French tree adjusted

[Hdvug]

Today, I found my French tree shortened from 150+ unites to just 99. All guidebooks have disappeared. I was in unit 59, now I'm in unit 34, with many purportedly new words already familiar to me and vice versa. Anyone else the same experience?

[Explorer]

All guidebooks have disappeared.

I heard that the guidebooks are being replaced by adaptive AI explanations. They say it's going to be a revolution in language teaching. Whatever happens, the thing is that you'll have to pay for that.

[Saperlipopette!]

This morning I did lessons under the old snake. I recently noticed these changes this afternoon. Along with what you wrote about, none of the skills have descriptions. My guidebook in Duo for schools didn't change at all. These changes are really confusing.

[Saperlipopette!]

These changes can't be right. The entire course is unstructured. I filed a bug report

[Deleted User 2015]

This happened to me too. As I have a long experience of Duolingo revamping their courses, I'm usually relatively relaxed when they happen compared to many other users. This one, on the other hand, is really dubious, so I've decided to just wait patiently until they revert me back to the usual course and do nothing with it while it is like that. I'm fortunate that I have a lot of other courses to work on but I really can feel and understand the frustration and worries of those who just only work on one course or where French is the absolute primary course they work on.

[GrahamW]

Hmm, I haven' t taken much notice of the structure of the French tree, as I've only been doing practices. But when I first got the path, I had 199 Units, and now I have 219. I have no idea when that changed occurred, but that's par for the course for Duolingo's mushroom-powered tree/path/snake change management approach.

EDIT: Hang on, that was on the web, where I can easily see the total number of Units, as they aren't broken into Sections. On checking the app, I see that I have 209 Units. Way to go, Duo!

PathSection SectionName Units
1 Rookie 9
2 Explorer 17
3 Traveler 16
4 Trailblazer 35
5 Adventurer 42
6 Discoverer 37
7 Daredevil 20
8 Champion 33
TOTAL 209

[Saperlipopette!]

I got switched back to the old snake, but placed over a hundred units behind where I was this morning. I filed another bug report.

[JudieLC]

I have 219 units on the web and guidebooks up till Unit 185. After that, there are no more guidebooks.

[Durr]

So I haven’t updated my app since 2021 probably, and I’m still using the old tree. I was nearly at the end, when a few days ago the tree updated. Before that I had 10 units, and now there’s 11 and some new skills interspersed here and there in the previous units.
I thought they were done with the old tree. But they still update it? Does that mean that they plan to add a toggle to let the users choose the interface?

[unterhausen]

I thought they were done with the old tree. But they still update it? Does that mean that they plan to add a toggle to let the users choose the interface?

The path is just a thin veneer of nonsense over the structure they were using before. But I was also surprised that it gave me new skills on the tree. It just shows that the system they were using is pretty robust, and also they didn't do the kind of restructuring that they should have done to go to the path. Unfortunately, they aren't going to give us a switch to go back to the tree. I feel like if too many people realize the tree still works, they'll do something to break it, probably whatever easy thing they can think of. And then the path won't work for a while either.

[Blauelf]

On Android, I now have a different version of the path:
1 Rookie 9 Units
2 Explorer 17 Units
3 Traveler 17 Units
4 Trailblazer 34 Units
5 Adventurer 42 Units
6 Discoverer 37 Units
7 Daredevil 19 Units
8 Navigator 21 Units
9 Champion 38 Units
10 Daily Refresh 6 Levels
total 234 units, 6 levels.

For whatever reason, on the browser, I have 254 units, guidebooks up to 215. Cannot check on Android, as that part is still locked.
At least up to section 4, both versions are still in sync. Well, desktop doesn't have sections, but same units.

[CasteG]

I think They will feel obligated to fix some of the units, I mean, look how ugly all of these stories put together look,
] it can't just stay the way it is. I loved how smooth the units looked before.

[BizProf]

As of today, I still have guidebooks in my Serpent de la français. It appears that some of you are experiencing Duolingo's random beta testing in the wild process. Bad thing is that after they test ideas in the wild, they tend to distribute them system wide.
Ever since Duolingo went public, it appears their mission is maximizing profit for share holders rather than its original altruistic one seeking to bring world peace by making language education available for everybody. To maximize profit means cutting expenses. Using AI really cuts out expensive humans.
My goal is to complete my current snake and bail from my subscription. But at the rate I'm going and Duolingo continuously resetting the goal posts, I doubt I will ever complete the course. And they will continously draw from my bank account linked to the subscription.
I can't complain, I really have learned far more French in the five or so years I've been with the system. I got the hang of verb conjugation, which is the heart of the language. But I do miss the audio lessons that allowed me to listen to speakers as I did other work and repeated their statements. The voice-to-text feature doesn't work. I've tested it frequently via the French to English lessons and it has never been able to detect "a.m." and "p.m." despite English being my Native language. Maybe British English pronounces that differently than Americans. The English lessons also teach really bad English, using archaic English slang terms such as "that money is phony." Nobody in the USA says 'phony', rather they use 'fake'. That is just one example that Duolingo isn't teaching acurate language structure and vocabulary. I wonder how much of my French is archaic. Then again, I first learned Québecois, so I spent my early Duolingo days transforming to metropolitan French. Bringing back the human speakers would greatly improve spoken language accuracy for Duolingo students.
And I rambled. Back to that change in the snake and removing guidebooks. It takes time to write guidebooks and tie them to relevant lessons. Dropping them saves money and maximizes shareholder value. Just as dropping the native speakers shortly after going public. Maximizing shareholder value is Duolingo's goal today. Expect more "efficiency" refinements over the time you're with the system.

[unterhausen]

I have been using an old app, so I have the tree. They got rid of some skills, which surprised me a bit. I had a couple of skills that I hadn't done the final lesson on to earn a crown, and those are gone. Today's quest included getting two crowns, otherwise I might not have noticed. They added a whole batch of new skills at the end of the course, which is an update I think others have seen before, but it just now showed up for me. I use the path on the web, and got pushed back 50 units. The number of units contracted and then expanded this week. It was a bit disconcerting. When they first implemented the path, I was a bit upset at how close to the end I was. Now I'm significantly further away. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Since the circles on the path aren't labeled, it's hard to know what they put where. They said they were reorganizing them this week though.

[Stasia]

I have been using an old app, so I have the tree. They got rid of some skills, which surprised me a bit. I had a couple of skills that I hadn't done the final lesson on to earn a crown, and those are gone. Today's quest included getting two crowns, otherwise I might not have noticed. They added a whole batch of new skills at the end of the course, which is an update I think others have seen before, but it just now showed up for me.

Same here. I used to have 10 En->Fr sections, a few days ago I saw 11, as of today there are 12 sections. Sadly, the new sections look very snake-like (I am also still using an old app version with the tree), no longer branching out, but new skills listed in a single line.

They definitely cut a few skills that I was working on, and they also erased my progress on a few more, which moved me slightly back but not too much (I'm more or less in the middle of unit 7). Before that last update I had more than 12 skills open and now I have only 5, so something definitely happened there.

Also, as of lately, my progress along the tree is somehow recorded on and coordinated with the new snake, because when I log into the snake/website after doing lessons on the tree/app, I see that I'm moving forward on the snake. (I'm not doing any lessons on the snake, but if there's a chest, I open it). That is new and I like that (when the snake was first introduced, my progress on the tree was not reflected on the snake).

[unterhausen]

I'm pretty sure your progress on the tree is reflected on the path, with one caveat. Basically it's the same thing as when you were updated to the tree, which didn't always make sense. For example, it put me much closer to the end of the course than was reasonable. Other people got moved very far back in the course. The lessons are shared between versions. But as most of us found when they did the conversion, some lessons on the tree don't count on the path, and sometimes you get credit for lessons on the path that you didn't actually do on the tree.

This means that when they readjust their course, their algorithm can do some nonsensical things. The main difference between the path and the tree is them choosing what you do next. The old lessons have to be an unbroken line, no exceptions. This leads to ridiculous outcomes whenever they update the course. They really should allow themselves the flexibility of adding new lessons in the middle of the course without moving users along the path.

Since none of this affects new users, they probably don't care. It's a really cynical way of doing business, and very lazy.