Everyone is FURIOUS at the new Duolingo Update. Here’s Why
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- čas přidán 19. 11. 2022
- So do ya love the new duolingo update or no?
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For me I hate how forced and linear the learning is now. I loved to just jump around and see what I felt like doing that day, sometimes doing higher levels and sometimes starting a fresh lesson. And mostly I LOVED stories, it is the thing that thing on the app that felt the most natural in terms of usage of the language...
They seem to have taken our freedom of choice away 😢
Same, I always had several lessons halfway and combining new easier lessons with the more difficult levels. Also that allows you to forget a bit what you did by combining lessos and make everything more difficult and rewarding. Right now I just repeat exercises with the same words for 2 weeks, at the end I'm bored
The stories are still there
Exactly! This update is a bummer. It gives you zero choice.
I liked the tree system way more
personally the fact that they took away the stories has really been the downside for me. yes, they integrated the stories into the roadmap thingy, but in reality, story based learning has been proven to be highly affective. It's also more enjoyable to learn when you have more context to your vocabulary other than sentences. Also, based on my map, I am now repeating a lot of stories I have already read! This is extremely demotivating to me... the stories were honestly my bread and butter. They were what I did when I didn't want to work on 30 lessons to complete a circle.
EDIT: new stories are NOT under review. You can only review stories you have previously worked on. You cannot jump ahead in stories. Maybe if you have plus? I don't have plus. I can only access stories I have already previously read.. and I have ZERO interest in doing that
you can see them in your stories under review
I miss all of the Podcasts and audio lessons that didn’t require a click every 5 seconds. I liked to listen and do other things like laundry, dishes, walking the dogs.
they got rid of separate stories as soon as I start a language with stories
@@Tiredmum 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Yes, moving the stories into the tree is the one thing I wish didn't happen. Personally they were very useful on days when I wasn't as motivated to do a lesson. They were bit sized motivators, that are fun to complete. They felt like I was learning more, then understanding a few non-connected sentences, the way I feel following a real world conversation.
Being a teacher and using the “schools” option has been a nightmare. I can’t assign topics anymore and it only allows to assign XP. Then the students are on different levels and could be missing the phrases and grammar I need them to get. I wanted them to learn superlatives yesterday and now the kids are all over the place and a lot of them are not far enough along the path. (Mine just updated!) ugh.
it seems that you can go back to the old version until the end of the month.
@@crazyspider17 how??
@@r.gurgel6532 There's an option in the settings. It may take awhile to show up. I'm currently using a class of just myself to keep the tree for a little longer.
I'm in love with you
@@peeblekitty5780 wait how
You forgot the most annoying part of the update. The Guidebook is totally awful, just having these key phrases that feel like somebody rolled the dice to figure out which ones to include. Gone away are the beautiful guides how to conjugate verbs or whatever you were on. This helped so much figuring out patterns in why this language was built like that. Also i liked those little icons and the representation of progress they had before.
100% agree! I didn't think to look at the guidebook before today, but a harder than anticipated struggle with a new unit made me check, and it is now utterly USELESS! I could have tolerated quite a few differences and likely been okay eventually, but THAT change is disgustingly unhelpful. I want my grammar lessons back!
I can't understand why they threw away all that hard work. Now I'm guessing Swedish grammar. Well, I'm using the old version still that they hid, but when they finally kill it, I'll have to find another app.
@@LeeGee It's such a shame that the comments got switched off and the community fora all went. It was great to be able to speak to native speakers with a concern and to get it straightened out by an expert.
FRR like I check to see the guidebook abt grammar and I see nothing about grammer, it’s just some phrases bruh and plus I’m tryna learn Russian and there aren’t even stories like the other languages , like Spanish
And the unit 1 in Russian is terrible. I hate the way duolingo stuctured unit 1 bevause i just wasted my whole time on it because unit 2 only started talking about “hello “ and “bye” . Unit was was saying “He is not human” like when am I ever gonna use that phrase
The one thing I miss is lack of choices. It's all completely linear now. I liked having the choice between 3 topics :(
It feels like I am forced to complete a tree and then told "Congratulations you are fluent". This is not how languages are learned and I am discouraged from review. I had signed up to all languages and would often come back after a break needing to review what I had learned. Now I just look at it feeling like the only way to review is to do the whole tree again
Same. Like let me pick.
@@cipher3966 exactly!
Yeah, I hate this candyland bullshit
Honestly I hated it because it felt overwhelming 😂
They decided to focus more on the competition instead of helping people learn a language. My German friend said he has no “hints.” So you’re penalized for making mistakes because they rules were not explained. I use Babbel now. I’m understanding the language more and can start building sentences.
I like duolingo’s pronunciation.
I agree about the rules not being explained. I’m learning Dutch and it’s extremely frustrating to get penalized for incorrectly adding (or not adding) an e to the end of an adjective because I have no idea _what_ the rule is for when you’re supposed to add it.
I did look it up, but the explanation I found was too hard for me to understand. This is an essential part of speaking the language, so it should be explained to us!
@Ian Bogue hopefully you didn’t pay for it. I really like Babbel. I’m getting the explanation for whys in German grammar. I practice with my friends on HelloTalk. Now when I go back to practice on duolingo, I can breeze through their sentences. I also see mistakes on Duolingo. You always say “Sie” to another person in German, until you know them. A few sections encourage informal which is rude. I’ve flagged it before.
@@t.l.c7481 you only use Sie in professional settings, hierarchy or with a big age difference. Teacher, boss or old woman on the street - Sie. Other student, people in a bar, random person that is around your age on the street - du. When strangers call you Sie in non professional settings and you're under like 35 it usually just feels like they call you old :D
But the fact that they won't explain the context makes duolingo usually quite frustrating
I also like duolingo for pronunciation. There is so much repetition. Love it. But hate it because I'm not learning phrases/grammar, it seems. Maybe other languages are better. I'm learning Dutch.
@Diana Cook I’m also learning French and Italian. No hints or grammar! My German friend is struggling with English because of little to no hints or grammar. This app was designed by English speakers. You would think there would be more to the English section.
Weirdly, i feel like the new system is way more overwhelming for me. With the old tree, it didn't feel like I was on a long winding path that will never end. Being able to clearly see everything I had left to do made me feel like I was actually making progress with every lesson I completed, this new system just makes me anxious
Yes!!
I agree!!!
When you go from "only 5 Units to go" to "I am in Section 7 of 42"🤐😑
YES!
I've pretty much given up on progressing. With the old way, I'd steam ahead and when new levels were inserted, go back and fill in the gaps. Now you don't see that, and some trees are so massive (eg Spanish) I know I'll never reach the end of it!
Here's my problem: I have adhd and one of the crucial benefits for me was that i could choose what to practice. I don't mean I just did the easy lessons and ignored everything else. With the old tree and the branches I usually had four lessons unlocked at various difficulty levels which allowed me to choose what i wanted to do depending on how well I could focus and sustain concentration that day. I would easily do 1 hour sessions every day and now all that flexibility is gone. I lost my streak bc doing even one lesson that is completely random, and without being able to gage the energy it requires, gives me a headache. I can't choose an easier level for that day or go back and repeat one to ease my brain into study mode. I hate this update, it made the app completely unusable for me.
I'm sure they did tons of research but, as is not uncommon in teaching, failed to acknowledge the needs of neurodivergent people.
I also have adhd and this is exactly how I used duolingo, I generally chose the units based on my energy and my attention, also I generally enjoyed being able to 'build' my tree on my own, even though I usually ended up doing the cascade method but still I liked being able to choose which lesson to take. Now the app is much less engaging to me, what I do to keep engaged is change the language I m going through, that keeps me a bit more engaged, but just for a little
Same here. ADHD. It's not fun anymore. So I quit Duolingo and started using Memrise instead.
Literally the same for me! A big factor in how well i focus is it showing im learning something new and making progress, but the new update set back my language progress a bunch. I just havnt been able to really get back to where i was because its making me go over one syllable words and sounds again.
Same here!! I lost my streak as well and haven’t been on for a couple of days 😕 what got me the most is the fact that they took away the audio lessons. I’d do those when I didn’t have the energy to be on a screen for a full lesson
Same. I let my streak die. I haven't wanted to even look at it for weeks. I'm looking for a good replacement for my target languages. I might have to give Memrise another chance.
Somehow not a single one of my problems with the new update made it into this video, which is fascinating! these are not at all in priority order i just have a lot (a LOT) of issues:
1) the amount of XP you get for completing lessons now is terrible; going back and practicing topics you've forgotten only gets you 5XP where it used to get you maybe 4x that much, sometimes more if you got the early bird or night owl bonus at the right time
2) you can lose lives for going back and refreshing yourself, meaning there's no point actually practicing specific topics ( i know you can do this with the 'practice to regain lives' thing but sometimes i want to go back and refresh a specific topic and now if i want to do that it might lose me lives??)
3) i liked having the stories separate, it meant i could split my learning between grammar and context more effectively for my learning style rather than being told when i should be completing them...also i just don't really like doing stories some days and the fact that i have to do them when i'm not in the mood really sucks
4) getting the legendary or whatever it's called for a section used to take 4 tries but now it takes you 8 and it still costs 100 gems per try even though you have to do twice as many
5) scrolling back to anything on the mobile app is dreadful - they've added a quick-scroll to the most recent thing but nothing for if you want to go back up for any reason
6) none of the individual topics are labelled clearly anymore; they're only named if you click on them, and even then it's just things like 'my bad day', which doesn't tell me anything about the grammar that's in it! whatever happened to 'birthday' and 'health'?
7) it's not just put me somewhere that i /think/ i shouldn't be, i definitely shouldn't be where it's started me off because I HAVEN'T DONE PAST TENSE YET, it's just dropped me in the middle of using the past tense with exactly zero experience and i can't 'refresh' the earlier topics in this section so i'm just blindly guessing how past tense works in German
8) i've lost all of my 'legendaries' i was saving up for, i liked having that long line of golden icons that turned purple when you mastered them, i know you can do that now with the separate sections but it doesn't feel the same to me
9) i hate the way it goes back and forth across the screen in the 'path', i much preferred the nicely organised grid system we had before which was just more aesthetically pleasing to me
10) AFAICT there's no more 'restoring' lessons, which makes it really difficult to know what topics i should probably refresh myself on; i found that really helpful to know when i was forgetting things maybe without even realising it and now i can't really do that
11) maybe it's the ADHD in me but i HATE being stuck on one path doing one thing at a time, i made so much more progress on the older system where i could just jump back and forth from 'groceries' to 'weather' to 'family' instead of the order someone else thinks i should be learning them in where i'm stuck doing the same exact vocab for six straight lessons - where did the idea of learning at your own pace go??
12) this was also a problem with the old system, not just the new update (which is why it's at the end) but i feel like duo never actually explains anything? how am i supposed to know the difference between 'ihre' and 'ihrer' or 'sein', 'seinen' and 'seinem' when it's never actually been explained to me in any kind of helpful way? i assume it's something to do with what comes after it but i don't actually know that because there's no lessons on that!
i agree with everything, especially with the formatting of the mobile app - it's horrible to navigate and the topics aren't clear at all
THANK YOU! You've explained this perfectly!
Number 11 is my biggest issue. When I'm tired, I want to choose easy vocab or revision. When I'm mentally fresh, I want grammar concepts. I used to be able to pick. Now I'm stuck in whatever duo has decided is what I should be doing and it almost never coincides with my mental activity level.
it seems like such a small thing but i do get really bored just clicking on the same lesson 6 times in a row instead of scrolling between the 15 or so i have going on and working on each of them
I’m p good with the new path but god number 12 on this list is a big thing- been studying Polish which has a lot of words with tenses and genders and NONE of it is explained so you have to figure it out yourself
I feel like this video focused on the silliest complaints while ignoring the more substantial ones.
In short, Duolingo used to be a flexible learning app, now it is very linear. Rather than making language learning fun and game like, it becomes a repetitive grind. That's not superficial, like changing a color from purple to gold. It cuts to the core of what made Duolingo work so well.
Agreed. Like, I normally respect the aim to stay open and positive towards change, but people are furious about the update for good reason, much more substantial than "legendary color change" or "we need to pay gems sometimes". There's basically no freedom of choice using this app anymore, which was exactly what made Duolingo so appealing and compatible with my brain and many others (as a couple other comments have said, this "optimal path" has utterly failed to account for neurodivergent people and anyone with different learning styles).
I agree completely! And he is ignoring the fact that people learn in different ways. He might be linearly minded, but I, and half the world at least, are not! We use choice to go where we will learn best that day.
I am unfamiliar with this channel and came on yt to get an explanation behind the changes to duolingo - this video came off as condescending and since the creator says he's a beta tester who has been on the site for 3+ years (approx?) he seemed biased.
I pay for duolingo - have had it for 2+ years. Made some progress with French but have always found the app lacking in explanations. I will not be renewing my subscription. It's not worth paying for.
@@jspaingreene6350 Perhaps he got payed by Duolingo to do that. Also did you know that Duolingo is now mocking people who criticise the new layout (look at some of their tiktoks)? It is time to search for another app.
Agreed. By blathering on about purple vs gold legendary icons he attempted to make anyone who was not happy with the new Duolingo appear to be focused on trivia. I think Evan rather missed the point of the change in legendary. It used to be that every topic had to do the legendary level 3-5 times to actually get legendary status. You could make 3 mistakes and now you can't but you only do it once. It is the repetition that makes the learning more secure and not the number of errors you make.
Linguist here.
I specialize in second-language acquisition and one of the most motivating factors about learning a second language is said to be the power of choice. In other words, your ability to choose what topics and words or patterns you learn is a key factor in keeping you interested in the language you’re working on. The old Duolingo tree had this to a small degree, but now it’s gone completely. This is the biggest headache for me as someone who genuinely cares about language learning and instruction. Duolingo, in my opinion, had something good going, and then decided to take it away and substitute it for something terrible. A huge step back in my professional opinion.
I also heard somewhere on Reddit that the company is trying to emulate their kids-marketed UI since it seemed to be doing well. I think this is a horrible choice to force onto adults. At least give us the option of working in one tree or another! So angry about all of this…
Same. I don't mind the path in concept, _if a person wants to use it._ Otherwise it just takes away freedom of choice. Just give us a toggle option to choose between tree and path.
And we know that's not hard either, because Classes has the option (the only way to use the tree nowadays--but they're getting rid of even that after December v.v)
Duo actually kinda sucked the whole time I watched an actual Japanese person react to their Japanese course apparently the pitch accent is completely wrong I’m not saying there’s nothing to the app but it’s way better to learn from an actual human if you can
@@Elfieee13 That could be an issue with some languages more than others. The video maker was able to learn Spanish almost entirely through Duolingo and people remarked on his fluency, and everything Duolingo's taught me lines up with actual Spanish classes I've taken in the past.
I don't want choice. I want phrases. I want a system that teaches me a framework that I can use to insert targeted vocabulary. My goal isn't airport, hospital, hotel, food. My goal is conversational abilities with a friend. Let the friend become my dictionary. If I need a new word, I point to it or say it in English and he gives me the Dutch, and I'm happy. Minor gripe. I didn't know there were accents in Dutch. Duolingo teaches Dutch with a Northern accent, and my friend speaks with a Southern accent. Ha Ha. It's as though I learned English with a British accent, and I'm trying to speak to someone with an American accent. No worries. More grammar!
I am totally in agreement with you! I like the choice of being able to learn the way I best learn, not someone else’s way!
The layout is so frustrating because I like jumping around to learn different things. And it's so important to practice older stuff.
@@emilwandel But as everyone learns differently, they've just decided to ignore their own users...
You can still do that... actually u can jump to the end...
@@emilwandel
That's cool and all, but I literally needed to repeat the time and numbers lesson in Japanese for at least 8 times before I felt confident in it. Meanwhile the new paths brings this stuff back maybe one or two times, which is not nearly enough to remember.
I found that I really miss the discussion forums where people could ask questions or make comments about specific examples. They locked all of the discussions, and you can still read the previous posts, but I liked being able to interact with other users (and moderators, who I think they got rid of!) to answer questions I might have about a particular sentence structure or phrase. And I liked being able to reward other users for having helpful responses--another use for lingots!
I think this is one of the biggest upsets for me
It’s not a coincidence that they killed discussions right before rolling out the early beta of the new tree.
Yeah, they were great to get fast answers...now you have to go reddit
they were so helpful i miss them
Evan, you’re doing Spanish & German from English, basically the two best courses on duo.
Maybe try Welsh from English? The forums were essential for that one! On the new path the tips more or less disappeared. There are just some sentences, no explanation. Try the Spanisch von Deutsch weg. Or a language with another writing system like Ukrainian, Hindi or Arabic. See how you get on without the normal skills with tips...
I never did legendary or the other stuff you talked about, really don’t care about that. Agree on the old timed challenge, those were fun when i CHOSE to do them.
Also miss the dictionary feature, especially for Cymraeg & Arabic. But not many people knew that one.
Clubs not so much, some people loved those, but i get why that got retired.
What irks me about these new paths is that in some i got placed way too near the end, yeah, most people complain about it being too easy, i got extra hard.
The path is just too long, scrolling is terrible on my shorter course, i don’t even dare to look at Sp from Eng.
I can CHOOSE to repeat lessons, for 5exp , don’t care about the value, but they aren’t named!
So, for Welsh, which has an insane numbering system(think French but worse), i cannot CHOOSE to practice those numbers, because i’m unable to find it on the path, while the skill was simply there in the tree.
Yes, i knew the waterfall system, i promoted it enough on the forums & even used it on some trees. But if i wanted to be weird & make the Arabic tree green or the Ukranian blue & golden, that was MY CHOICE.
As you might have guessed, i leant a lot of languages & skipped around to prevent getting demotivated. Duo’s new path doesn’t take this into consideration. If, after doing Welsh & Arabic for funsies, i finally return to Deutsch, duo doesn’t care that i want to repeat my earlier skills, i get thrown a bunch of new things that make NO sense to me, because duo thinks i should learn that; Ordnung muss sein!
I do not get to CHOOSE.
Also, i miss separate stories, while they are integrated in the path i cannot CHOOSE to do them when they suit me...
On the forums duo promoted itself as inclusive even for those that had other learning styles. It got a lot of kudos for it then, why do they abandon it now?
I don’t care about clubs, lingots, leagues or legendary status.
I just want a CHOICE.
(and the dictionary, fully functioning tips & the forums pretty please?)
Liefs leafs (^.^)
For context, I've been learning/ speaking Japanese for over a decade and even teach Japanese-- the thing I hate about duo lingo is how specific your answers have to be in order to be considered 'right'-- especially when there can be multiple 'correct' answers, or when certain phrases just do not translate at all. It's really frustrating how most of it feels like I have to guess the correct English the way that Duo wants me to word, rather than understanding the content. -- it's like taking a backwards English test in riddles.
So instead of learning anything, I end up infuriated that I was 'wrong' because I worded my English sentence differently. You can report a question to have more than one correct answer, but you still get marked wrong regardless which is annoying as hell.
True I am learning japanese in Duolingo and if you don’t add an “a” like in “a cat”, it’s wrong
I agree. Also, it's AMERICAN English so not necessarily correct grammar anyway. The number of times they have said incorrect to my answer only to find the so-called 'correct' answer is grammatically bad. So annoying! (Korean and Japanese course on Duo).
@@kdfrk247 Oh god, this part didn't even cross my mind-- that's AWFUL
The thing that bothers me a bit about the snake style tree is that it took the illusion of choosing what to tackle. Sometimes, I got a bit stuck on one lesson, and with the dual-tier tree, I could focus on a different topic for a bit, until my brain had re-set. And yeah, I miss the stories, too. I often did them a few times, weeks apart, to see my progress in understanding the language.
I don't care about the gems side of things at all, it's the inaccessibility of the new update. They've removed the icons that made it easy to know which lesson were on what topic, and the occasional labels are now inaccurate/don't match what the lessons are actually on (I'm learning Mandarin for reference). It's so much harder to go and revise past lessons which I found incredibly helpful before. After months of trying to get it to work for me, I've actually uninstalled the app and have pulled out my textbooks instead.
Excuse me, where are you from? The app has the new interface for less than a month to me, so im surprised to read that yuo tried for months now
@@jennpao1999 i’ve had it for months as well, it just automatically updated for me. i looked it up at the time and saw almost nothing about a new update so i assume it was some kind of beta test
@@jennpao1999 my son has had his changed for about 2 months now, way before my changed. He uses apple phone & I have an android, so I wonder if that's part of the difference
@@jennpao1999 my husband had it before me. I was actually dreading getting the update because I had seen how different it was on his.
Honestly, as a Mandarin speaker, you're going to learn more from the textbooks anyways. I can't imagine having started with Duolingo to do Chinese. How would you be able to recognize any characters? I use it just to brush up on my Mandarin and when they give you a new word they don't tell you what it means or how to use it correctly. They just give you one example of how to use it and then move on. I haven't seen any grammar explanations either.
My biggest gripe with the new update is mostly how much more impractical it has become. The endless scrolling. The fact that the lessons don't have their little symbol showing what they are, so it's really hard to find stuff if you're looking for something specific. The (for some languages) removal of tips and tricks on grammar, I always need to brush up on verb forms - overall it feels like the entire tips section has become worse.
I'm also a long time user (currently 2120 days) and I recently finally got my dad to start using Duolingo. Now he has to stop. Can't do it anymore. He's hard of hearing and because of the stories built in, he can't progress, because he hasn't found a way to not have to do the stories when they require listening.
Personally, I also hate the fact that there's only one single way of going forward now! I really liked mixing waterfall method with a deep dive into a specific topic that was useful for me at the moment. It's good that they're trying to optimise the learning for the more casual learners, but I hate not having options! Sometimes you just got to trust that people can pick the best way to things for themselves.
I have been starting to look into other options to duo, just in case I get too frustrated with this update. I would be sad to lose my streak, but I would still have the knowledge. I think that I'll stay, but I will spend way less time on the app and less time learning with duolingo
I can confirm that removing grammar is terrible for such complex languages as Irish. I can't revise word mutations, the article about them simply vanished.
Also as someone in this comment section mentioned, it was completely incompatible for them because they have ADHD-and several people agreed. I also have ADHD and this new linear tree sounds much worse for me. I don’t absolutely need to use Duolingo to learn Spanish, as I’m doing the second part of a Spanish course next term at college, but. I would have liked to use it in addition. Now I’m completely demotivated to. Like that person said, their decision to switch to this method completely neglected the learning needs of neurodivergent people… It sucks.
I think the worst is not being able to go back. It's always necessary to go back and refresh the memory, in any field.
What I’m upset about is that they took away the audio stories/lessons, at least the ones that were available in my French course. I had found myself using so much of what I learned there and now they’ve disappeared.
I'm in love with you
The stories aren’t gone, they’re just somewhere else
@@Your.typical.German.2. where are they? I have been wondering where they went
I can't stand the new layout, I like jumping around, and I like doing things my own way.
I also feel like I've been pushed back many lessons, it's not just demotivating It seems like they're actively pushing me away from the app.
I feel the same. I finished one tree (just on level 1, but still), and now I'm in the middle with the new update. Why?
Same here.
SAME
@@paimaikar285 That's the way I do it... finish level one all the way through, then level 2 all the way, etc. Transferring progress to this new path makes NO SENSE. I usually learn thre vocabulary list before I do the lesson, too. The lesson I did today, I was so lost. I had no idea of any of the vocab... I had to look at "hints" for everything... I feel like I've learned nothing (although I did pretty well reading signs in Norway last month), and I'm so demotivated. My plan is useful in helping me get exposure to a lot of words quickly, which helps with reading and listening. I don't need to practice output yet, but they're forcing me to, and it's too soon.
Thank you! I felt like I was sent to a completely different learning area. Like, I'm not sure if I was sent back, but I definitely was not learning about whatever topic I'm learning now.
I mean my reason for hating this tree is that for years Duolingo has been about learning your own way at your own pace. I'm sure this may be a better way to learn for some people but for me it just feels like school, which really did not work for me at times.
It also doesn't help that my autism doesn't do well with changes that I didn't choose or want so it's extremely hard to have something that I'd gotten and liked being stripped and being told its for my sake. Like no.
I'd been struggling to articulate exactly this about how they've been all about learning at your own pace and now have seemed to force everyone into the same method
100% same. I literally cried over this change and I've just been doing the bare minimum to keep the streak. Plus for me I liked that the old tree was like a list and I knew what my lesson was going to be. I don't like the randomised order of things.
I feel this so much! I've genuinely found learning from textbooks easier and have uninstalled the app and switched back to that :(
@@georgina_2746 I really liked drumming into my head some key phrases and language constructs, repeating them over and over for a week or two. Now Duolingo offers me just a stupid vocabulary training game that nobody can get through without time boosters :(
Im autistic so I’ve been struggling with it too. It’s ever so demotivating oh my god.
I was one of the unfortunate individuals who got the Beta test months ago and at this point I've turned 'hating the Duolingo update' into one of my personality traits. I like learning on my rules. If I want to do one verb lesson, one revision on gendered nouns, one how to order at a restaurant, one directions, and then one more complex sentences then I used to be able to. On this one? I'm re-learning the same 6 words over and over and over again for an hour and slowly wanting to die. Also, they took my stories, and I was 1 story away from completing it! Angry. For me this update just seems like it was designed for kids and as a 35 year old who is using the app to keep up on a language I already speak but can never use at home because no one around me speaks it, I HATE this.
Duolingo has ALWAYS been focused mostly on trying to get peoples subscriptions rather than teach you. Their lessons are focused on giving you very tiny steps that give you the illusion of progress when really you're only 0.0001% closer to learning the language.
I have ADHD and my biggest issue with the new user interface is that I find that it's overwhelming to look at and I can't visualize my progress. As someone who was tracking my progress through the duolingo Norwegian course for the last 3 years, suddenly I have no idea where I am in the course and when I try to figure it out, I find myself endlessly scrolling along a path where the sections are not visually distinct or clearly labeled. The endless scrolling makes the course I was halfway through now seem interminable and unconquerable which is extremely demotivating. On top of this, I recieved this update without warning or explanation. I never got the cute little video. Imagine you're reading a book and it's entire layout and format changes and suddenly you have no idea what chapter or page you're on. Wouldn't you feel like giving up? That's how I felt.
My second biggest issue is the lack of autonomy. Instead of being able to choose between a cluster of topics or being able to easily go back and practice completed sections, I'm forced to follow one rigid path. Sure, I can choose to skip ahead by taking a test but I have no idea what I'm skipping to or skipping past. Because I have ADHD, I can't focus on learning when I get bored and the unique level of autonomy Duolingo provided kept me from getting bored. Duolingo says they changed their app because this is what's best for the average learner but what about people like myself who are not average learners? It seems like they don't care about us at all.
Also, because you can't go back and practice, there's nothing to do once you complete the path. Language learning doesn't end once you've completed the path. My plan when I finished my original Duolingo tree was to continue go back and practice old lessons everyday to keep my Norwegian fresh. Now I can't do this.
And I'm not usually one to complain about app updates. I understand apps have to change and adapt to some extent. But this truly feels like a completely different app to me and it seems to go against the original ethos of Duolingo.
I am not upset that Duolingo is trying to find more ways to monetize the app. They have to make money somehow. I expect them to do this. Anyone who is complaining about that aspect is being silly.
All that said, the new update made me cancel my subscription. I honestly don't expect them to revert to the old layout when they've invested so much in this new one but I do expect them to at least consider customer concerns and unless they make a statement about how specifically they're going to improve the app for neurodivergent learners and those with disabilities in general, I'm not interested in paying for their product. I just feel like their attitude regarding this change has been very ableist. Sure, I doubt it's intentionally ableist but that's not a good excuse in 2022.
Because of my adhd I only ready the first two sentences of this but I have to say that I felt the update helped my adhd mind lol
@@melaniegrace7707 everyone is different..
@@gracehetfield5331 ofc honestly I was just trying to be funny not to argue
i feel you i may have ADHD don't really want to go through diagnosis right now too many stuff going on and the app was easier for me before the update because sometimes i will do languages for months in a row and sometimes not having the the level on each micro-lesson was so helpful for me T.T
I'm not neurodivergent and I agree with you! You said it beautifully, the new design sucks
I’m learning Korean via Duolingo, so I don’t know if this is exclusive to Korean or if this happened with other languages, but what was most frustrating to me is that when the change happened, units that I had already learned & gotten legendary status on were now a couple units away, uncompleted, because they had restructured where those units were placed. So units I had already learned were locked for me to learn again in the future, and now, where I was at, there were new words and phrases that I hadn’t learned, that had been placed earlier in the tree with the restructuring.
It was incredibly jarring and demotivating.
It's not just Korean. They've completely rearranged all the languages. It's impossible to know where I was at before, because everything is mixed up, making everything way too easy, or too hard. Sometimes it's both at the same time, depending on the lesson.
I have had previously completed units autocomplete once I reached them. It's like the progress is still there but they are reinforcing foundations before progressing you past that more complex content.
Korean itself has been demotivating for me because I can't learn Korean without having to learn a third faux-phonetic Latin language in the mix. I know English, I want to learn Korean and the Hangul script. I don't want to learn this third language. It's getting in the way and it's the thing I mess up on most of the time because it's completely useless.
I've learned Korean sounds in advance before starting on Duolingo, through sounds and IPA (international phonetic alphabet). So I know the sounds and the IPA values. But I had to drop the Korean course early on, it's impossible to do on Duolingo.
At least give me the option to use actual IPA instead.
@@Liggliluff what 3rd language are you referring to? I’m not sure I understand what aspect of the lessons you’re referring to
I had the same problems with Korean when this update rolled out to me over the summer. (I was apparently in the first wave of people to suffer the new and improved version.) It was so frustrating because my grasp of the last few lessons before the change was really weak and suddenly my ability to review was cut off and I was thrown forward in lessons with no foundation to stand on. It’s gotten a little better since then. I can go back now and review all of the lessons I’ve completed, and it’s a good thing because there’s a lot there that’s completely new since I first took those lessons. It’s not as much fun anymore, though. I can’t quite explain it, but some of the excitement about learning is gone.
As a neurodivergent person (autism and ADHD), the sudden change with no option to turn it back has made my motivation take a massive hit. The whole layout is different, the helpful lesson descriptors/icons are gone, and I can't choose what topics I want to learn or refresh. Also, when I was put on the new course my progress got all out of shape. It was trying to teach me things I'd already learned and do stories I'd already done. I had to skip at least three units because the lessons were too understimulating for me and it was also dulling my motivation.
I’m not neurodivergent (to my knowledge), but I’m experiencing similar effects. If I have to practice a certain topic without choice, I’m less motivated. And I’ve been getting duplicate topics and stories. The way they translated the progress didn’t work for me.
SAME
Same here
@@salamanda11 exactly!
Same for me:(
The thing I hate the most about the update is that it literally set back my progress by miles. I'm suddenly doing extremely basic lessons in languages where I was previously almost completely done with all the units available wtf...
EXACTLY!!!!!!🧡
I had the ENTIRE French tree unlocked, everything at level 1, I could review everything from "salut, ça va?" to long complex sentences about religion using obscure grammar... then the path update came and I lost like 60% of the unlocked lessons, a lot of the stories I had already unlocked, and since now there is just level 0 and level 1 with no incentive to go back and reinforce already learned lessons OR to repeat lessons that you have just learned, I am not incentivized to go back. This is one of the worse updates I have seen in my life for any app or site.
@@KyrieFortune agreed. Said perfectly. I deleted the app and haven’t looked back since 🤣
For me, the lack of options has made this much harder for me to stay motivated. Some days I come home from work exhausted, and I don't have the mental strength to push through new material or take that one category to legendary. I used to go back and review just to maintain the habit on those days, but that's not really in the cards. Some days I felt like doing a story, some days I had zero interest in stories, but that's out of my control now.
At this point, I do a lesson a day to maintain my streak and I'm looking for other options.
Same here! I'm only doing one lesson a day, just in the hopes that they come back and fix this eventually. Hey, Disney just fired their leadership for bad decisions... maybe Duo will take a hint. ;) I'm not renewing my membership. I'll focus more on my books, and I'm thinking about buying Pimsleur. I already do Drops daily along with Duo, and right now Drops is the only one I enjoy.
@@joob40 I used Pimsleur for 30 days for Swedish and... it's certainly something... just a warning: set aside an hour for a lesson, 30 minutes is bull, and be prepared to get bored by repeating certain phrases. Trust me, it's useful, but eventually certain phrases are super annoying to repeat. Plus, the farther you get into the lessons the lack of grammar explanations become obvious. For example, Swedish has EN and ETT words (most are en) but Pimsluer never explained how the word would change in the tense, and this might not seem like a big deal when starting out in a language, but they want you to repeat a English phrase into your target language and then you say the phrase wrong, maybe sentence structure or something of a another, and you stuck with the lesson on pause trying to figure out what you did wrong. I think the 1 free lesson trial is stupid, you certainly can't get a feel for the course that way. But it is a dollar a day for 30 days, so maybe it's worth a try. Just don't choose to use it for a language that you're super proficient (i.e more than a beginner) because, to my knowledge, you cannot skip any lessons
:)
@@joob40 also, you totally werent asking for a review so, apologies!!
@@adventureswithmadison No apologies needed! That was actually helpful.
As someone who sometimes does Duolingo when they're drunk, the no going back rule is extremely detrimental to my learning and I can't see myself actually learning the language properly just because I like to practice French when I'm drunk lol
I can go back on mine so it might be an issue they’ll fix
@@josiahjray I went back on mine and it reset all of my progress, went from lesson ~30 to lesson 2. So yeah, I don't recommend it.
@@ThePedro8161 That definitely didn’t happen for me, and I go back to previous lessons every day 😬
I emailed Duolingo but I honestly don't expect anything. Super demoralizing im sure you can imagine.
you can now
I have more than 1400 days streak and I'm one of the furious users. I hate how it looks and the way they force me to learn through the "best way". Language learning should be FLEXIBLE: what works for one person doesn't necessarily works for other people. Also, if the learning process is no longer fun, it doesn't matter how effective said learning path is. So, I said thank you to Duolingo for the past few years, and I changed my study method. I still use Duolingo, but only a minimum amount.
My biggest issue with this update is that It happened when I had circles left to complete Welsh. As I was moving on, there have been words and phrases that I legitimately had not learned at all. I scrolled back up and discovered that there are topics that Duolingo thinks I learned that I have not, like spirituality and religion. I have no clue about either of those topics, but I am now one day away from completing the entire course.
The one thing I am missing is: previously if I was really tired mentally I would do some level 1 or 2 lessons. Now even if I don't feel like I can muster as much focus (after studying for uni etc) I still have to do hard exercises
Yeah that's a big thing for me too. I'm chronically ill and some days my brain barely functions but I want to maintain my streak and keep Japanese in my brain daily.
Exactly! No option to chill anymore
@@slinkywhippet The amount of times I have redone basic Hiragana and Katakana just to keep my streak, as if it helps with anything... The only way to make progress now is to do lessons that are a bit too tough for me and feel more like a chore than anything
Same!
I was a super early adopter of Duolingo, starting a day or two after they launched. And I was also a paid subscriber. They made me a beta tester of the new tree system, which I got months ago. I gave it a couple months, there were a lot of bugs I reported, but I really tried to give it a fair shake. But they made so many rapid changes, and all of them basically took away stuff that I had found fun. Making the timed challenges impossible was the last straw. I abandoned my lengthy streak and cancelled my subscription. I guess it’s working for them but I’m done with them.
what’s your streak?
@@czar_cz Currently zero. And will remain zero.
@@flibbertygibbette I mean your length streak; your streak before you abandoned Duolingo
One word I keep hearing over and over from people who dislike the update is "demotivational." For new language learners, it's really hard to exactly pinpoint what exactly is demotivating, you just know that it IS demotivating. You no longer feel motivated. In fact, you feel DEmotivated. It's hard to quantify or qualify, but clearly a lot of people are experiencing this with the new update. I feel like motivation is a huge part of learning a new language, so in my opinion, this update really missed the mark hard core.
I haven't seen anyone complaining about what annoys me the most in this update, so I will bring up the subject to know if another person felt the same or no. I really liked the increase in the difficulty of the lessons, making you write more in the language you are learning. The problem is, they didn't make the lessons shorter. So, more difficulty and the same amount of exercises make the time spent on each lesson way longer. It used to take me 5 to 8 minutes to complete a lesson, now it takes me about 13 for languages with the same alphabet as mine and up to 18 minutes in lessons with a different writing system. Since I am not that familiar with the writing systems I am way slower at typing. This is really frustrating because my progress feels way slower than before and after I finish one lesson, I don't want to do another one. I used to do like 5 lessons per day, now I don't feel like doing more than one. It also doesn't help that your whole answer is wrong if you get one tiny mistake. Like, I just typed a whole sentence correctly in another language, what if i messed up the pronoun? it is not such a big deal. I'm just really frustrated lately because of this. For example, I used to never commit more than one or two mistakes, now I keep loosing hearts until I can't keep learning.
A pro tip: Any time you have lost some hearts in the regular lessons always top them up again by doing practice lessons (click/tap the heart symbol)! In practice lessons you can't lose hearts, instead you'll gain a heart at the end of the lesson. It's kind of a hidden feature - I discovered it by accident. Doing it this way will allow you to continue gaining or keeping your gems by not having to spend gems on heart refills nearly as often.
I have two problems with the update:
1. the new tree system does not really work for the way I was using Duolingo to learn languages (it is German funnily enough), which is work through every lesson section to the max before moving onto the next unit, now I am somewhere completely different to where I was with the old learning tree. I think a compromise they could do is let you choose the tree design that would work for you and go from there.
2. the new tree and push for more gem use is way to close to games, especially mobile games, that are purposely designed to suck money from you through, "subtly," forced microtransactions to have any reasonable progression without having to be on for many, many hours of the day.
Unfortunately they aren't going to keep the other tree because they don't want to have to keep updating two things.
I really liked how in the old version I could work on different lessons (circles?) in rotation. I do better if I take a break from a circle for a couple of days and then go back to it. So, not so happy that I'm forced to stay in one topic and then move on away from it instead of being able to circle back to it.
The linear learning is frustrating. I'm learning Japanese, so it's an extra step more difficult due to kanji learning on top of sound and meaning. Which means I really appreciated going back into the same lesson as I knew I needed to practice that one thing. But I did feel like I was getting to a point of not being able to progress, so I think I will get used to this, as long as it's not my only source of learning (and it's not). However, something I wish they'd fix is when introducing new kanji and sounds, they'd also tell you what it means when you answer, because I'll go through one or three new words and have no idea what they mean until maybe the last half of the lesson. Which seems a bit wasteful and could be better for learning more concrete info when that kanji is front and center.
Just write whatever you want on a notebook
The new tree is meant to be less repetitive but in my experience it's much more. Maybe it's just the Arabic course specifically, but I've skipped units 1-6 after only doing a third of the unit.
Also the legendary status is twice as expensive now which is infuriating to me.
I find the layout frustrating as scrolling is now more of a hassle on the mobile app. It takes so long to go all the way back up if I want to repractice something. Also felt that I was way farther ahead with the old layout because now I suddenly have 64 chapters to work through instead of the previous 6...
Smart phone tip. Just tap the top of your screen (iPhone) and it scrolls all the way to the top of the list.
It would be nice to have a menu to show every single chapter though or a search bar.
I think they want people to access revision of old lessons through gaining hearts back though.
THIS! This is hands down the most frustrating thing in my opinion. I am nearly 2 years into working on my French and I have to scroll from Unit 136 to Unit 24 if I want to work on the Legendary levels. It takes around 40 swipes and the first time I tried the app just glitched out. I just tried the "tap at the top of the screen" tip given by @coolattach77 , but I don't have an iPhone and it does nothing. Glad there is a short cut to scroll back to the levels I haven't completed yet, but I wish there was also one to short cut to the legendary levels.
I also feel like it isn't as clear at first sight what you are going to be practicing
@@georgelaxton But you might not want to go all the way to the top. Scrolling up AND scrolling down are both time-consuming.
there is no tree anymore. now it is a very long worm.
The trouble i immediately see with removing the three strikes system is, it means the database of accepted answers needs to be perfect. I've been doing the Welsh course since it was in beta, and still there are occasions when it doesn't recognise perfectly acceptable northern dialect as correct, and I've lost lives through this before. If the "one wrong and you're out" mentality is going to work, these kinks need to be ironed out, across all the languages.
I'm really enjoying the new update, I've been moving forward onto new lessons so much faster rather than just farming old levels to win leauges
I'm glad this video popped up on my recommendation and I accidentally clicked it because if not I wouldn't have known there was an update. Already completed a couple of lessons and I feel much better about my ability to learn from the app. Thanks for the great video!
Really the only thing I hate about the update is that they took took the audio lessons away. These are the interactive lessons in Spanish with Carlos and Alejandra. I would listen to these while driving to and from work and these improved my conversational Spanish more than anything else. The interesting thing is that these were still there after my app updated to the new version but then disappeared a week or so later.
They took away the French ones with Paul and Estelle as well 😢 those were my favorite
Where could one find those?
@@valentinagomez6838 Yes, Paul and Estelle’s lessons were indeed soooo helpful, informative, and fun. Freedom to prepare a meal while listening snd speaking across the room to answer their prompts was working fine for me.
This update is less than fun, it is mind numbing.
biggest downside for me: the complete lack of choice and control i now have. i pretty much always do one full bubble of lessons (idk what the technical term is, hope you know what i mean) and it was nice to be able to choose from the like, five that were available to me. some days i wouldn't have that much time so i could pick one of those grammar ones with a lightbulb which tended to be shorter. sometimes i was already feeling anxious and the bubble all about 'health' didn't look particularly inviting so i picked the one next to it. or, instead of doing lessons i'd do four stories.
there were ways to personalise your strategy, even within the constraints of what they think is optimal, and i liked having that little bit of wriggle room. now i'm always forced to do what they want me to do, i can't pick a story bc they're baked into the path and i can't postpone a certain lesson even by a day, i have to always do what they want me to do, and i'm not a fan.
I barely used Duolingo until recently, so overall I don’t mind this new update. It somehow helps me to set goals for the future, like ‘I’m going to get that far today’.
I agree with most of the comments here. I don’t care about superficial changes (like colour schemes) but I do feel it is more linear, like many people have said, and I’m less keen on it. I also agree about choice, like being able to choose between completing a lesson or doing a couple of stories. For me the worst aspect is, as mentioned, not being able to go back and refresh older units AND losing the grammar hints. As a grammar nerd those were massively helpful for me! I’m not *angry* about this like a lot of people seem to be, and I’ll still keep using Duolingo, and I guess we’ll all get used to it with time - but rn I am struggling to make friends with it. I hope Duolingo will take some of this feedback on board and perhaps reintroduce some of the features people are talking about here. *just to add I’m glad you made this video, as I thought perhaps it was just me struggling - so thank you* 🙏😊
The thing I've found infuriating with this new update is (as you mentioned) you can't go back and practice old skills. I started Duolingo in March 2020 to learn Polish, and completed my tree like a year ago maybe? Now I mainly use Duolingo for those vocabulary refreshes and learn Polish through trail-and-error/Polish people I'm friends with helping me, so information really needs to stay in my brain. But with this new tree - I can't do that. I'm moving to Poland next summer so I really don't want to forget things, but there aren't many apps to learn Polish that are free/cheap (I'm a uni student) since it's such a niche language to learn. If anyone has any recommendations I'd be happy to hear some!
Are u taking the wok to Poland?
Memrise is nice, and has real recorded audio samples for each language, not the weird AI-like ones Duolingo uses. Plus, it's free.
You can check out Drops if you're looking for vocabulary. But sadly there is a time limit (5 minutes and resets every 10 hours, you can get more time by watching ads and keeping your streak going). Tbh I haven't checked out Polish there since I'm a native speaker, but I used it for French and Japanese and noticed a mistake like once.
But since you already have some grasp of the language probably watching things in Polish would be the best choice. And don't worry, once you move your language will progress really fast, immersion does that for you
I've heard about someone learning Polish specifically, that's so cool! Dzięki!
I've been waiting for your reaction to this POS update lmao. I much prefer the old tree. Sadly i got back into Duolingo 2 months before the update. The thing is you can go back at least on desktop however the individual topics are not obviously labeled anymore so that makes it more difficult to find specific lessons you want to refresh. Also with this new tree you can't access stories in a separate tab anymore which is unfortunate.
I have just been mainlining stories the last month to ensure I did them all before the update. I feel like they need about 10 times as many stories as they have
As someone who has been doing duolingo on and off for a few years and managed to get pretty far down the tree while also forgetting (or never properly learning) a lot of the earlier stuff, I hate that they've now made it more difficult to brush up that older knowledge before moving on. Because the lesson I'm supposed to be doing next feels too difficult and duolingo let me sail through the earlier lessons without me properly learning the things I was supposed to learn (looking at you, irregular verbs and past tense). I was going through those parts of the tree that I felt like I needed to brush up on when the new update came and now I have no idea how to find those things and keep track of them.
@@tinnie75 I'm hoping that they'll at least label everything at some point to make it easier to go back. While I understand not wanting people to have to go back I think that it sometimes really helpful especially if you think you need extra time on a specific subject. I personally don't see anything wrong with backtracking to make sure that you remember something
Repeating lessons for points in the league was what got me to a point where I tried speaking Chinese with other people in public. Also, the timed challenges forced me to retain the information by having to comprehend much faster.
Since the new tree, I've not been able to complete any timed challenges, I've fallen out of the diamond league, and I've had trouble maintaining my streak. I feel completely discouraged about being able to retain any new lessons.
This was incredibly helpful, thank you!
One thing you didn’t cover (though I’m wondering if it’s just because I’m learning a “less popular” language) is that they’ve removed the vocabulary lists of each section from the desktop website. They have “guidebooks” that show MAYBE half the vocab/grammar but in the first 20 units, there are only 2 guidebooks. I got put in where they were asking questions on vocab that I had not learned yet and had no where to look at to learn it. I really enjoyed looking at the study guides they used to have, it was very interesting learning the etymology of some of the words and just fun facts about different phrases that made it seem more real world than tapping my phone screen.
Are you doing Esperanto? Because the tips have vanished from that which is baffling because surely we need to know how to construct a sentence and why.
What are you learning? I don't have a vocabulary list for Dutch. I never had guidebooks or lists. Wish I could have them.
Same here, learning Norwegian...Grammar tips are GONE...only "Key Phrases"...like, what? why would they do that?? Why couldn't they just simply not touch that??
My major issue is that all choice was taken away. I get that is the point; they've found "the best" path and put me on it. The problem I have with that is that it is not how I learn; I get distracted too easily. If I can't "distract" myself by doing a lesson on food, then on questions, then on transport, then on word order, then back to food, then on family etc. I'll distract myself by switching to Reddit or CZcams. Boom, instead of doing 8-12 lessons a day covering 6 + topics, I'm only doing 2-3 lessons a day on one or two topics.
I think the best solution would be to have an option menu where you could choose which path style you want. I like the new change since it pushes learning forward more for me than before, but there should definitely be more customization!
They spent more time for marketing than actually making this app easy to use 💀
The new path is so boring as well. It's a chore to sit through an entire circle that's literally the exact same thing for an entire 15 minutes. So then you finally get it over with, but then there's a practice circle that's LITERALLY THE EXACT SAME THING. It makes me want to drill my head in and scream. I want to be able to hop back so I don't get bored.
I haven't opened the app since the change, the thing with doulingo was that it was always fun and they've taken the fun out, no more going back to your favorite lesson, no more checkpoints (that was my favorite part), no more stories, now it's just do lesson, complete lesson, do next lesson, etc. it's just classroom learning, which is probably an effective method for most, but classroom style is what turned me away from language learning in the first place, it didn't work for me
edit: I've seem to miss understand the story bit, they're there, but as part of the lesson, which is worse honestly, they aren't fun things to do in my down time anymore, they're lessons I have to do, that would kill my want to read them
I love how good the colors are in your video. The camera and lighting really makes everything pop!
I swear Duolingo has just stopped having me practice speaking. I had to check in my settings because I knew at one point there was a setting to say you couldn't speak right then, but everything was on. This is such a vital part of language learning to me
I'm quite liking the new tree as it is forcing me to move forward with the learning rather than constantly having to dash back to refresh to 'repair' a stage. My app does allow me to go over old lessons for 5xp but to be honest I haven't really used it much and seem to be pushing forward more than I was before
Yes! I hated the repair thing
I feel the same way! So glad to not be the only one
They could have dialed back the "repair" thing without any of those other changes. Just make it take months or years before the old things crumble.
Yeah, honestly, I haven't hated it so far. The repairing units thing held me back too. It was basically paylocked balanced practice while promoting poor learning practice for everyone else. I used to constantly be "repairing" the first unit lessons over and over again, learning absolutely nothing because they were so simple. All because they were the ones I've "mastered" so far and it costs so much to master a skill.
And it rewarded me much more for doing them, over learning new content. So if I was feeling tired and lazy, I would end up just repairing basic lessons that taught me nothing. They gave a tonne of xp, you lost no hearts if you mucked up, and you gained a heart for completing. Get an xp boost and you could wrack up hundreds of xp very quickly and milk the system. Pretty necessary for the higher leagues.
The new system, while it has flaws, is actually making me learn new content which I appreciate. And I'm not getting annoyed repeatedly writing "Merci" and "Comment ça va ?" 50 million times.
Yes, I guess we're in the minority, but this new version has "corrected" most of the things I hated about Duolingo.
I miss the maintenance of my tree, the repetition really helped me learn and the "practice" option was never as thorough as revisiting the lesson to keep it golden. Apart from the most basic lessons, I purposely never made them "legendary" specifically so it would make me do this. I'm one of those who has the option to go back on the path but it's suuuuper long and all the units look the same, I have no idea what they cover or how much my skill has degraded.
I have no qualms about the in-app purchases, as Evan says you can still use all the essential parts for free and I always love a quality app that does that, i don't even mind making a purchase every once in a while. There are so many apps that are total trash but also trying to suck you dry!
Legendary lessons will/would still break. They do on mine and I make everything Legendary status
On a positive note I like how the stories are now integrated into the main path. It reminds me of Classic Mode in Smash Bros. Also they chopped up the 5 levels into individual levels. It feels much more motivating to get one level down and move on, than to doing the same routine of exercises 5 times in a row.
I got an ad for Duolingo for this video. The owl is threatening me.
yoo same 😳 lowkey scared rn
I have been using Duolingo daily for 8+ years and I kinda love this new update. For a while, I have been using it just because of the habit, going over older lessons, just because, but over the last week of the new trees, I have felt a lot more motivated again, learning new things.
We shall see what I think about it over the next few months, but right now, I'm fine with the changes.
I actually agree with you. I feel that I do lessons alot more. Its more motivating for me.
Same :)
Honestly I like the update 😂
I’ve been using the app for close to 250 days now and this my first update. I miss being able to access stories whenever I want and the conversations with the two people in which you had speaking parts. Those last didn’t seem to coincide with the lessons at all, but they were quite practical common speaking situations: asking for the bathrooms, ordering a coffee, buying produce. I really liked hearing those two and the bits of conversation they presented. I wish they hadn’t done away with that.
I miss this the most!
Same I had Alejandra and Carlos They were my favorite part of the app I learned tons from them.
Been waiting for this!
I’m in the group apparently where you can go back and redo previous lessons for minimal XP. This works for me because I like to do an old, easy lesson first to maintain my streak, then I go on to do the new lessons without fear of losing all my hearts in one fell swoop on a bad day…
i'm able to go back and review old lessons - but only for 5xp, which has forced me to go forward in my tree. i like the new structure, cutting it up into units feels good, but with limited hearts in practice now, i'm now worrying about getting my streak before running out of hearts. thats the only thing i hate about this update. i want to be able to throw myself into something new and still finish the lesson and get my streak! (you know how a slip up in grammar can often cost a heart)
started duolingo after watching one of ur videos back in 2020 btw, and thought wow, 1000 days is insane. today is day 1017 for me :)
mfw i see nominativ akkusativ dativ or genitiv on the next lesson
I've been forced to pay for Duolingo premium due to the heart thing. I hate it so much but I know I'd give up without unlimited hearts as I don't have the time to waste waiting for them to refill. I have a busy life. I have 20 minutes a day to do duolingo and I can't waste my time just because of a mistake. I wish there was a better option but Duolingo is the best at the moment sadly
@@skellious Can you use the desktop version instead? No heart system there, which I love. I'm there to learn not feels stressed.
@@skellious if you press the heart in the top right corner you can practice to earn hearts. And if you watch an ad you get 1 extra
pssst, you the browser version, you don't need hearts there.
I'm on a 250+ day streak now with Korean, and the update has definitely thrown me off as to exactly where I am. One thing I've noticed is lessons I've apparently passed in the new tree contain vocab I don't recall learning beforehand. Which isn't so bad on the regular lessons where you can just tap the word to get the definition, but throws you through a loop on the tests where you can't check the meanings in the sentence, and that is frustrating. That and what you said about going back to practice previous lessons and units being difficult, partially because I don't know exactly where anything is anymore but also because the topics aren't as clearly labelled as they used to be. Now it's just the "Move Forward!!!" structure. Not because the system is inherently worse, but just it means completely mentally adjusting how I use the app, which is frustrating now, though I guess I may eventually get used to it.
Also for people that are trying to build a lot of XP, regular lessons only being worth 5XP each might be a bit annoying too. Korean didn't have stories yet anyway so no loss there (the app still feels way more optimised for European languages over East Asian ones tbh)
I feel like if you haven't already gotten that far into it, this update probably won't throw you off too much, but if you were already super deep into your tree then it might be more disorientating. Hopefully I'll find my bearings quickly enough that I don't feel like abandoning the app entirely, but I am already using a couple of other apps and resources in concert with Duolingo, cos I don't want to just be relying on only one learning source anyway.
In my version I can go back to any lesson I want. When I lose some hearts, I just practise to earn the hearts back, which is a great way to increase my vocabulary... love it.
I honestly can't remember the last time a Duolingo update made things better not worse, it's been getting slowly worse for ages and I'm only just still tolerating it
CLICKED SO FAST. one: because Evan, two because Duolingo haha ❤
same! i've been waiting for this video lol
Same
YT recommended this video and I think it was my reminder that I did promise myself to become fluentish in Español. Thanks for sharing! I re-downloaded the app! 😆
the worst update of Duolingo ever is disable the Discuss section. I learnt from Discuss section more than the lesson of Duolingo itself.
Over 500 day streak and I quit the moment that new update hits. Holding onto that tree for as long as possible, but once the update arrives I'm done.
And for me what really stung was the reddit ama 1 of the devs did a couple of days ago, basically brushing away concerns and issues as people "complaining" and said they didn't get what people were unhappy about. How much more tonedeaf of a response could they give?
I think the things that frustrates me most about the new tree are not being able to see what I have done and get a refresher, not being able to see exactly what is coming up and choosing what to do first (when tree split), and I think the new layout looks like it is geared towards children (it looks infantile) which isn't bad if that is their target audience. I also miss stories. Hopefully I will get use to it, but at this point it feels more like just checking the box to not lose my 4 year streak rather than actually wanting to learn more.
Yes! My little sister got the update before I even knew about it, I walked past while she was learning and thought that's just what the kids version looks like. The new layout really feels condescending to me, I miss having the ability to roam at my own pace
I never recall having or using stories in my language that I was learning, so I'm not personally sad about their loss. The thing that I can't stand is the extremely linear path that takes away my autonomy regarding learning what I want to learn day-to-day. I liked being able to pick a lesson for the day. Picking what I wanted to focus on and knowing that that was what I would be covering. It was something super important for me to remain engaged, especially with my ADHD. It was the only reason I managed a 450+ day streak. I even paid for a year subscription last year. I was considering resubscribing, and I'm very glad I didn't because my motivation now is non-existent. I force through a lesson to keep my streak right now, but I'm no longer doing it to learn the language and now am only doing it to keep the number. The second my streak falls off - which it inevitably will now that the lessons no longer interest me - I know I will never pick up the app again and that's sad to me because I want to learn the language.
Here I thought you were going to talk about them getting rid of the forums. Those were so helpful!
For me, the chats in the lessons were really helpful because for some reason, I can't access the grammar tips. So now, I am just blantanly guessing rather than seeing other people bring the issue up and getting an answer. I hate not having that reminder now to go back and refresh my memory on topics and and I much preferred the old layout, where you could pick what topic you wanted to do. If you do the same one after a while you can just rehearse the sentences which is not the point of language learning. Worst thing, is I can't really leave because Scottish Gaelic isn't found on most other learning langauge apps.
I was really looking forward to this video - thanks Evan! Definitely people should be patient and give it a chance HOWEVER for me personally the new version really messed up my own learning. I was learning French -> Spanish. I had already reached the end of the tree but I still felt like I was progressing by going back and reviewing, especially with the really tricky grammar at the bottom. When the app updated it put me at the very bottom and with the lack of incentives to review old lessons (only 5 XP) plus the really hard to navigate tree order, I felt like this effectively totally stopped my learning.
I was sort of excited for the new updated as I was hoping they would add new lessons but its the total opposite! There were only 4 units on French -> Spanish but they had got up to conditional, future tense, imperative and plenty of other things that were really challenging me. The last units on this new version are past tense and infinitif which are so much easier. I suspect this is an issue for a lot of Duo users using languages other than English as their base language.
I've switched to English -> Spanish which is sort of starting from scratch. I think it will be good for my learning in the end but it is a bit frustrating that I have had to.
I think the new update if absolutely fine. I'm just trying to progress in a language and it works. But I'd like an easier way to easily go back to previous chapters when I want to complete the legendary status. A chapter select would be nice
I just got the new update a couple of days ago and I hate that I'm longer able to move around and do what I want rather it's an old lesson or a new one and I don't like that the stories are included in the tree making it impossible to tell which ones I've read and which ones I haven't. Hopefully it will grow on me with time. By the way I just found your channel as this video was recommended to me and I was excited as I didn't realize such a channel existed now I have someone to share my Duolingo gripes with LMAO 🤣🤣
The new update put me in a weird place where I am both further ahead and way backwards compared to where I was before. It makes no sense.
I actually really like the new update. I'd tried using duolingo several times in the past, but I always gave up after a couple of weeks because I found the old tree overwhelming. I'm now over a hundred days into my streak, and I'm super motivated to keep learning Japanese. The new path just vibes so much better with the way my brain works.
Taking away the pages of tips on the web page that explained why and how changes occur is a big back step in learning and understanding. I pay a yearly membership. Great value, feels like its free because of how much you get for it👍
I really like the new update. I am also able to go back in my tree and replay lessons. I like the stories being built in to the tree. I do miss the audio lessons though.
The new update is alright imo. Sadly, they didn't fix the practicing mistakes thing, it's still behind a pay wall. I think language learning would be way more effective if I practicde the stuff I struggle with instead of moving forward constantly, especially with grammar concepts, I wanna fully grasp them before I move on
No, they got rid of it in premium or super or whatever as well
I’ve stopped using the duolingo app because of the update. I was almost finished with the Scottish Gaelic course but then the update happened and the unit is all personal practice, which is so annoying because you don’t really learn anything all you do is revise. I really liked the old version
I had the same problem with the Yiddish tree, it took me to 2 units from the end even though I had several more to unlock on the old tree, and then it's all been practising words like "tea", "coffee" and "friend" which were from some of the very first lessons. It's difficult to find where to access the content I've missed
the new road map looks like a video map which is fun but it makes scrolling take forever and I missed picking what I want to learn. Also I wish we had stories. We had them for Spanish but not in Swedish and that was before and after this update. Edit: Also I kinda liked hopping from topic to topic and it sucks we are forced into learning in one way. Edit 2: Okay so I like the sections where you have to repeat the words but (it's probably a me problem) It doesn't pick up on what I say and it only gives you two attemeps on saying it!
The biggest thing I miss is indeed the cascade learning. I used to have "10+ lesson days" quite often as I would go through 1-2 lessons for each of several topics, while some are new, some are at level 2 or 3, and some are getting legendary. Some days I didn't feel like learning new vocabulary but I could still do many lessons improving/remembering things I learned yesterday or last week. Now I feel so limited, they literally make me learn one specific topic, and do 6 lessons of it in a row. Most days now I just do 1 lesson for the sake of keeping the streak (I'm at 288 days), and I think I'll stop after I reach 365 days. I'm exploring other options to learn now.
I used to love being able to have the collection of stories in a single tab. The older layout was more flexible and easier to navigate. When I needed to practice to get hearts, I was able to choose which lessons I can practice on, and now they choose for you. I can't describe how much I despise the new update, and I find that I use the app much less than I used to. I basically force myself to do a single lesson just to maintain my streak and do not feel the incentive to do anything more than that. I wish they would go back to the old format. I don't see myself continuing on with this for much longer, unfortunately.
I got through that “I need to be top of the leaderboard” junk. For me it is more about consistency. 40 minutes each Russian and Swedish every morning.
right. leaderboards burnt me out and had me xp farming
I really disliked how they took away the choice of what to work on. It made it feel like I had more control, and it was nice to know what to expect clicking on a lesson, and like I could go at my own pace. If I had trouble remembering a certain concept, I could work on that until I felt comfortable before moving on. Now it just makes you move on whether you get it or not. I also liked being able to choose between an easier review lesson or a harder new lesson depending on how much energy I had at the time, because sometimes I just don't have the mental energy to process new information and would much rather just go over something not brand new that could still use some improvement.
Wow, nice! 823 comments already and the video was only posted 8 days ago. WTG!
I tried out Duolongo a long time ago (years) and then dropped it but have very recently (right before the new update) taken it up again to learn French.
Your assessment seems to be spot on for me.
When I first got the updated version, I was appalled. I felt that I had travelled backwards and that really affected my motivation. BUT, since I really want to learn French, I just stuck with it and a few days later I saw the value in the "new" way.
Since I am such a new user, I not only don't have any "awards" to speak of, but I don't even really know exactly what they are, etc. HOWever, I do agree that if your objective is to really learn the language all that stuff is immaterial. My hope is that any updates requiring "spending" gems stays with all those shenanigans and not on the actual ability to learn the language successfully.
I did get nervous when after the update I was not able to earn hearts by opting to do a practice session. Like you said about the speed challenges testing your reaction time and agility with the keyboard since a miss may only be due to hitting an incorrect key, I have that problem in general. I use the mobile app and answer all the questions as quickly as I can only because I want to get on with it. Almost always, my hearts get deducted for my bad data entry on the phone rather than true mistakes. So not having a way to refill those hearts would severely cut down on the amount of learning I could do in each session. (The watch-an-ad option is not available on demand; I would have to wait for it to pop up or wait while the hearts very slowly refilled in time. Anyway, I think the option of a practice session to make up for mistakes is beneficial and a good idea). But, I think it was just some coincidental fluke that the practice session disappeared for me at the same time as the update came through because today "IT IS BACK" so I am a happy camper again.
I've been studying/reviewing several languages, but what I dearly miss is the discussions and the tips in Swedish. The Swedish mods were absolutely amazing. And the so called "guidebook" is nothing like the pre lesson tips that used to be there. I'd be okay with Duo not letting us ask anymore questions, but darnit why throw away all the previously answers given by those amazing mods?
I used those for Swedish as well :/
I’ve been with Duo since 2015, like you topped the Diamond league and won the diamond tournament a few times. I have a 1500+ day streak right now.
I loved the previous iterations enough to invest in duo+ as it was and then to invest in the company.
This new update was forced on me in August. All I could do was answer questions on geography and physics in school, something I neither wanted or needed to do. All flexibility to add to my learning where I needed to, was removed & I was dictated to by the algorithm.
The CEO saying anyone who didn’t like it was adverse to progress & change decided me to vote with my money- I’ve cancelled by subs and divested my shares
I still do a daily lesson; I’ve done 34 minutes this month.
It’s not just how many subscribers; it’s about how much time they’re spending on the app: I used to spend 30-45mins daily & provide all that data for them to Monetise.
There’s something called the thermocline of truth- I think Duolingo has passed it & is past it as a relevant useful language learning app & tech stocks investment.
THIS! I've had this version since around August/September too and it led me to eventually give up and uninstall the app.
YES!!! The CEO’s snarky comment really pushed me over the edge. Canceled my sub too.
Thanks for this! The new update really threw me off and I unfortunately broke my streak of 500+ days due to it. Wasn't really mad at the app, it just discouraged me a little bit. Thought I'd watch this and find out what had happened, and realized that I had, in fact, been so fixated on maintaining the daily streak and gaining XP/climbing the ranks, that it had stopped being about learning the language at some point.
I'll adjust my priorities and start again now!
I agree with the motivation I saw a lot of people that say they want to learn that language and they're doing nothing to learn and your Spanish is so good
I hate it because I have to scroll back forever to find the last "legendary" lesson so I can continue those. Also, agreeing that the lack of descriptors is bad.
Thank you for your video, Evan, and for consolidating some key points/bones to pick.
Idk how I haven't heard/seen my biggest bone talked about anywhere, but my biggest complaint is the replacement of the tips/notes with the guidebook, which is no more than a dinky phrasebook at this point
I understand that the old tips+notes were a product of the time and effort the course creators put into it. Some language courses have more meager notes, and others are more detailed. German used to have more detailed notes until they updated these to include the Duolingo dolls, but to get a good grasp of what I'm talking about, look at the Welsh course. The old Welsh tree, pre-update, had paragraphs of comprehensive notes, just as you would get from learning a language inside a classroom. The notes would even refresh your memory of previous skills, e.g. remember that this is how the past tense is formed, or remember that soft mutations occur in these situations
ALL of that is gone in the guidebooks, just some throwaway phrases that we get anyway from actually completing the lessons. If I were a beginner in the language, I would feel thrown to the wolves and completely lost. I would have to figure everything out from the sample sentences and vocab in the lessons without any grammar notes, and I feel I would lose motivation. Not to mention all the time the creators put into those notes; I feel it to be disrespectful to have gotten rid of those carefully-drawn up notes. That's my biggest gripe...