A while back I posted about Duolingo’s addiction for XP and competing in leagues. Last year I was Diamond for the entire year and kept that position until last month. I decided to ignore the speed required to maximize the 3X XP boost and focus on actually learning and to take my time reading and understanding.

It made a big difference in a short period of time and my reading improved significantly (probably a combination of previous casual attempts to read while competing, enhanced by the recent focus to actually read the sentences).

All this to say is that if Duolingo can take it easy on gamification, or evolve it in a way that makes it fun without impacting the learning effort, it’ll be much better.