Several days ago, I completed the final unit of the Duolingo EN-FR course (section 8, unit 37), bringing me to the Daily Refresh wheel of review. Each daily wheel is comprised of six exercises – two Stories and four Personalized Practices (Q&As). Whether the Q&As are indeed personalized is debatable, as many others have noted. They are unquestionably also repetitive, especially if you click the 25 XP Start button, as opposed to the 40 XP Legendary button.
Here are four observations that have not previously been shared:
- Some of the stories are new – stories that were, for whatever reason, omitted from the long, windy path of Duolingo’s structured lessons. Consequently, the Daily Refresh can indeed be “refreshing” – a breath of fresh air.
- The stories sometimes differ, depending on whether you click the Review or Legendary button of each storybook pavestone. This makes the Legendary story exercises more interesting, because they do not necessarily repeat (or regurgitate) the story you just heard when you clicked Review.
- Opting for the 25 XP Start button guarantees that you will see the identical Personalized Practices questions over and over during subsequent Daily Refresh cycles.
- Opting for the 40 XP Legendary button instructs Duolingo that you are ready to move on. The questions become more challenging, they cover considerably more ground, and they do not repeat what they asked during the previous Daily Refresh cycle.
I made the mistake of using my 15-minute Early Bird and Night Owl bonuses to race through each Daily Refresh cycle – racking up XPs – but enduring the same Personalized Practice questions over and over. Fortunately, I did this for only three or days. I discovered that electing “Legendary” burned through much of my 15-minute bonus time, but ensured that the daily review questions didn’t repeat. I have only been doing this for a couple days, so Daily Refresh may indeed still become repetitive, but electing Legendary seems to be the way to make Daily Refresh exercises worthwhile.