Who asked for stories with English explanations in a French story?

[JudieLC]

Not sure if it's only happening in English to French stories. I do French and Spanish stories, studying English to French and English to Spanish. And when I'm learning a language, I don't want an English explanation of what's going on in stories in my target language. I want the story to be all in the target language and let me figure it out.

Who even asked to put a native language explanation in a target language story? Is this happening in other languages as well?

It's so annoying that I can't even listen to those stories.

I'm also learning Hebrew and Arabic, but I never saw stories on the DL website in those languages. (And to be honest, I can recognize words in Arabic, but reading a sentence when I don't know what's coming is still hard for me.)

[Saperlipopette!]

I know the En-fr course pretty well, as a user of it. There are English explanations in the early A1 part of the course, and the English gradually dwindles. In later A1 and throughout A2, there are some questions in English, but the stories are nearly all French.

If you'll recall in the old course, back when the stories were not integrated with challenges, there was a lock on them. You couldn't do stories until you passed a certain number of units. Duolingo decided it wanted to expose beginners to some basic conversation for people who didn't really know enough to follow a French narration, and that's the concept that they came up with in the early part of the course The course is designed for people with no prior experience to French, so I believe Duo decided it had to be this way.

[JudieLC]

I know the En-fr course pretty well, as a user of it. There are English explanations in the early A1 part of the course, and the English gradually dwindles. In later A1 and throughout A2, there are some questions in English, but the stories are nearly all French.

If you'll recall in the old course, back when the stories were not integrated with challenges, there was a lock on them. You couldn't do stories until you passed a certain number of units. Duolingo decided it wanted to expose beginners to some basic conversation for people who didn't really know enough to follow a French narration, and that's the concept that they came up with in the early part of the course The course is designed for people with no prior experience to French, so I believe Duo decided it had to be this way.

How early is early in the course? I don't know how to judge. The stories they are translating are stories I have already read in French in the past, so I really don't need a translation.

I admit I might be a bit lazy in French. When I first joined Duolingo, I did placement tests in French, Spanish, and Hebrew, languages I have studied in the past. I got the best placement in French, which is ironic because It's the language I am least proficient in of those three. I suspect I did less well in Spanish and Hebrew because I used some colloquialisms that the app didn't accept. But it was so long ago and the course has changed so much that I'm not really sure where I am relatively speaking. I eventually went back and did all the lessons I had skipped as a result of taking a placement test.

[Thomas.Heiss]

Duolingo placement tests allow a lot of guessing, word bank tapping,...

It was different on the web portal with full typing in a free form text field in 2016/17.

The newer placement test only seems to focus to place learners at the third A1 section.

I noticed that in the old EN->PT volunteer course the newer test (for a few years, before it got replaced with a new CEFR beginner course) didn't test any complicated verb tense stuff or Subjunctive forms.

The first three sections are A1. Fourth section is A2.

I know that the old Portuguese stories in 2017/18 where more complicated, used vocabulary which I wasn't familiar with,...
......before all the path UI, comic avatars and unnatural Azure AI voices (high pitched, squeaky) from new stories.
Some newer PT stories gave me the feeling I don't want to do them again so bad they were.
But I didn't write it down which one were affected by the Junior voice.
They likely have changed a lot of them once again.

Kinda sad that the old PT stories without all the comic characters alignment are lost or not directly accessible anymore or can only be read/played in their cached form from old threads.
I haven't replayed them forever.

[Thomas.Heiss]

I know there were A/B tests on the mobile apps or on the Web.

But I NEVER was able to replay a PT or FR story "in one go" to focus on the listening side
All the time the interactive questions or quizzes interrupt the flow of the two persons and demand a reaction from the user (and to read not only listen in parallel).

[JudieLC]

Duolingo placement tests allow a lot of guessing, word bank tapping,...

It was different on the web portal with full typing in a free form text field in 2016/17.

The newer placement test only seems to focus to place learners at the third A1 section.

I noticed that in the old EN->PT volunteer course the newer test (for a few years, before it got replaced with a new CEFR beginner course) didn't test any complicated verb tense stuff or Subjunctive forms.

The first three sections are A1. Fourth section is A2.

I know that the old Portuguese stories in 2017/18 where more complicated, used vocabulary which I wasn't familiar with,...
......before all the path UI, comic avatars and unnatural Azure AI voices (high pitched, squeaky) from new stories.
Some newer PT stories gave me the feeling I don't want to do them again so bad they were.
But I didn't write it down which one were affected by the Junior voice.
They likely have changed a lot of them once again.

Kinda sad that the old PT stories without all the comic characters alignment are lost or not directly accessible anymore or can only be read/played in their cached form from old threads.
I haven't replayed them forever.

2016 was when I did the placement tests, at the time I first joined DL. I was curious what my placement would be in languages I had studied previously. I did the placement tests on the web, not the app. I didn't download the app till 2019.

I let my activity lapse after a while (from 2020 to 2022) and came back in December of 2022. That was when I joined this forum the first time (that first account here I deleted perhaps a year ago and I'm on a new account here now). I did not redo the placement tests when I restarted DL in 2022.

I honestly don't remember the nature of the placement tests I took in 2016. There may have been guessing involved, but no tolerance, as I said above, for commonly used colloquialisms. I do remember a lot more typing than now. But typing on the computer in Hebrew was difficult for me at the time, as I didn't know the Hebrew keyboard that well - I had to print it out to remind myself where the letters were. Typing in Spanish and French was fine for both, since it's the same alphabet (more or less) as English.

I went back and did the lessons I had skipped when I restarted doing DL, mainly to rack up points to see if I could come in first in the Diamond league. I was stuck at home with an injury so I had a lot of time to do it and eventually was able to be first in Diamond. After a while DL was taking up too much of my time and I wasn't that invested in keeping up my Diamond status in the leagues, so I went private and stopped participating in the leagues.

Anyway, all this is far afield of my original complaint.