Duo Lingo, how I kind of hate you because I don't think you are very worthwhile. The daily streak is such a stupid thing really. I mean, what does it matter? Regardless, I was gifted a premium subscription so I am using it anyway!
That being said I am at nearly day 500 on my own streak and a lot of this has to do because you only have to do one lesson a day to accomplish this and one of those options was this word match section that I was able to finish in less than a minute if I was really focused.
It was something like that. You don't get very much XP for it and you shouldn't. The thing with this was that you could get the right matches just by process of elimination, it doesn't really mean that you actually know the words. In many situations I don't think I actually did know the words, I was just going through the motions like a lazy student which is ironic because I get annoyed when I find my own real life students are taking the lazy way out not because it is at all necessary, but because they are lazy.
Well, DuoLingo recently changed the word match section so now it resembles what "flash cards" would look like if you made some of them.
It shows you the English and you need to speak the Spanish to it. If you get it wrong or are so in the dark that you just pass on it, you get to see the answer and the card goes back into the deck. If you can remember you get a second chance to get it right on the next one. If you fail the 2nd time around the system seems to make showing you this particular word more of a priority in the future, which is good. This is how you learn words. I don't like how it will keep throwing the words at you over and over again that you clearly know very well and answer immediately every time. I guess they are still working out the tweaks.
There are some annoyances that come along with this though. Since it has to discern from your voice whether or not you have said the word correctly, it can go in and out of service depending on how shit your internet connection is. In my house, which is the only place that I do DUO out loud, the internet connection is provided by the landlord so of course, it is the shittiest connection they can possibly get away with providing. That's the way rental properties work.
If I am using my data I don't have this issue. But there is also the issue of things interfering with your microphone like a fan pointing at you. It won't understand ANYTHING that you are saying with a fan pointing at it. Once you get past these two annoyances though, this new word match system is, in my opinion, a MUCH better system and has actually contributed to me widening my vocabulary greatly ever since they introduced it.
I recall how effective actual flash cards were for me when I was doing various things in college, so while I resisted at first (this is human nature!) I am now on the side of whoever decided to do this.
Nicely done Duo Lingo!