I seriously think I may finish the French course (if I live long enough…) and still have a rating of only 50%. This is how I am doing it currently: I do 20 points a day, starting with a “weight lifting” exercise (repetitions picked by the machine). If I don’t do better than about 80% right on first try, I do another such exercise. But almost always I do better than that, strangely enough, so I do the next 10 points from the next available lesson. Even though I learn a handful of new words or phrases six days a week or so, I am still at 50% as I was last fall when I wrote about this. Now I kind of wish to continue like this and see if it really holds as I learn hundreds of new words. Actually I’ve probably done that – if each new lesson teaches 5 words (and I think that is a minimum), that would be approximately 30 words a week. And having been 50% for about 5 months now (with the occasional dip down to 49%), that would be in the range 600-700 words at least, while still remaining at 50%. So naturally I am curious as to how long this will keep up. Well, that’s one form of motivation!
(It is not actually a bug though – the more you have learned, the more you have to repeat. So if I had a randomized test of what I have learned so far, I actually might fail at half of it. It is hard to say, since Duolingo makes sure to never make the questions too hard, for fear that people might give up. I know I have gone through much harder stuff than what I get quizzed in.)