanded Spanish tree through level 1 and then starting to go back through it in a sort of reverse waterfall approach.

Although I had the equivalent of five years of Spanish in high school and started with Duolingo mostly as review, and although I am now reading fairly complex material, I encountered quite a lot of new vocabulary words and idiomatic expressions in the last half of the tree. As I review the material, it's become quite clear that (surprise, surprise!) I didn't take it all in the first time, so the review is also useful

Aside from that, grammar review in and of itself is a decent reason for someone who is fairly advanced in a language, but not a native speaker, to keep using Duolingo.

And finally, Duolingo is/can be fun to use. Even if someone might theoretically be better off using other resources, if they still find Duolingo fun, that's reason enough to use it.

[b05aplmun.ca]

Oh, and I see that I missed one important point. Duolingo shakes things up pretty often for the trees that are most popular. For those trees, a student is, perhaps, more likely to despair of ever finishing a tree before the next big shake-up, rather than find themselves repeating the exact same material indefinitely.

Even the smaller, more static courses add new sentences from time to time. (For instance, I have been taking Catalan for some years, and it now has a few sentences that clearly could only have been added after the start of the pandemic, for instance. I also see other sentences that don't seem familiar, but that I can't necessarily date in the same way.)

And finally, Duolingo has recently been adding a number of different types of exercises, so, even if you're seeing the same material, it is presented in a new way. (Unfortunately some of those new types of exercises dumb the material down, but the ones that require you to distinguish between two similar-sounding words or to answer a question based on two or three sentences of the spoken language are, I think, a big improvement in how Duolingo teaches the spoken language.)