I don't know if we've done a poll on this before. Let me know.
Just wondering what are you feelings on the tree versus the snake.
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I don't know if we've done a poll on this before. Let me know.
Just wondering what are you feelings on the tree versus the snake.
L1
Advanced beginner Duolingo levels
Languages without borders, languages bridging gaps, the Red Cross are my heroes.
I can learn on the snake, but I much prefer the tree. The learning tips on the tree were much more complete and helpful.
The guidebook that goes with the snake, especially in Arabic, is spectacularly unhelpful. I was very frustrated when I first came back to Duolingo till I came here and found out how to find the tree and the old tips.
The contributor Portuguese course was specifically designed for the old tree design:
Readable skill names (longer names are visible on duome.eu/USERNAME/progress, sortable by prefix)
Dedicated grammar skills
Multiple dedicated verb tenses incl. four Subjunctive skills which you can directly jump to.
(Old) Web Tips&Notes, written by the former contributor team which directly maps to the skill names on screen (now only available on www.duome.eu/tips/en/pt; staff rolled out their different mobile tips from the app to the desktop too).
I guess, I will continue to focus for a while on the crowns models on the Android app (old version).
Would have used the www-internal website for my reverse tree which is now very DEAD / completely unusable.
That En<-Pt course is completely unusable on the mobile app!
Is too much fun to quickly scroll through the screen, get PT typing offered here and there, and to selectively pick one of the more difficult verb- or grammar skills.
But I will truly miss Camilo's TreeEnhancer userscript to enable French or Portuguese for all exercise challenges and two translation directions.
Prepositions, Contractions & stuff follow a strict 1-4 splitted sub topic design which was brought to air in summer 2018.
Has a very specific order.
All gone otherwise.
I can imagine a lot of work went into designing it this way?!?
What a shame to throw this very usuable design just away.
Other manageable shorter contributor courses like French from German (12x skills) follow a similar self speaking design.
Laddering trees let us compare grammar skills and verb tenses in two Romance languages.
..(...)..
I somehow can understand that some people in Pittsburgh are getting paid their salaries and want/need to reinvent the wheel, once again, even nobody has not specifically asked for it.
They could just have given a nice Guideline "Next lesson" button like Camilo had already developed it for his other Tampermonkey userscript.
This was what some users needed help them and they didn't find out for themselves how to proceed or did it wrong from the beginning, pushing to higher crowm levels too soon.
Yes, I get it that newer CEFR courses like French, Spanish, German, all from English, are very differently designed and probably don't need a strict order and readable skill names.
But older contributor courses actually need that, don't you think?!
Duolingo staff is drifting more and more away from nice grammar- and verb drills towards a general vocabulary practice app/website with a course which has become that long that not too many people can actually finish it within several years.
Not what I asked for.
The new path is just endless scrolling for no additional benefit for long-term users and more advanced learners who know their weaknesses and what they want.
The best joke ever:
A difficulty setting is still missing to turn multiple-choice questions off, switch translation directions, force 100% typing or voice dictation (speech to text), disable tapping of word banks on lower crown levels,...
..(...)..
The new Portuguese path / snake with 75 units, namingless round circles looks to me like a big mess.
They took away my owl (crown level 2), placed me after six!! years at Unit 49 "Use Infinitives" (there are three Infinitives 1-3 skills on the old tree) and the first two Infinitive lessons strictly asked me to type about 14/16-20 PT questions in English, all of them.
Honestly, I doubt I want to start with one of the two available French courses (from PT, from DE) after having been learning it on Busuu for one year.
The snake will just bite me to death that way with over-repeats of early lessons and known vocabulary and very basic grammar without a strong crown level 1 focus but denying me a quicker forward progress.
Thanks god I started on Duolingo six years ago.
Hopefully they don't shut off the older Android apps; www-internal is gone (redirect). Couldn't block the www redirect on Chrome or Firefox Nightly on Android.
For a newbie it probably isn't that critical for newer CEFR courses when they have to start totally from scratch?
Some users may not even have seen the old tree design so they don't know what they're going to miss.
The third crown dimension was pretty cool.
Maybe some individual and default learning settings would have been better to customize one's learning experience so each user could freely choice want he/she wants.
A compatible tree design with a few more default settings would have been the better thing for us oldies. No need to corrupt everything and to lose progress.
What's your opinion?
Native |
Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) |
L25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu):
(A1 McGraw-Hill) |
(interm.)
Reverse newest update: Nearly 15,000 users have signed.
Change Petition Duolingo Revert Path update
Native |
Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) |
L25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu):
(A1 McGraw-Hill) |
(interm.)
I was so happy to see this poll I'm not often on Duome, but I'm planning to become a more frequent visitor so I can see how it goes. I'll be surprised if anyone votes for the snake. I wish there were some way to get every member of Duome to respond to this wonderfully simple poll; with a big enough margin in favor of the tree, we might see some change at Duo . . . (or do I dream?!?)
HEY DUOLINGO! I'D PAY TO GET THE TREE BACK!
In fact, I was a paid subscriber, but got a pro-rated rebate when the AI voices appeared in Japanese. They didn't seem to care a whit about losing my money. The tax dollars from the public schools seem to be ruling.
Hey Duolingo! Why not spin off the tree and let it be a kind of wiki, back in the hands of real language experts, which it was in the first place, and just focus on building the best platform for the public schools? Because Duo IS NOT the best platform for all language learners anymore despite the fact that you tout that as your goal.
In answer to "Have we done a poll like this before" - well, no, but I found this change.org poll seemingly by accident:
https://www.change.org/p/reverse-duolin ... rect=false
Please go, sign, leave a comment. Already nearly 15,000 users want Duo to reverse the path update!!!!!!!!!!!
the tree is probably better for learning (because you can choose what to do and redo skills) but one thing I like about the snake is that you don't have to think what to do next, there's just 1 lesson possible
so either works for me
(N)
(F)
tracking euro notes
Willardsdaughter wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 4:26 amIn answer to "Have we done a poll like this before" - well, no, but I found this change.org poll seemingly by accident:
https://www.change.org/p/reverse-duolin ... rect=false
Please go, sign, leave a comment. Already nearly 15,000 users want Duo to reverse the path update!!!!!!!!!!!
as if that's gonna change anything
(N)
(F)
tracking euro notes
Duolingo is deliberately making the learning experience worse through the no return switch to the snake. Learning access to former tree designs has been completely disabled (also in DuoMe).
Since introducing the snake:
They might hope to draw more learners into their paid Super Duo subscription. Yet exactly the opposite is likely to happen. Learning using the snake is not worth a penny. Only the newcomers who are unaware of what DL used to be, might be lured in. As of today I 'retire from the leagues'. I will keep only the few courses where I am close to the end. After finishing those: farewell Duolingo!
Speaking
Learning
(B2-)
(B1)
(A)
The -internal trick stopped working for me yesterday, so now I'm forced to engage with the snake. I can only thank the posters here who made me aware of how to get the tree back for at least a few more weeks. It was good while it lasted.
tbh I don't understand why duo still hasn't disabled this internal workaround if they want to force the snake to everyone
PtolemysXX wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 5:40 pmBut why are they doing it? I am not getting it. What is their plan?
I think we all wish we knew.
PtolemysXX wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 5:40 pmBut why are they doing it? I am not getting it. What is their plan?
Your guess is as good as mine.
Through eliminating the 'events', DL is in fact suppressing the last possibility of (virtual) direct interaction between learners. When 'retiring the forum', they hoped to eliminate most virtual interaction, while saving resources. The opposite happened: exchanges of ideas clustered on a few forums with more dedicated learners, such as this one. One important difference is that there is no effective control by DL using orchestrated downvoting as the main vector of censorship.
As users are now 'on their own', DL can implement all kinds of measures which they claim are beneficial for the average user, but are detrimental for learning: since only the better users effectively end up learning a new language. The average user gets caught up in gamification and is not learning much if anything at all. 'Super Duo' may find more adepts among those average users. Too bad real learners are chased away: but in the end we are only a minority.
Speaking
Learning
(B2-)
(B1)
(A)
[mention]SweNedGuy[/mention] Does getting away from volunteers have something to do with marketing for schools? Some events were free and also the courses were originally made by volunteers. Will tax dollars cover something that includes volunteer contributions?
L1
Advanced beginner Duolingo levels
Languages without borders, languages bridging gaps, the Red Cross are my heroes.
Not sure if this truly fits into this poll thread.
@mods
Should probably be splitted and moved somewhere else, but where?
Don't forget that they at least gave Maxime notice ahead else this forum wouldn't be standing on its feets and chance of taking over some of the user base.
At least we actually had a chance to exchange some addresses and resource blog urls and invite users.
A necessary top management or investor decision about cost cuttings or getting away from hackers on their own old but proprietary forum software code doesn't necessarily mean that none of staff was on our side and enjoyed being part of the community or at least reading over some interesting threads.
The cut would have come over night if they wanted to achieve what you said.
Thankfully they didn't do that.
Of course, remaining time wasn't sufficient enough and a lot of threads (thread id ranges) are missing on duolingo.hobune.stream/ because of the deadline.
Out of millions there are only 350-500k on Duome.
Only 5000+ users made it here.
How many didn't get the message or never visited the forums before (as an app user)??
Seems like Discord channel has a lot of more users.
They did this even before.
Sometimes some ideas were picked up, but often not.
I'm actually surprised how long Duolingo management has tolerated to share user complains, general resource tips on the Duolingo community forum.
After a new rollout (changes, removage of a function,..) their forum was always a mess with too many threads about the same subject.
But I doubt they took criticism seriously.
There's not much difference if it's their own forum or on other places.
But I honestly think too many young kids lied about their age on account registration.
Sometimes even teachers asked the pupils to give away very wrong age info; yes, I saw these Educator threads.
Closing all social interactions is the next logical step when you want to push school classroom learning with underage teens and very young kids.
Don't think they want it more often that parents have to call the police.
Next thing might be to remove the friends feature...is long overdue and there hardly is any benefit from it compared to 2016 (Streams).
..(...)..
Well, they are getting VERY wrong metrics now!
Web tree is closed - question is how long direct skill Urls will be working through Duome progress page (tree tab). I hope they do.
Many users might try to switch over to older Android app versions to get back the tree.
But this just means usage of web users gets down:
Generating FALSE data with no real meaning.
Also this means reverse- and laddering trees are hardly usable, not from the Android app with missing audio.
Again, my longer break in the newer En<-Pt CEFR course again generates wrong metrics from last 2.0-2.5 years and surely this year.
So will do the closing of Web trees.
But I told them many times in their official threads the dilemma about advanced learners, long-term Duome SHOF holders and what it basically means if they forget about these user types.
Finally we are here, as previously feared, with a very different new path/snake concept which I don't want to use as a "not fresh beginner", neither in Portuguese nor for French.
Recent typing issues on a few browsers and versions are the next dot over the i (same country, same account, smame 1-3 courses, but different results both on the snake + old tree skills).
Can't understand why no developer has researched current and old userscripts as well as extensions and has incorporated the best ones to make our learning experience more flexible and much more adjustable with advanced user custom settings.
As soon as direct skill Urls stop working through Duome progress page, they (staff) can close down their whole website; there's no benefit for me anymore, especially with typing option gone and lack of reverse tree support.
Surprisingly Memrise did the same:
A reengineered website with new code, but no compatible userscripts left working.
Either it's too slow, too much vocabulary, too much grammar or too fast or missing detailed Web Tips Notes.
The meaning "effectively" is a very flexible term.
Maybe I find those two thread where it was estimated that a Spanish or French CEFR course takes more than 10 years on a slower progress.
I knew exactly why I didn't want to start French from English here when I lost contributor A/B tree3 (96 skills).
Definitely.
To chase me away from my En<-Pt reverse tree or the two other laddering French courses doesn't look like the best business decision.
Can't completely turn off the cartoon characters on the old Android app but the snake Home/Learn website is now overfilled with way too many cartoons and they're back at dancing as soon as the Animations OFF setting gets randomly overwritten on the Web.
But not learning "deep enough" can also happen on other resources which may miss EN translations, no audio/video subtitles, are too quickly paced, have complicated sentence examples, too often use UNKNOWN words, have fast speaking French speakers which often are not hearable very good and don't speak slow enough or a low quality audio/video file was uploaded.
On the other side you have Duolingo with an ultralong CEFR course, endlessly scrolling path, now missing very detailed Portuguese T&N (hopefully they will rework all guidebooks for beginners) which existed before, comic TTS voices......but not a so fast paced progress (like immediate thrown into two person dialogues).
I really hope that MosaStories and MosaSpeak will work out for me one day when I finally start them.
Portuguese is still missing those two modules.
Don't see Stories2 for FR, only for EN.
I also need to focus more on single word vocabulary learning with good SRS apps otherwise my built up French foundation will remain too shaky.
Didn't write down every NEW word or phrase on paper...I better should have.
Repeating alone helps nothing.
My Portuguese foundation is better as I focused on the smaller things first and had used Memrise early on...but speaking (repeating aloud) came later.
..(...)..
Obviously, Duolingo still tries to be the ONE single language resource. One fits all.
Their user evaluation forms even ask if you have ONLY used it to start from scratch or if you used other resources in parallel or before.
In that case and with your honest form answer you're excluded in their studies.
It's hard to find the right mixture...
If I hadn't Portuguese as a Romance language (Duolingo, Memrise, Mondly, 50languages,..) under my belt I probably would have found French much more challenging, especially with Busuu.
It was hard enough to get started and it almost feels like I'm "nowhere" now.
LingoLegend clearly shows me my weaknesses after one year of French (without Duolingo or French) when using the 1-2 letter word builder.
All the Dr. French grammar university shown rules and exceptions just are: Frightening.
Kwiziq clearly shows us our score and how much we don't completely know in reality.
Ein nur mehr oberflächlicher Pfad wird es nicht besser machen.
A more superficial path will not make it any better.
..(...).
For your gamification complain:
Other ressource also seem to have their weaknesses?!?
No idea why a product doesn't get stronger over the last 4-6 years so I actually WANT to spend money on it.
Let's hope Ikenna found a new way with Fluyo.
Native |
Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) |
L25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu):
(A1 McGraw-Hill) |
(interm.)
The snake is completely useless for me. There's hardly any repetition, it moves on way too quickly, has no explanations for anything and is overall just a mess.... And especially on the website.
I've seen some videos on youtube, which shows that the path might be more useful on some phones, where it shows your level being C1 or B3 or whatever. But that must be an iPhone feature, because it never showed on my android. It's just an eternal scrollfest with no usability there as well. Not to mention, I hate typing on phone, so I mostly just kept the app for convenience, being able to fish it out and repeat a lesson while waiting for a bus or whatever. Most of my actual learning was done on the website.
So now that the internal version no longer works, we'll see how long I can be bothered just logging in and doing the daily streak recquirement. My guess is, not long, since I don't get enough repetition to actually learn anymore.
DuoMe Profile Learning /
+
, with the most focus on
for now.
Working on repairing the
Legendaries after the 2023 updates, but refusing to pay for the snake makes it hard
as long as a kind soul keeps me in their family plan
.
Legendary is finally completed again.
SansEspoir wrote: ↑Thu Jan 26, 2023 1:10 pmThe snake is completely useless for me. There's hardly any repetition, it moves on way too quickly, has no explanations for anything and is overall just a mess.... And especially on the website.
I've seen some videos on youtube, which shows that the path might be more useful on some phones, where it shows your level being C1 or B3 or whatever. But that must be an iPhone feature, because it never showed on my android. It's just an eternal scrollfest with no usability there as well. Not to mention, I hate typing on phone, so I mostly just kept the app for convenience, being able to fish it out and repeat a lesson while waiting for a bus or whatever. Most of my actual learning was done on the website.
So now that the internal version no longer works, we'll see how long I can be bothered just logging in and doing the daily streak recquirement. My guess is, not long, since I don't get enough repetition to actually learn anymore.
The CEFR level (if the language supports) should be shown in school for duolingo.
I ticked the both option. I liked collecting trees, bringing some trees to particular levels, even getting one to legendary, all in my own time and preference.
That being said I also like the snake because I have the impression that it contains a really good mixture of repetition and new stuff and that I'm still learning and improving.
EN
That recquires using DuoLingo for schools, though?
And my target language of italian shows no useful info on the website.
DuoMe Profile Learning /
+
, with the most focus on
for now.
Working on repairing the
Legendaries after the 2023 updates, but refusing to pay for the snake makes it hard
as long as a kind soul keeps me in their family plan
.
Legendary is finally completed again.
[mention]SansEspoir[/mention]
Italian (both from English, from German) were contributor courses.
It's very unlikely that volunteers have designed their Italian course with having the exact CEFR curriculum (all required CEFR vocabulary, order of grammar usage and where to exactly introduce formal skills,..) in their mind.
For Non-Cefr courses like Portuguese (which in general isn't a bad thing as they focus more in grammar, formal grammar introduction, very detailed Web Tips&Notes, many more verb tenses in less time) schools doesn't show a specific alignment and grouping.
No need to create a school classroom for Italian.
Native |
Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) |
L25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu):
(A1 McGraw-Hill) |
(interm.)
I voted for the two. But is snake really a different method? It's still about words, sentences, some multiple choice, some filling in, some typing, some word order, some (or even too much) repetition, etc etc.
Both serve to link the lessons in some forward way, either by knitting or crocheting
And the most important features in language learning are missing in both.
No I won't give the list here and now
BB - Basler Biker - Positivity and constructiveness will prevail
Native
/ fluent
/ learning
/ fan of
(bs/bl)
I definitively prefer the tree, but recently I've started to learn a new language using only the snake (the Xhosa which is not available for android). And it works. I mean, I can learn with it. On the web I still have the practice button and I use it a lot. And I discovered that if I get a practice that I don't want (like the first skill) I can refresh the page or exit and click the practice button again and I'll get another skill to practice. This way I am able to repeat the new material many times before starting another skill. Whith a course with just a dozen skills and after learning less than a half of the material it works for me. I'm not sure how it would be with a longer course. With a language that is totally new to me (like any of the African languages after I only learned some European ones) I sometimes need really lots of repetitions before I feel confident enough to move forward.
I liked the old tree, from before the introduction of the crown system, when you could practice one selected lesson over and over again if you felt like it. With the crown system the way to repeat the material that worked for me was achieving the legendary level of a skill. Then I could do the "hard practice" every day until I felt it was enough for the moment.
Learned a lot on the tree, and when I started Portuguese they just forced me on the path. First ten units or so were okay, but then it got worse and worse. These new units barely had any new stuff and contents are completely unstructured. The given "topics" had barely anything to do with the contents I was presented with. Tenses are mixed together all the way. You're supposed to learn tense 1 according to the description and you're presented with all tenses you've learned so far equally distributed within these units. That's not how learning works for me, I want to actually work on something specific. This here is rather like reading a random text. Last week I reached the last section (or second last, not this personal practice thing) and nothing had anything new in it. So I used the "jump here" thing and it was embarrassing. Zero new sentences until the end, I think it was 12 units. I was so fucking annoyed I gave my account away 4w earlier than planned including 4w plus just bc I see zero chance to get any takeaway from that anymore.
Wait, actually it's even worse. You're not only presented with everything you've learned so far, they even occasionally mix in things from upcoming units. Diamond/legendary in the beginning was impossible since it asked for stuff they didn't teach until then. They changed this path legendary/diamond thing meanwhile, but I never tried it again bc I was already way too fed up.
I thought being presented with an ad after each (!) lesson and hearts system were the things to force users into super. Not sure where I found this, but there were reports of significantly increased amounts of ads parallel to the snake introduction. They basically fixed their losing users due to the snake numbers with forcing more users into super by being annoying with ads.
I personally think the path itself is not that bad but along with introducing it they removed tips¬es, which was a really terrible thing to do.
I am probably in a Duolingo test group for another DOWNgrade. If the only change was yellow legendary instead of light blue, that would not be such a tragedy, but (together with other mostly small annoying troublesome changes) ALL DIFFICULT QUESTIONS DISAPPEARED FROM MY LESSONS !!! I face pictures and single word questions even in legendary lessons all the time and Duolingo team probably thinks that receiving easy XP's is the only thing making their users happy. They probably completely forgot that the original purpose of Duolingo was to learn languages.
I WANT THE GOOD OLD TREE BACK !!! I MISS HARD LESSONS SO MUCH !!! Duolingo is nothing but a waste of time now.
Gentianopsis wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2023 4:39 pmALL DIFFICULT QUESTIONS DISAPPEARED FROM MY LESSONS !!! I face pictures and single word questions even in legendary lessons all the time
Also this frequent (random example)
1 lesson ("sentence"): a materia
immediately followed by
1 lesson single choice: <two other nouns> plus the exact same word as before
water_color wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2023 12:25 pmI personally think the path itself is not that bad but along with introducing it they removed tips¬es, which was a really terrible thing to do.
Getting rid of notes and tips was a real loss.