Duolingo

Duolingo is a gamified language-learning app, which provides short lessons and a points-based system to incentivise learning.

What can I beemind with Duolingo?

Beeminder tracks your points in any of the ~40 available languages. See the Duolingo goal creation page for a full list!

I don't see the language I want on the list. Can it be added?

Most likely we can — just email us to get the feature request in. Last time we did it in less than two days!

Can I track multiple languages?

Yes, but not all in the same goal; you'll need a separate goal for each language you want to track. You'll also need to use the same native language for all courses (see this answer below for more info on this).

Can I have a non-midnight deadline for this autodata goal?

Yes! Change it in the reminder settings. All the normal deadline restrictions and rules apply.

Beeminder isn't fetching my progress anymore...

This will happen if you make your Duolingo profile private or change your username. If you've made it private, the only solution is to make it public again. If you've changed your username, contact Beeminder support and tell us your new username and which goals need updating. We'll update them with the new information and get things working again. We'll need to do this separately for each Duolingo goal you have, if you have more than one.

If you don't think either of those situations applies, just contact support and let us know the name of the goal you're having trouble with, and we'll start looking into it! Sometimes, Duolingo will temporarily not allow us to fetch data for a particular goal, e.g. due to downtime, and in those cases we can just clear the error for you and get things back on track.

Beeminder just dropped all my points!

This most often occurs after you changed the language you're learning from (usually your native language). For example, when you're learning French and the language you're starting from is English ( s'il te plaît is translated to please and vice versa), English is the language you're learning from.

If you've changed the language you're learning from, e.g. so that now you're learning French from German ( s'il te plaît = Bitte), changing it back to the language you were previously learning from should fix the problem. The next time you fetch new data into your graph will restore your points back to what they were before.

This happens because we don't get both English -> French and German -> French points when you track French points; we can only see the points values for courses associated with the language you're choosing to learn from, whichever it is at the time.

If you want to restart your language progress, see the next question for how to do so safely.

If none of these sound right or solve your problem, contact support!

Can I restart my language progress in Duolingo without derailing my goal?

Yup! First, restart the language in Duolingo, so that you have 0 points. Then go to your Beeminder goal and force a data fetch, so Beeminder gets a 0 datapoint. This will reset the odometer, so Beeminder doesn't lose your progress thus far. You can then start using Duolingo again normally!

Advanced Beeminder tip: to correctly reset the odometer, you need to have the 0 datapoint in-between the highest value and the new smaller value post-reset. If you started working on the language again before reading this question and already synced a low number, you can edit the tiny datapoint to 0, then force a new fetch to fix things.

Duolingo sample goal setup

  1. Head to create a new goal.
  2. Click the Duolingo icon to start a new goal using Duolingo data.

    The Duolingo icon, a small green owl!

  3. First, type in your Duolingo username so we know whose points to fetch. Then pick the language and the number of points per day you want to commit to. Lastly, if you want to delay your goal's start a few days (maybe you're traveling this weekend), be sure to tick the "Start this goal with extra leeway" box. Enter the number of days you want to delay and press Continue.

    Screenshot of Duolingo goal setup, showing the Beeminder and Duolingo icons at the top and followed by a field labelled "My Duolingo username is", then "Tracking my progress in", then "I pledge to average" where you need to enter an amount per day, and a ticky box for extra leeway
  4. Give your goal a brief name. If you want, you can also write a short description with more information.

    Shows the "Give your goal a name" page, with "duolingofrench" entered in the first box, showing how it creates the goal's URL. Below there's a box with the description entered, saying "50 points per day in Duolingo!"
  5. Finally, choose your initial pledge. This is the amount you will pay the first time you derail on the goal. After derailing, the pledge will increase by default — use the dropdown below to control how high it goes by selecting the cap. In the example below, I have chosen to start at a $5 pledge, which will increase each time I derail, until it reaches $270 — the pledge cap. (To read more about pledges and payments, check out some FAQs!)

    If you want to start out with a sort of trial period, you can choose to start the goal at $0. If you do that, the pledge will automatically increase to $5 after seven days. If you derail before that, it will also increase to $5.

    Screenshot of the "Starting Stakes" screen. The text says "Your pledge will increase each time you derail until you reach your pledge cap (which you can adjust below)", with a demonstration below showing the pledge progression: 5, 10, 30, 90... to the pledge cap, which currently shows $270. Below, a checkbox button allows you to choose to "Hold the pledge at $0 for 7 days while I get my feet wet"
  6. Step through the preview and payment confirmation screens, and that's it! I'll need to get 50 points in the next 4 days to avoid paying Beeminder my first $5.

    Example graph showing one where +50 points are due in 4 days


Keywords: autodata integrations, language learning

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