I’ve been learning Spanish on Duolingo on and off for years. In June 2021, in a pandemic-induced fit of boredom, I opened the app with a renewed sense of determination. Since then, I’ve accumulated a hefty 200+ day streak and have nearly reached the halfway point of the Spanish course. It’s been a long and sometimes discouraging journey. So this month, to shake things up, I decided to do something I hadn’t planned on: earn the Duolingo Legendary achievement.
How it works: Every week, you’re randomly assigned to a league with 29 other people where you compete by earning points through language learning. At the end of the week, those at the top of the leaderboard advance to the next league. You have to climb the ranks through nine leagues in order to reach the Diamond league. Come in first place in the Diamond league and you earn the coveted Legendary achievement.
Naturally, pressure is high in the Diamond league. It seems like everyone is glued to the app, racking up points faster than you can keep up. There even are strategies online for how to best position yourself to win. It’s hyper-competitive to say the least.
I still wanted that pesky Legendary achievement, so I did what I had to do. 5000+ points. Over 7.5 hours of Spanish (and a little Hindi and Korean). Practice before work, and after work, and in every spare minute of time that I could find. Also a lot of counting down to Sunday night when I would finally be able to relax. And now that it’s over, I have some thoughts on the experience.
The good:
- Because the XP Ramp Up Challenge rounds are timed, I got to see how fast my translating and problem solving skills had gotten.
- The XP Ramp Up Challenge covered material I’d learned months ago, so it was a good refresher on concepts that I hadn’t been tested on in a while.
- I realised how much more effective sustained practice is. I was actively practicing for over an hour a day. This was a lot in comparison to my previous hour per week. I absorbed material more quickly and took less time to feel immersed in the language.
The bad:
- Unsurprisingly, it was stressful. I was obsessively practicing and checking the rankings to make sure I was still in first place.
- I was more focused on the points than on the learning. I was mostly practicing using the XP Ramp Up Challenge to maximize the amount of points I could earn. Not a big deal for a week or two, but not great in the long run.
- I was lucky and ended up in a league where I only needed around 5000 points to win. The next week, in the league I was in, the person in first place won with an insane 20000 points. The effort it takes to earn the Legendary achievement varies wildly depending on the people you’re competing against.
Now that I’ve earned this achievement, I’m never going to think about points ever again. Here’s what I plan to do instead.
- Spend more time when learning. In the two weeks since I earned the Legendary achievement, I’ve upped my practice time to around 45 minutes daily.
- I’m going to switch to a spaced repetition system, splitting my time between completing new lessons and reviewing old ones.
- Duolingo Stories is a surprisingly rich feature (at least for Spanish) that I want to make more use of.
There’s a lot more to do. I’ve been watching Spanish content creators as well taking every opportunity to practice conversing with native speakers. Learning a language really is a journey without a destination. And earning the Legendary achievement was a fun side quest along the way to fluency.
