Rude and demotivating!
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I understand you very well, but if they make an exception once, they can’t stop it. Everyone can have a reasonable excuse of their own. Otherwise, the longest streak ranking could always remain the same.
You can motivate yourself to achieve a longer streak than before. Even if they fix your streak, it’s actually a broken streak, and you’ll always remember those two days.
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I quite like streaks as a motivating matric. Words read is better overall. Lots of minimal effort days wouldn’t be as good as overall more words read. Eventually, you would have looked beyond the streak, as did I.
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Thanks for your suggestion. I just want to share honestly that losing almost a year-long streak in one go has really killed my motivation to continue in the app.
I understand that rules are rules, but sometimes even well-intended rules can feel unnecessarily rigid in real life. Many modern learning apps now offer a way to repair a streak when life gets in the way - illness, or couple of days off the grid. Being able to fix a couple (or even three) missed days in a row, especially for long-term, committed users, makes a huge difference for motivation.
Right now, it feels like missing 2 consecutive days is punished more harshly than missing 10 non-consecutive days in a month, which is hard to understand from a motivational point of view. For someone with 250+ days and a large number of points, losing the entire streak is simply too harsh.
For me, the streak has been one of the strongest motivators - that’s why I kept going for almost a year. This time, though, it broke me. I really like LingQ, but the way the streak system works in situations like this has unfortunately pushed me away. 
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I accidentally deleted the message while editing it.
You are right, strictly adhering to the rules does not ensure fairness. Therefore, flexibility can be provided for valid excuses. For example, people with acceptable excuses (perhaps with documents, etc.) could be given the chance to correct their series.
However, even in this case, there will always be debates about which excuses are acceptable. In other words, the flexibility granted to one person may not be granted to another. This can lead to problems. However, as I mentioned earlier, managing this is also difficult.
Objectively, it may be possible to offer longer repair periods to individuals with specific series. For example, one extra day of repair could be granted for every 50 or 100 series.
As Steve always says in his videos, being motivated is the most important thing when learning a language. Just as continuing with the series, gaining extra repair opportunities can be another source of motivation.
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Exactly, you see this so well! A smarter reward system would keep people motivated, now after this stupid treatment is just … Some smarter apps keeping people attracted for years are for instance Duolingo, to the same reason i lost the streak there as well, and after 3 days off, they offered a repair, this is how you keep people coming back to the app and user experience is great and reliable, not by stupid rules chasing dedicated people away… thanks for understanding and sorry for the bad mood…
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I don’t use or like streaks, but I understand your concerns. In my opinion this would be largely solved if they were to change the streak system. Instead of a 100% or nothing mechanism, they could present a percentage. Thus if you miss one day in 200, they give you a 99.5% streak. Alternatively, you could repair a streak by making up missed time.
This is a bit of an aside, but over the last two and a half years I have come to the conclusion that LingQ statistics are detrimental to progress. It can be good to take a day off, if for example you have to do overtime at work, or a family member has an illness, or you just need a rest. Also the word count and other markers are not useful. I changed to a more effective learning strategy and it significantly reduced my progress according to LingQ statistics. And yet I was actually making more progress. The current streak and statistics are however good for LingQs business model … In other words, some of the LingQ architecture is designed to benefit LingQ, not the learner. That is in my opinion of course, others are free to disagree, and perhaps the way I learn is not typical.
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Exactly my sentiments as well, you’re absolutely right! I’ve been thinking in the same direction: instead of counting only days, they should measure the quality of your streak, maybe as a percentage. As it is now, you can miss around 20% of days as long as they’re non-consecutive, while someone who happens to miss just two days in a row gets their whole streak wiped out. That feels very unfair.
They could also do something like Duolingo and let you earn back a broken streak with extra work. And I agree with you: LingQ feels far too detached from the customer - just look at the mess when you try to manage and organize the content. In the long run, the apps that are truly on the customer’s side will win our time and attention.
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What exactly do you hope to gain from having the streak repaired? Will it improve your language skills? If not, why bother?
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@Leif Goodwin
You’re right. Although virtually all providers of language learning courses (whether electronic or printed) recommend avoiding interruptions, breaks, etc., because this could hinder the learning process, I personally have had different experiences.. When I take a break for a while (sometimes even 3-4 weeks), I remember everything better than before the break, contrary to all the prophecies. Maybe my brain just needs time to “digest” the new information. But perhaps, this isn’t typical either.
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Except possibility to brag, it actually motivates me to do lessons. But you are right, this is not the primary factor for improving language skills, some days you just do it mechanically just to keep the streak, but sometimes we need to give some break to our brains to process stuff…
Alex Rawlings, a well known polyglot, recommends, in his book on language learning, taking an occasional break. I don’t know if research has anything to say on the matter. However, I did a Google search, and the general concensus is that a break is beneficial.
It is possible the powers that be at LingQ genuinely believe it is bad to take a break. IMO LingQ is one of the few genuinely useful online language learning tools, albeit with more bugs than you can shake a big stick at. As for Duolingo, Busuu and other similar apps, I don’t consider them language learning tools. Others may disagree.
I have had exactly the same experience with ice skating, where a rest gets me out of a rut (no pun intended). I am sure that you’re right, the brain does take time to digest new information, and infrequent breaks may help.
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@Leif Goodwin
You may be right when it comes to books that deal with language learning in theory. To be honest, I haven’t read much of that kind of stuff. The only app I use is LingQ. And I don’t use it to learn languages (in my opinion, LingQ isn’t suitable for that), but to expand my vocabulary in languages I already know quite well and to train my listening comprehension. So I was mainly referring to language courses with textbooks and CDs, mp3s, etc. I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but here in the German-speaking world, authors of language textbooks usually recommend regularity without interruptions. If it’s different where you come from: Lucky you.
Maybe try and “train” your brain: each time you see “x days”, read it aloud as “365 + x days”.
Not the real thing, but it may work.
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It’s easiest to think of a streak in strict terms - did you or did you not complete a task every day. If you didn’t, then the streak was broken. There are people with running streaks who run at least a mile, even when deathly ill, every day, just to keep their streak going for years. I was on the Speakly language app and you can “recover” your streak on that app. I think that is absurd as it is a binary question: did you or didn’t you log in? If you didn’t, then the streak is broken.
As the other posters have said, the streak is ultimately irrelevant. What is amazing is that you had completed 250 days non-stop. That effort translates into results bigger than the streak - you get the result of learning a language and sharing it with a new culture.
All the best with your goals.
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Actually, you can set the daily tasks to the lowest level, and then when you’re sick or very busy, you can just browse around on LingQ to complete the daily tasks.
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You don’t even need to browse around. If you leave a lesson in page view open on browser it will count the page read after a short while and you get notification you have met goal even exceeded it. When I am just importing and testing imports, my goal target get met even though I have not read anything much.
Just replying here and having that page open on another tab and I am at 222/50 without even reading a word.
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Percentage system is a good solution. It can work for the ranking as well. Where ranking can only count XX% and above to be including in ranking. Or a way to sort by percentage.
Another possibility is an option in setting to have a lenient or a hard/unforgiving streak system.
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I believe the purpose of streaks is mainly for habit forming and yes it also motivates you or forces you do things to create the habit you want to form. It is a productivity method, “Don’t break the chain“
You don’t have to use lingQ to track your streaks especially if you do stuff outside LingQ. You can use other habit trackers. Some of them you can even put up money to motivate you. If you want to keep things simple you can just mark in a physical calendar.
I prefer to track it outside of lingQ, where I can list out all the things I want to do per day. It helps to remind me of the different tasks to complete.
There is also a tracker designed specifically for language learners, created by Refold. I have not used it though, it seems very comprehensive. https://youtu.be/SWVqSA_55Ac?si=PbJIljnEHCb037r-
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When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
I think this is a good example of how the streak system can become counter-productive. If you do daily exercises out of anxiety of not breaking the streak instead of wanting to learn / read about something, then you’re learning to associate the learning experience with this feeling of obligation.
We have enough reasons to be anxious, better not to introduce additional artificial ones upon ourselves with small things like this.
I stopped caring about streaks long time ago and my learning experience became more pleasant and I usually spend more time doing it and take time off when I don’t feel like it.
No more anxiety driven lessons, where I will try to find a short article to read cause I don’t actually feel like learning at the moment.
Learn when you feel like it and prevent yourself from associating the experience with negative feelings of being forced to do it to maintain some arbitrary number.
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