“Why does Clozemaster (or Duolingo) improve/expand the content for popular courses such as Spanish and French while my target language is left behind?”
I have seen this kind of rant many times on the Internet. I always suggested them to manage their expectation based on the popularity (i.e. profitability for app operators). However, they just keep ranting on and on.
In order to convince them, I calculated how some language courses are so unpopular on Clozemaster and Duolingo.
See Spanish and Russian on the list, for example. Russian on Duolingo ranks 9th with 16.7%. In other words, The Spanish course (the most popular) has a 6 times larger user base than the Russian course.
The only learners who are eligible to be demanding are Hindi. – Hindi has significantly gained new learners on Duolingo in the last 21 months, jumping up from 8th to 6th in popularity. However, Hindi on Clozemaster still has 2.8% against Spanish. Clozemaster should invest more time and effort in the Hindi course and its promotion to prospective users.
ETA: See the following two images if the full list in one page above is too small for you.
That’s a great investigation @MsFixer, you’re a star for putting that together.
I’d often thought about getting hold of that type of data from Clozemaster, but I didn’t want to have to join each course individually, then leave the course, and then delete the notifications that would be sent out about joining the course.
I’m hoping that you found a different method such as knowing how to access the data using the Clozemaster API (… otherwise that would be quite the effort to get hold of the data).
@zzcguns
Good to hear that the stats is worth your while to read.
I wish I could have a better systematic approach, but I compiled each number manually by creating a subaccount to avoid sending notifications about my new courses to my followers. That’s why I gave up rank 25th and lower.
You can deduct some implications from the stats. For example,
Vietnamese on Duo (14th with 5.7%) is probable overvalued. The real-world popularity would be closer to the figures of Clozemaster. Unlike East Asian languages (Chinese/Japanese/Korean), South East Asian languages are still unpopular in general.
Comparing “Clozemaster Weekly” with “Clozemaster All-time” is interesting. If the percentage of “Weekly” is much lower than that of “All-time”, it implies that the course has more dropout leaners (partially due to poor quality of content), or the popularity of the language is declining.
I was very surprised to see that the English course for Japanese speakers (EN from JP) is almost on par with EN from ES in terms of weekly active users. EN from JP doesn’t have a large all-time user base, so it means that EN from JP is a rapidly emerging star or Japanese people are super diligent in learning English. – FYI: Duolingo’s Global Study Report in 2022 revealed that users in Japan recorded the highest engagement in learning on Duo.
Dutch, Swedish and Polish are much popular on Clozemaster than on Duolingo. I am particularly curious about Polish, which Ukrainian refugees and their supporters may want to learn.
Thank you @morbrorper for the instruction. However, I still need a subaccount to test my target languages. The approach is to play the minimum number in each course and check my ranking on the leaderboard. Without a sub, I have to delete the current progress for my target languages from my regular account.
(… otherwise that would be quite the effort to get hold of the data).
