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Comment by mikeodds | Hacker News Reader

I realised the gamification had missed its purpose when I caught myself memorising the bigrams and trigrams of answers without reading the full text so I could click through and retain my streak each day. My learning had stalled at this point but my streak looked great.

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I do this myself. But is the memorization not a feature as opposed to a bug? Essentially embedding certain sentences/phrases in your brain to the point where you already know what you need to type/say without having to fully engage with the prompt.

I was thinking the same thing. I don't process English one word at a time. I consider it a sign of progress that I don't process certain bits and pieces of German one word at a time.

It does have its issues, in particular for those relatively good at games to begin with...

There's quite a big difference between their language classes though, but I do prefer alternative apps that target a specific language with laser focus. They tend to have better organic content for the purpose of practice.

You also need to realize that you will only truly be good at the language if you get to practice using it with other speakers. Something needs to click in your head in the right way.

What apps would you recommend?

Depends on your language of choice. For Mandarin, I like Hello Chinese better than Duolingo. It still has a gamification aspect, but the content is much more varied and includes things like practicing reading comprehension and mock conversations, not to mention stroke order practice.

I would expect something similar to exist for other popular languages - I know that is the case for Japanese at least.

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