Does Duolingo care about completing a course?

[PtolemysXX]

I receive those motivational messages on the daily basis: “users who do xxx are yy.y% more likely to complete their course”. I usually read them with indifference but today I reflected a little and asked myself if Duolingo really cares whether anyone completes their course. My conclusion was… that it doesn’t.

About a year ago when I joined Duolingo there was a “conqueror” badge awarded for finishing a course. The conqueror badge had five levels depending on the tree completion level. Moreover, when a Duolingo friend completed a course one would be notified about that fact and could send congratulations. Around March-April 2022 both features disappeared without trace. Why? I’d say they should not be in conflict with the “one path” learning system as in the “one path” the ultimate goal is also finishing a course.

There is no reward for finishing a course. On Android when I complete the last skill I can download a picture that confirms the accomplishment but it does not mention the level of completion - yet there is a huge difference between level 1 and the legendary level.

My feeling is that Duolingo does not really care. The number of completed trees (as of today around 350k) is ridiculously small compared with the claimed number of users (300 million) that the advertising companies pay for. Fewer than 0.1% of users completing a tree, so why bother…

I realize it is a bit of provocation…

[Steve579062]

I have reached the same conclusion. Duolingo is just a money making exercise. Yes they shout about how many users they have. They boast about the number one language learning app. But at the same time they carve off little slices of useful information for the learner. They don't update courses in the way they should. They offer no interaction between users. They don't even monitor the advertising that they disperse to users.
And after all that we are slaves to the quest of learning. I believe that it was good and it could be great in the future.
But I wouldn't bet on it.

[uralicnomad]

Yup, it was blatantly obvious when I was using the app and they introduced the watch an ad to claim a reward, which I would utilize yet it never really bothered me until the snake appeared though. I've completed my chosen course (no conquror added) and now I'm rolling through legendary and it's become a chore. I'm doing Hungarian, which is still in beta, many questions only have one correct answer when it could be said in three or four ways without being incorrect. So it becomes painful having to remember how they want you to answer. I don't think the course will ever progress beyond it's current point.

I'm thinking the app is now just a pre-occupation tool for those who live on their phones.

[Thomas.Heiss]

Hi,

The number of completed trees (as of today around 350k) is ridiculously small compared with the claimed number of users (300 million) that the advertising companies pay for. Fewer than 0.1% of users completing a tree, so why bother…

I'm curious: Where did you get the 350k finished tree number from?
Duome?

Elsewhere from Duolingo docs, investor published articles or something?

Be aware, that many Duolingo users (from those millions of registered accounts) either are not registered yet on Duome or don't fullfil the minimum requirement of a 100+ day streak.

Often long-term users with high streaks and/or more than 100,000 XP suddenly get listed on Duome while they or someone else first looked up their user profile and they usually start in a higher rank.
So there will be a lot of (app) users who may have NEVER heard of Duolingo community forums, SHOF threads, Duome.

We can't directly set the completed trees (golden owls) in reference with the millions of inactive or active Duolingo users who have started, stopped in the middle or finished a course.

Also Duolingo has changed their own interpretation of ACTIVE users a while ago.
Some old tree finishers might not have come back after completion and fall out of the active Duolingo count and may not be listed on Duome as well.

[Thomas.Heiss]

There is no reward for finishing a course.
My feeling is that Duolingo does not really care

2-3 years ago the "friend updates" exactly showed events like user X completed their abc language tree.
User Y reached crown level 2-n in their abc language tree.

Something useful you can say....

When I finally decided to complete the very last three lessons in three bottom skills in my DE<-PT reverse tree before 04. January 2023 which I worked a longer time on with multiple shorter or longer breaks I got no congratulation messages from the friends updates.
Also the crown level up messages where disabled again by staff 1-2+ year(s) ago.

But those annoying "user Z got a 7-14 days streak" messages are still shown on the friends updates.
Or "user W did 10+ lessons a day" or "..jumped to the next League" not so useful messages are still flooding my stream.

On Android when I complete the last skill I can download a picture that confirms the accomplishment but it does not mention the level of completion

The Duome page does, at least for now.

yet there is a huge difference between level 1 and the legendary level.

Fewer than 0.1% of users completing a tree, so why bother…

I first completed the Portuguese tree with 69 skills and 406 lessons in the pre-crown period end of 2017.
That tree got updated in summer 2018 and has had 91 skills and 463 lessons until recently.
There are 75 units on the new path/snake.

Some trees like contributor German from English or French from German where a bit longer (>100-13x skills) but still manageable, so you had a good chance to complete them within 1.5-1.75 years, maybe a bit longer.

My personal impression of the super long CEFR Spanish and French staff-based trees, which got extended again and again, never was that a normal human on earth can actually complete them.
Users lost progress again and again for the non-compatible CEFR migrations in 2018-2019.

My English from Portuguese tree (CEFR, staff took over in 2018 and rolled it out to me in 2019; several incremental updates followed so it can definitely keep up with English from Spanish CEFR course) got bigger replacements and some parts where redone 2-3 times for new sounds or new challenges so I lost progress not only once. Well, it's just a reverse tree for me...

Some long-term and advanced learners may have also been working on higher crown levels, reflected by a very high 75-150k or higer course XP score.
But too many beginners followed the wrong/suboptimal learning concept (even for Latin languages) and overworked on all early skills without any spacing and never tried to push through the whole tree with 200+ skills at least on a L1-L3 crown pyramid system to get that golden owl.

With the new path and forced repeating levels integrated it might take even longer to complete a tree as you can't do only the first L1 crown level anymore, like you could do in 2016-2017.
Even the new crown concept gave you the freedom to do this in 2018-2021.

For example:
I already have one year of French learning under my belt (Busuu) and 6 years of Brazilian Portuguese.
It doesn't make that much sense then to follow a strict Duolingo path or to be forced to complete ALL skills on higher crown levels with the Pt->Fr or De->Fr courses or reverse trees.

Somehow it's good that English reverse trees and Spanish as well as French courses somehow got overblown courses which might NEVER end for a lot of beginner learners as they have to give up too early.
At least nobody can complain now that they completed a shorter course and don't know what to do afterwards

But it surely is nothing for a shorter 1.0-1.5 years time range.
Not even 3.8 years to be realistic (only kinda realistic for the lower crowns).

https://ardslot.com/duolingodata.html

I knew for sure that I wouldn't be able to complete that long French tree to its very end.
So I held back to start one of these monsters and would focus first on the two other but shorter Duolingo course options (gives the big picture about Romance grammar, verb tenses and Subjunctive much sooner).

Didn't even start the old French contributor tree3 (A/B, 96 skills) which I caught in 2018 as several users got migrated too soon to the other CEFR tree design.
Nobody was pleased to lose their progress, so I didn't bother starting it. But could have as I was not migrated any earlier than 2019, 0.75-1.x years later.

The Duome course learners vs tree completion data is not very high, that's true.
But under these circumstances that's somehow understandable.

Also keep those earlier FR, ES and EN learners in mind who have actually completed their tree not only once but one of the last CEFR content updates or rearrangements still has taken again their golden owl away.

Duolingo shouldn't be a full-time job if you want to add 2-3 more resources.

[PtolemysXX]

Hi,

The number of completed trees (as of today around 350k) is ridiculously small compared with the claimed number of users (300 million) that the advertising companies pay for. Fewer than 0.1% of users completing a tree, so why bother…

I'm curious: Where did you get the 350k finished tree number from?
Duome?

Yes. The "Golden owl hall of fame" summary page. I realize that the number is not exact, I am assuming it is "in the ballpark" though. The total number of users, the reported 300 million has even a weaker foundation as there is no data to back it up.

[Corinnebelle]

[mention]Thomas.Heiss[/mention] So if anyone is casual user, who doesn't keep a 100 day streak, their golden owl won't be mentioned?

[PtolemysXX]

There is no reward for finishing a course.
My feeling is that Duolingo does not really care

2-3 years ago the "friend updates" exactly showed events like user X completed their abc language tree.
User Y reached crown level 2-n in their abc language tree.

Something useful you can say....

When I finally decided to complete the very last three lessons in three bottom skills in my DE<-PT reverse tree before 04. January 2023 which I worked a longer time on with multiple shorter or longer breaks I got no congratulation messages from the friends updates.
Also the crown level up messages where disabled again by staff 1-2+ year(s) ago.

That was exactly my point.

But those annoying "user Z got a 7-14 days streak" messages are still shown on the friends updates.
Or "user W did 10+ lessons a day" or "..jumped to the next League" not so useful messages are still flooding my stream.

I would add to it messages about completing monthly challenges. This is nearly spam quality.

My personal impression of the super long CEFR Spanish and French staff-based trees, which got extended again and again, never was that a normal human on earth can actually complete them.

Maybe that is why the conqueror badge disappeared...

[Thomas.Heiss]

@Thomas.Heiss So if anyone is casual user, who doesn't keep a 100 day streak, their golden owl won't be mentioned?

Well, how should that work?
Honestly, I doubt that.

www.duome.eu/faq
www.duomu.eu/blog

Maxime had said previously that it's technically NOT possible to add all millions of Duolingo user to the Duome DB (auto-refresh of streak data, caching, activity stream,..).

So there are currently 313882 users who A) match the minimum criteria and B) who had a user profile lookup at least once during their ACTIVE learning phase.

On the other side: Alumni Duome (tree/ranking) data from 137k users is still included (which lost their streak).

But you need to get listed at least once, before, not afterwards after you've lost the streak.

AFAIK for users below a 100 days streak some live data from the Duolingo "extended user profil" might be shown as an interim solution, in a shorter form.
DB Caching and auto-refreshing of streaks (and other tree data) is disabled then.

This is how I understand the basic implemention.
Maybe something has changed.

Feel free to correct me if this description doesn't reflect the Duome code and chosen server/database concept anymore.

You simply can't auto-refresh 300 millions of those more inactive user streaks with lost behind (old/suspended) tree data.
Too much overhead and network load.

[Corinnebelle]

[mention]Thomas.Heiss[/mention] Thank you for your detailed response. Very interesting!

[Thomas.Heiss]

Some more fancy tree data:

French: www.duome.eu/en/fr
184196 Students
76605 @ L25 (30k XP) - 41.57%
16507 Golden Owls 8.96%
12043 L1 Trees
...
1454 L5 Trees
293 Legendary Trees

Spanish: www.duome.eu/en/es
222018 Students
102323 @ L25 (30k XP) - 46.06%
17083 Golden Owls - 7.69%
12661 L1 Trees
...
1492 L5 Trees
275 Legendary Trees

I like the (ratio) data for the Portuguese course much more:
www.duome.eu/en/pt

54988 Students
11253 @ L25 (30k XP) - 20.46%
10101 Golden Owls - 18.37%
5525 L1 Trees - 10.05%
1000 L2 Trees - 1.82%
634 L3 Trees - 1.15%
494 L4 Trees - 0.90%
2128 L5 Trees - 3.87%
320 Legendary Trees - 0.58%

Reminder: On mobile you first need to request the desktop site. Top right legend explanations, detailed statistics and all table columns are NOT listed on the mobile compact view.

So the owl completion data is a lot better than the 0.1% you've calculated / assumed.

Unfortunately, we know nothing about the rest of the 299,500 millions of active or inactive Duolingo users and their previous tree/owl/crown successes.

[Steve579062]

All that would still go over my head even if I stood on a chair.

Duolingo builds on that competitive nature between humans to such an extent that actual learning is only a by product. Every day that goes past I lose a little more faith in the time I spend using the system.

I can feel the time coming when I delete the app and my profile and simply walk away. Not because I give up on language, but because I find another way to keep my memory alive. That damm bird plays me like a cheap piano and I refuse to give in. Hitting one thousand days might be the "excuse" I need.

[SweNedGuy]

Some more fancy tree data:

French: www.duome.eu/en/fr
184196 Students
16507 Golden Owls 8.96%
12043 L1 Trees
...
1454 L5 Trees
293 Legendary Trees

Spanish: www.duome.eu/en/es
222018 Students
17083 Golden Owls - 7.69%
12661 L1 Trees
...
1492 L5 Trees
275 Legendary Trees

I like the (ratio) data for the Portuguese course much more:
www.duome.eu/en/pt

Reminder: On mobile you first need to request the desktop site. Right legends and all table columns are NOT listed on the mobile compact view.

So the owl completion data is a better than the 0.1% you've calculated / assumed.

Unfortunately, we know nothing about the rest of the 299,500 millions of active or inactive Duolingo users and their previous tree/owl/crown successes.

This kind of info has been nicely tabled a while ago : How popular are Duolingo courses really?
You will notice that statistics published by DuoMe have been tuned slightly since last year.
There are links to courses from a few other languages: FR/ES/NL.

[Olav]

Who cares about if Duolingo cares?

[ElmerRamone]

I can attest to the fact that Duo doesn't give a hoot about finishing a course. When I got my golden owl in Spanish last year, nothing happened. No congratulatory email, no confetti, nada.
But when I reached my two year streak, just a week or so ago, I did get an email noting my 'Duoversary'. So they only care that you hang around, not that you accomplish anything. And just recently, I finished the additional lessons of the new path, completing my tree for good. (Unless they add more). And Duo didn't congratulate me for that at all. It doesn't matter, but maybe they could do a little better.

[PtolemysXX]

So they only care that you hang around, not that you accomplish anything.

There is a link to an interesting article here in the Spanish forum:

viewtopic.php?p=42361-este-parece-que-e ... ngo#p42361

It explains a lot. A 2+ billion dollar public company has different goals than a start-up teamin up with a bunch of volunteers.

"Los ingresos por compras internas son una prioridad para nosotros"

When you focus on completing a course, you may be less tempted to take up invitations for things like "lightning rounds" , the one-armed bandits with whom you can only lose unless you pay for extra time.

And just recently, I finished the additional lessons of the new path, completing my tree for good. (Unless they add more). And Duo didn't congratulate me for that at all.

So here is a language learning app that gives you points, badges, pats on the shoulder for anything imaginable except... learning the language itself

[Deleted User 4833]

If they don't care about you completing a course, why are they always so eager to offer me the chance to jump ahead when I do a couple of or a string of perfect lessons. I always thought that was counterintuitive to their goal of having people stick around as long as possible.

[Deleted User 5745]

[mention]JudieLC[/mention] I don't think it's counterintuitive for Duo to encourage jumping ahead. More people are likely to finish a course if they are engaged and not stuck in a rut mindlessly typing, "Tu eres un niño" for umpteen levels.

As for whether or not Duo cares, I think everyone knows Duo has never cared! They're always off on some strange new weird tangent.
They are not educators - though I do appreciate the time and effort the course creators have put into it all.

The way the courses are presented though, proves that complete nincompoops are running the show.
Interestingly I saw somewhere that the highest paid employees are the animators!
I know that will (not) come as a suprise to everyone.

Remember, Duolingo is not a charity but a money-making enterprise. So it's unsuprising that they're trying to make a buck or two.

However, I still find it incredulous that real and longterm users have never had a say in it's efficiency as an actual language learning app.

[Deleted User 4833]

But if you finish the course, you are more likely to quit Duolingo and either give up learning a language or move on to other ways of learning a language. Which is why I said it's counterintuitive to Duolingo's presumed goal of keeping as many people on the app as possible for as long as possible.

[PtolemysXX]

But if you finish the course, you are more likely to quit Duolingo and either give up learning a language or move on to other ways of learning a language.

Yes and no. Logically you are right. Yet taking myself as an example: because thanks to jumping ahead and testing out I make a faster progress that I would otherwise do, I started learning more languages than I initially intended (=more time on DL )

[SweNedGuy]

But if you finish the course, you are more likely to quit Duolingo and either give up learning a language or move on to other ways of learning a language.

Yes and no. Logically you are right. Yet taking myself as an example: because thanks to jumping ahead and testing out I make a faster progress that I would otherwise do, I started learning more languages than I initially intended (=more time on DL )

After imposing the snake, I have eliminated some DL courses laddering to my target languages from French and also PT from EN. It has 'costed' me over 600 crowns and some 20K of XP. By consequence, I am not inclined to stay on DL longer than I otherwise might have. Eliminating spaced repetition keeps me away from lingering on.

On placement tests and jumping ahead: I 've done some analysis a while ago: Placement test in the path/snake configuration

Jumping ahead complete chapters had beneficial consequences in the DL tree structure, since you only skipped level 1. Now jumping ahead units implies completing the first pass of the snake/path. Later on you can only do some short repeat exercises on the individual rounds or else do (try) the legendary lessons on the unit.

[Deleted User 4833]

But if you finish the course, you are more likely to quit Duolingo and either give up learning a language or move on to other ways of learning a language.

Yes and no. Logically you are right. Yet taking myself as an example: because thanks to jumping ahead and testing out I make a faster progress that I would otherwise do, I started learning more languages than I initially intended (=more time on DL )

Yes, some people may do that, but I don’t know how common that is. I know that some of my friends who started Duolingo at the same time I did stopped doing lessons and never picked it back up again.