Zero spots left... 😱
Why my Duolingo events are filled so quickly and what we can do about it.
You might have noticed that it is quite tricky to get a spot for my Duolingo events. In this article I want to explain why and what to do.
Why are the spots gone so fast? ⚡
There are not many hosts for German Duolingo events. As far as I can tell, I might be the only native speaker organizing events at the moment. This means that a lot of people are interested in participating in my events, and the available spots (between 15 and 30) are filled very fast.
Can’t you just open up more spots? 🪑
But why do I limit the number of participants? I know that other events offer up to 70 spots. However, participants in those events spend most of their time in breakout-sessions, and get little time to speak to the host. In my events, I want to spend time with you together on your vocabulary and grammar. For this reason, I limit the number of attendees to 15-30 (depending on the type of the event), which is just manageable for me.
Can you offer more events? 🗓️
Since a couple of weeks I organize two weekly German events and one every other week. I love doing these events - especially the beginner course is dear to my heart! However, I do not feel that I can offer more events than this. Keep in mind that I am a volunteer, organizing the events in my free time.
No-shows 🤷♀️
Another factor for quickly filled spots are no-shows: Many people register for an event, but forget to actually show up! Usually, 25% of the registered participants do not show up for the event, but sometimes the number is as high as 80%. I hope that Duolingo can do something against people that intentionally stay away (XP-farmers), but there’s nothing I can do as a host.
Here is my request to you: Please show up if you have registered for an event, or cancel your registration. I receive up to 20 mails per day of people asking me to join! Be fair and give them a chance!
Regular attendees 🔄
I know that the current situation is particularly annoying for people that want to attend regularly. Once enjoyed one of my events, you may want to come to the next one, but it’s already full. I’m always looking forward to seeing you again, and I think that regular attendance is more effective, and I love to see your progress over weeks and months. I hope Duolingo will introduce tools to make regular attendance easier, but for the moment we’re stuck with what we have.
How to get into your events? ⁉
If an event is already full, I cannot offer you any solution - sorry! However, I can give you a hint on how to get into the next one:
Instead of creating a long series of events, I switched to publishing events indivually on a weekly basis. Currently, I aim to publish events on Fridays at around 6pm CET.
As soon as events are published, I’ll post an update in our facebook group. Keep an eye on the group on Fridays, and there’s a good chance you’re one of the first people who registers for the new events.
I hope this will help you. 👍
Thank you ❤
Finally, let me say this: I am very happy about your interest in my events! Organizing the events, and speaking to all of you is really fun for me, and the overwhelmingly positive feedback from you tells me you enjoy it too! I’m glad to help as many of you as I can!
Best wishes,
Rebecca 👋
About me 👩🏫
I am Rebecca, an enthusiastic language coach since 2016. I love learning languages, and help other people learn them! As a Duolingo Global Ambassador, I regularly host online-events for German, currently exclusively online. I’m also available as private tutor via preply.
Community 🌍
Stay up to date about the events in my facebook-group! This is also the right place for questions and answers about the German language!
Newsletter 💌
With this newsletter, I want to offer material and ideas to everyone who is in the process of learning German. It will contain explanations of grammar and vocabulary, but also information about German culture and proverbs. For advanced topics, I’ll write the newsletter in German, so you can exercise reading German texts. I hope to publish at least once a week.