Moving the Goal Posts
18/04/2018 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIt must be just over a year ago now that I first signed up for Duolingo
Some random browsing on assorted productivity porn sites led me to a woman who had signed up to do 5 minutes of French a day using this bright shiny new language learning app.
Went for a peek and was pretty impressed. The idea of bite sized language snacks that could be fit in while waiting for the bus or sitting at a cafe seemed rather more alluring than the usual dreary 1 hour slugging through text books usually associated with language learning
This was the perfect opportunity to conduct an experiment. Of course it could never be double blind with control groups and all that proper official stuff designed to minimize confirmation bias. But choosing a language that I was interested in studying but had never attempted to learn before and setting the bar low with only one lesson per day - more if desired but not necessary, this seemed like an opportunity too good to miss
And so it must have been some time in April 2017 that I signed up for the Duolingo adventure.
I chose Spanish because it is a useful language to learn and is not too far outside of the serpent comfort zone. Years ago having attempted to learn Mandarin Chinese, came to the conclusion that learning to read and write would require far too much effort, the language itself while interesting from grammatical and word formation aspects, had such an annoying sing song grating whininess to it that it was like listening to jazz all day long.
I had dabbled in Arabic many moons ago so that was off the table aside from the fact that Duolingo did not have it on the menu back in April 2017. Not checked for progress since but there sure are some seriously obscure languages on the platform. Irish Gaelic, Czech and Hungarian. Even Welsh made it onto the list. Those are hardcore languages for folks with ancestry or intellectual curiosity. Not quite Klingon or Quenya but not too far off in terms of obscurity.
So after many months of slowly plodding and climbing up the tree, I decided it would be interesting to add Russian to the list which I did in September 2017. Strangely the app just added the 200 something day Spanish streak and treated both languages the same.
So kept on slowly plodding away nibbling the tasty fruits from the Duolingo tree until I finally got to the very last juicy apple from the 62 bunches on the Spanish Tree.
Then it was time to start all over again and go for the goal of getting them all to be bright shiny and golden at the same time. The most I ever managed at once was 20.
Day by day, if you don’t practise and polish those already nibbled apples, they lose their golden shine and turn back to red or green or sometimes blue.
So it is like running on a treadmill to keep up.
Eventually I worked out a strategy that instead of polishing up each skill as it lost its golden shine, and then constantly having to catch up on older ones fading away, it made more sense to do them in batches of 4 or 5, get them nearly polished and then do a quick blitz of the lot devoting only one lesson to each which would then be sufficient to get 5 golden bunches in one go.
That was until they changed the rules a few weeks ago.
Those 25 bright shiny precious rings had vanished and were replaced with crazy crowns. About 18 of them were adorned with the number 2 and the rest were all 1
Went googling for the new rules only to discover that each branch of fruit on this bright shiny new grafted tree now had a whole lot more apples and 5 crowns. But it takes longer and longer to jump from one to the next.
So I am glad that I did manage to finish one tree before they grafted all the crazy extra branches on to the rest of the trees in the orchard
Some random browsing on assorted productivity porn sites led me to a woman who had signed up to do 5 minutes of French a day using this bright shiny new language learning app.
Went for a peek and was pretty impressed. The idea of bite sized language snacks that could be fit in while waiting for the bus or sitting at a cafe seemed rather more alluring than the usual dreary 1 hour slugging through text books usually associated with language learning
This was the perfect opportunity to conduct an experiment. Of course it could never be double blind with control groups and all that proper official stuff designed to minimize confirmation bias. But choosing a language that I was interested in studying but had never attempted to learn before and setting the bar low with only one lesson per day - more if desired but not necessary, this seemed like an opportunity too good to miss
And so it must have been some time in April 2017 that I signed up for the Duolingo adventure.
I chose Spanish because it is a useful language to learn and is not too far outside of the serpent comfort zone. Years ago having attempted to learn Mandarin Chinese, came to the conclusion that learning to read and write would require far too much effort, the language itself while interesting from grammatical and word formation aspects, had such an annoying sing song grating whininess to it that it was like listening to jazz all day long.
I had dabbled in Arabic many moons ago so that was off the table aside from the fact that Duolingo did not have it on the menu back in April 2017. Not checked for progress since but there sure are some seriously obscure languages on the platform. Irish Gaelic, Czech and Hungarian. Even Welsh made it onto the list. Those are hardcore languages for folks with ancestry or intellectual curiosity. Not quite Klingon or Quenya but not too far off in terms of obscurity.
So after many months of slowly plodding and climbing up the tree, I decided it would be interesting to add Russian to the list which I did in September 2017. Strangely the app just added the 200 something day Spanish streak and treated both languages the same.
So kept on slowly plodding away nibbling the tasty fruits from the Duolingo tree until I finally got to the very last juicy apple from the 62 bunches on the Spanish Tree.
Then it was time to start all over again and go for the goal of getting them all to be bright shiny and golden at the same time. The most I ever managed at once was 20.
Day by day, if you don’t practise and polish those already nibbled apples, they lose their golden shine and turn back to red or green or sometimes blue.
So it is like running on a treadmill to keep up.
Eventually I worked out a strategy that instead of polishing up each skill as it lost its golden shine, and then constantly having to catch up on older ones fading away, it made more sense to do them in batches of 4 or 5, get them nearly polished and then do a quick blitz of the lot devoting only one lesson to each which would then be sufficient to get 5 golden bunches in one go.
That was until they changed the rules a few weeks ago.
Those 25 bright shiny precious rings had vanished and were replaced with crazy crowns. About 18 of them were adorned with the number 2 and the rest were all 1
Went googling for the new rules only to discover that each branch of fruit on this bright shiny new grafted tree now had a whole lot more apples and 5 crowns. But it takes longer and longer to jump from one to the next.
So I am glad that I did manage to finish one tree before they grafted all the crazy extra branches on to the rest of the trees in the orchard
no subject
Date: 2018-04-19 06:50 am (UTC)It suddenly struck me that the whole concept is flawed, from the point of view of gamification. I understand that spaced repetition is important for learning a language, and that people tend to forget even basic words if they're not using them regularly, which I suppose is the case for most Duolingo students, who learn languages just for fun, not for using in their immediate environment. But in a game, you need continuous progress. You level up, get better equipment, better in-game skills; there may be occasional setbacks, but overall, it's constant improvement until the game ends. When it's undoing all your progress and you spend a lot of efforts just to stay in the same place, it's too depressing and frustrating just like RL ;)
I think playing Duolingo past the endgame (completing the tree) doesn't make much sense. If you're serious about learning the language, you should move on to the "real thing" (books, web sites, forums, maybe sites with advanced courses); if you want to have fun, move on to a new course.
Bling things
Date: 2018-04-22 02:10 pm (UTC)So now it is time to slowly catch up on serpent stuff in Cyberia
So far it is too soon to tell if the crowns lose their shine once you earn them. It may have happened but I have not noticed yet. Decided to simply go through the trees getting to level 2 ( I had finished the Spanish course before the bright shiny new rules came in and now nearly all my old branches or is it fruit? have been rated as Level 1
If they do lose their golden glow, then as it is so much slower now to make progress, then it would be exactly as you say - a pointless toil of Sisyphus. That sort of stupid busy work is more appropriate for the likes of Vernon Dursley who would dig a hole and then fill it up again and then dig it and refill over and over while feeling so much more smug and self righteous than some one who just sits in the garden with a glass of wine in hand listening to the birds
It is a similar thing with the Catholic obsession with suffering for the sake of suffering. Unless one is a masochist, it should only ever be a means to a more worthy end
Getting to Level 2 on all of them and then 3 and then 4 etc keeps the material fresher in mind and is less tedious than getting to 5 on each one before moving on.
I have decided to stick with Russian and Spanish until the end of this year and then do just one language at a time from now on - with the intention of doing 2 per year.
2020 will definitely include Dutch since I still hope to visit my sister in Amsterdam in September 2020
I am still very happy with Duolingo because it makes such a difference getting immediate feedback and always getting to hear the words as you learn them so that you don't pick up any crazy pronunciations. Not yet in the position where I want to venture on to the real thing beyond the level of Mexican Wall and other Donald memes.(usually involving words like Pajero or Pendejo)
PS I haven't forgotten your very very delayed birthday present. I got a bit distracted recently but please do send this serpent a wish list of interesting Cat treats.
Re: Bling things
Date: 2018-04-22 05:05 pm (UTC)So the idea of completing all Duolingo courses is sort of reasonable? I still hesitate about committing to it. Also, it's not really furthering any of my practical goals... but as long as it's fun, it beats most of the non-educational entertainment.
Ah, right, the gift... I didn't want to bother you because of all the things... but https://www.humblebundle.com is a good option, and they allow to buy gifts and send by email (I had sent many of these to the Kitten over years). Right now this bundle sounds cool: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/game-studies-books and if you won't catch it in time because it only has 1 day left, this one has 3 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/gaming-comics-books (I've heard so much about these games, but they're too hard for me to play, and reading fanfiction stories is kind of dry... comics may be a nice compromise.)
And it's time to dust off the Serpent's wish list too... ;)
Re: Bling things
Date: 2018-04-23 08:02 pm (UTC)Re: Bling things
Date: 2018-04-24 03:06 pm (UTC)Yesterday I visited the site using the little tweet stone and the website had the evil habit of making you jump through 666 hoops including giving address and credit card details before then proudly proclaiming
" We were unable to validate you using our CAPTCHA service, which we use to prevent automated purchases. If this is the first time you have seen this message, please hit the back button and try your purchase again."
Some 20 minutes later after 3 attempts and getting this message every time, I figures that it hates phones or something because no Captcha fill in box ever appeared anywhere at all on the screen.
Maybe it's just not very phone friendly
So I waited till later back at the Lair. The Big Mac wasn't too bad except it took ages on its 'processing' spinning dial thing after entering the email addresses. Got there in the end by some miracle
Then today a little voice pretending to be Petunia's suggested that the serpent could send some more evil snacks to the cat
This time the spinning dials were running for 40 minutes. Tried in Chrome instead of Firefox and got through the hoops twice only to be told the same captcha crap
So there is simply no way that this serpent can bear the thought of going near that dreadful demented website ever again.
Pity because the bundles definitely look like value for money except it looks like they don't actually want anyone to buy them.
Re: Bling things
Date: 2018-04-24 03:25 pm (UTC)Amazon ought to be a good gifting platform (maybe a bit expensive but you always can find exactly what you want), but apparently only for people who live in the same country :/
Re: Bling things
Date: 2018-04-24 06:20 pm (UTC)But I still don't understand the whole squawking about Captcha thing when the little box with the pictures or mangled text never even appeared at any stage of filling in the forms on any of the devices
I guess it was a fluke I got past the hordes of 3 headed hounds of hell the other night. It wouldn't work on the phone nor on the tablet either.
In such complete contrast to story bundle which I have always found very easy to use. I think it has never taken more than 5 minutes to order something there.
So the serpent is curious to see what sort of Cat and mouse games you have in mind. I guess first person shooters have been done to death.
Aside from those games they play at the net cafes such as World of Warcraft, what sort of game genre would keep people amused for more than a week or two? Games seem to me too much like movies. So much time and money is required that most individuals are little more than cogs in the machine. At least with writing novels or short stories, the production of special effects and animation gets outsourced to the reader and most of them love it like that. So it is one of the few avenues left for a lone ranger to be successful.
Did you ever get to try some resurrected version of the infamous ET game?
Re: Bling things
Date: 2018-04-26 06:57 am (UTC)Anyway, I prefer story-based games that can be completed in a relatively short period of time, to be over and done, so the player can move on to something new. If the game evokes a powerful emotional response, all the better; and it can be accomplished even with minimalistic art&sound resources. (Right now I'm reading one of the books from the bundle, about the emotional design in games.) I just happen to like graphics, but text-only games (Interactive Fiction) are very much a thing, even though niche; and many of them are not in any way inferior to good books.
The ET game? No, and I had to google it up - so there's some gaming stuff you know better than me! Apparently it's considered one of the worst video games of all time. Hmm, maybe at least I can compete for this title ;)