Updated Duolingo Mandarin is missing pinyin and speaking exercises

[mepeterser2451]

It seems the latest Duolingo version is missing pinyin for the fill in the blank and for listening exercises. Also there are no speaking exercises anymore. Is this a bug or a change they made? Any way to switch back?Installing an old version on android still has the same types of the new exercises even though it looks like the old version. Help appreciated.

[Thomas.Heiss]

If it's an A/B test you likely can revert back to the older (stable) tree with a school classroom.

I have one active as a teacher; I don't even need to enroll in my own classroom as a student.

DL staff has made some changes to the classroom settings and they said this will not prevent to be excluded from A/B tests and student now have a different experience on the web and mobile apps so the experience with all accounts and the teacher accounts won't be the same.

Note: It's a general account thing, affecting ALL courses/languages.

It could be that other (newer) language courses getting then rolled back to the earlier stable version too.

You can easily revert back by deleting the classroom so that shouldn't be the big problem if you don't like it.

There's a 50:50 chance I guess.

Maybe just stick to HelloChinese, Lingodeer,..any apps which main focus clearly are Asian languages and where you're not constantly an alpha or beta tester for Duolingo Inc.

Duolingo's focus clearly relies on French, Spanish, English and a few other of the 8 main languages.
Obviously, it's not Chinese Mandarin.

I probably wouldn't even use Busuu (is Freemium) for Chinese either.

[mepeterser2451]

Thank you so much! This is very helpful. I will give it a try

[Thomas.Heiss]

I forgot to mention something:

When courses get updated and the course structure is different enough an update often means: Lost progress, old units/levels/lessons marked as completed suddenly show NEW words, or the system pushes you much further on the path UI so you actually have no clue about the shown topic in a new lesson (current unit / current placed level in a unit).

The only solution often seems to be: To delete (reset) a course.

When they roll out something new if it only is a question of time when this change finally hits your account.

Just be aware of this bigger issue, especially on the path UI which now works much worse than the old tree design where you hardly see anything what exactly happened with the resetted skill L0 crown or update/changed L1-L3 crown levels (for an already completed skill), regarding that matter.

If you don't complete the old (stable) course in time your account likely will be hit with the exact same (or another new vourse version) in the near future.
Could be that you can only reset your Chinese course if you're completely lost after the course update.

[Enzfj2]

I've finished en->cn course a few years ago – fully up to Legendary (now golden) level. When I found out that there are lots of new courses for every language, I started the Ukrainian to Chinese, and was surprised that there was no pinyin, but they ask to write in Chinese from the very first lesson! How they imagine it can work for the fresh students, no idea.
For comparison I returned to my English to Chinese, and discovered that all lessons were set down from Legendary to normal finished. Well, I redid the first unit and – basically the same content as in the uk->cn, but quite different from what I remember from the beginning back then – and no pinyin!
All right, I went to the final 'endless repeating loop' of the en->cn, and – miracle – it had pinyin!