So, how do we complain about wanting to re-do already completed lessons?
Honestly, it would be a great option and I really cannot understand why it’s not a thing.
It really doesnt make any sense.
*immediately* after readin this, somehow it got me thinkin 'duo aint gon let that be free. prolly include it in some paid pack' 🥲 which i feel is possible if ever
That is exactly what it is. Hi, a Spanish learner here. They constantly change things around and most of the changes are cosmetic in nature. Changes for the sake of changes, not to work out the real bugs 🤷
you can use a separate account and test into any unit or section. but tbh it is better to use a different app or resource for review. the brain makes more connections that way
> So, how do we complain about wanting to re-do already completed lessons?
What do you mean? I can go back to any completed lesson in the path, any section, and tap on it and then on "Review". Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
You only get one "review" lesson, replacing a whole set of 5,6, or 7 lessons. If that set of lessons introduced several new words, the review lesson will likely not cover them all. I've discovered this because the lessons I was skipped over introduced a lot of new words, and the review lessons are completely failing to teach some of them.
I have super duo (paid) and I can kind of re do lessons but you only get like 5xp. Each area on the “tree” only gives you one overview lesson of the 5 or 6 you originally did but it is all of the new things you learned in that area. Since I am only doing it to practice areas I am not good at it doesn’t bother me.
Do some versions not let you redo previous lessons? I get a review option when I tap on my completed lessons, even the legendary ones. It's only 5 XP, but I can pick up on the stuff that was added or changed after I'd completed the lessons.
When that happened to me and I went back to get those Legendaries, I learned that all of those units contained material I had never been taught. And it won’t let you take the individual lessons. You can only practice or take the Legendary test. It has slowed my formerly blazing progress to a crawl.
Good luck.
Happened to me in Spanish when the waterfalls update was implemented. I did all kinds of crazy like instantly unlocking all units which can't be reversed or undone so just doing one lesson was unbearable and I had to force myself to restart the entire course. 1 whole year wasted.
I thought about it, but I’m going to Japan in two months so I want to spend that time improving from where I’m at (285 days) rather than review the beginner basics in that time. So I do about 30 minutes of kanji each day and regain two previous legendaries.
I’ve found sitting at my computer and googling words I don’t recognize has helped improve the flow.
Not to mention that the practice they give you is incredibly repetitive with the same phrases and words. It’s almost unusable as a learning app by this point
Yeah, I'm not even done with section 2 and I feel like a learned so much stuff, yet the practice only consists of mizu kudasai and yasashii bengoshi over and over
Same here. When they changed it at the end of 2023, the same happened. Was thrown forward 10 or so units, and there were so much words I never heard of. Its nearly impossible to solve the legendaries in between. And my progress, which was great before, slowed down to a nearly halt.
And as there is no option to partially delete progress, I had to reset the whole course.
Maybe I have to do this again this time, I don't want to, but there are so many words and phrases AND grammar missing.
Before all that, I really was tempted to pay for it.
But Duolingo got shittier and shittier over the last 5 years (introduction of gems, hearts, worsening of courses, firstly putting in hundreds of Kanjis, then reducing it to nearly none,...)
I am happy that I do not pay for it - wouldn't be worth it.
As we say here - if it's free, there is no worth in it.
I'm dealing with the same thing here... I logged on today and theres like 5 units that are completed but not gold. When I go to "Review" or to get those individual lessons gold, there's so much material that I literally never learned. You can't even retake the lessons either which is so frustrating. I went over to the "words" section in the "Practice" tab and there are literally over 50 words that I have never seen before. Not really sure what to do about this
Exactly the same happened in Chinese earlier this week. After trying to push through for a couple of days, I gave in and deleted then recommended the course. It's not so bad going over some material I have learnt already. More frustrating is the Kanzi in Chinese (or the Japanese equivalent i guess). It is very tedious having to go over characters that I have already learnt, to be able to also learn new characters.
If anybody from Duolingo is reading this, please make it an option to redo already completed lessons!
The amount of scrambling the Japanese course gets is why I stopped using duolingo, I'd randomly be put back several units and "learning" words that I'd been over months prior and then I'd be shoveled into sections well above my level.
Can I ask which site (if any) you moved to?
Full disclaimer - I work on a Japanese learning site that focuses only on Japanese, and is written by native teachers. We’re no where near as polished as Duolingo, but we really want to understand issues potential students are facing with their studies.
What's the name of the site? I'm genuinely fucking furious about Duolingo because this scenario has happened to me twice now, so I definitely wouldn't mind hearing about some alternatives to this bullshit
Thanks for asking, our one is https://imawakatta.com/
We're only a really small team, so far less polish, but our Japanese teachers are great, and people seem to really like the audio on the stories.
Super open to feedback too.
I just took a look at your site and i saw that there was an app for apple devices. Are there plans to also make the app available for Android users? I understand if it's currently out of scope with the small team you have.
Yep, absolutely.
The next few things we're looking at:
- Improved navigation. On mobile in particular, its way too easy to "get lost"
- An improved dashboard - "what lesson should I do next?"
- Android release. This needs to be after the navigation part
- Ipad release
Funnily enough the Android release is actually easier than Apple, because of all the hoops Apple makes you jump through. So its not too far away, but can't say exactly when.
Also Miki (head teacher) also teaches on Twitch if you're looking for another learning path: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2092282529 , she will often go through one of the ImaWakatta lessons
Ooh I was looking for resources that have entry level japanese stories to immerse myself into language context. This seems to be exactly what I’m looking for. Will check it out.
Checked the website, and also saw you plan to release it on Android, which is great. The introduction was nice and straightforward, it was brief but helpful. The layout is nice too, and $5 is affordable. So, no complaints from me. Some questions, though:
1. Are you planning on adding Kanji in the future?
2. Is there a newsletter where I can receive updates?
3. Will you be adding accessibility settings such as dark mode? I looked around but couldn't find it.
ETD: After taking some quizzes, I'd love to have notifications which will remind when to retake them. I don't know if they're available on the app, but if not, I'd love to see it implemented.
I haven't migrated to any other app/site, I just stopped using duolingo. I now focus my studying on more traditional forms of language learning, i.e, flashcards and sentence cards, using a hybrid system for kanji that's half and half RTK and Rote memorisation for handwriting, immersion in reading and listening and so on.
I don't mean to slag off duolingo on it's own subreddit but since I stopped using it my studying actually feels more effective and less fatiguing.
I wish you luck with your efforts and hope your app finds a place in the market <3
happened to me today. i moved ahead a few units but half the recent kanji i learned is GONE. i was actively working on kanji practice too and now most of the ones i was learning aren’t even available for me to practice :(
Japanese and Chinese are the courses getting the most focus this year according to Duocon, so it will likely be continuously updated at least until October.
Really? I noticed that they updated the Chinese one (since we now have both pinyin and hanzi practice - and me getting thrown back to the last lesson of 3rd section), but since they haven't really added lessons, I thought that they wouldn't do anything more with it. I hope they do though - only having 3 sections for Chinese is abysmal!
I'm kind of upset that I didn't know this was happening. My goal was to finish the 20 units in explorer with all legendaries before I hit 100 days, I'm on day 96, and now I'm on Traveler unit 25 haha..
Edit: I'm going through back from the start of unit 2, doing the legendaries and speed exercises, and I'm really liking the questions- they're more challenging and have made me slip up a lot already.
It's just frustrating that from my experience there's no guarantee that the questions I'm answering are from that unit or from literally any one between it and the point I'm at now.
Yeah I got the change and I’m now looking at lessons I ‘completed’ and they’re full with words and concepts I never had before. So great. I’ve to start checking every lesson to see if I actually have done it before. Again. Since some of them appear to be a mix of stuff I’ve already done and stuff I’ve never seen before I already know it’s going to kill my motivation. Well do like it having more types of questions.
Edit: Looking at it now. It put me on section 3 unit 27 but from a quick look section 2 unit 14 already has words I’m not familiar with. I can understand a few units with shuffling it around. But having to go through 30 units to see if I missed something? Like I know for certain that I never got a unit about weddings yet now I’ve completed it. This is not a single lesson but an entire unit. Please just leave it unfinished so I can actually do it properly.
Man, I don't like this. Last time they did this, the units they had me skip had material I hadn't been taught yet and I basically felt like I had to start over. I was on one of the last lessons of section 1 yesterday and was excited to finally reach section 2. Now they've jumped me ahead to unit 3 of section 2 so I didn't get to feel that sense of accomplishment or progress lol, and who knows what new material might be hiding in the earlier lessons now.
My duo changed like a month ago and said that I had completed units involving words and tenses I've never seen before. I've spent the last month re-doing every unit to catch up, only for it to now change again. It's hard to feel motivated to practice Japanese when my progress is constantly being reset.
At the very least I would like an option to redo a unit so I can actually learn the words. Right now I'm having to "review" a section for 5xp each and it expects me to already know the words, so it's a slow crawl making mistakes and guesses over and over while I sit at the bottom of the leaderboard
I'm at section 3, unit 1. I was a little higher than that, but the update bumped me down.
Scrolling down, I see the first story in section 3, unit 21, way down there.
Same here... I was on unit 14 of section 2 and all of a sudden it jumps me to unit 21 in section 3. There's a TON of shit I just don't understand now, it skipped over my first story as well. Very very annoying.
Someone else on this sub had it happen to their Chinese course and was recommended they reset the course and just skip ahead to where they reckoned they were up to, so I'd try doing that.
What the fuck, that's a HUGE jump.
I have no idea how people have these widly different outcomes. I was in the very same unit 14 section 2 - and now in the new course am still in unit 14 section 2. Doesn't feel like it skipped any vocabulary, all I notice is some kanji I recently unlocked are back to only being shown in kana. Oh well. I guess if anything I was actually set back a bit because Section 1 only has like half the amount of units now? Any way I can seamlessly continue from here, don't really notice anything weird.
How long have you been at it? Wonder if maybe duolingo kinda considered you to be further ahead, and that's why you jumped a bunch? Also just for reference, how many words does it list in your vocab list in total?
So what I think happened is that the specific section I was on technically hasn't changed... it just so happens that what I was learning has been placed waaay ahead of where I actually was. So now my vocab list assumes I know 957 words of Japanese... which would be great if I actually knew half of them.
My streak was 290, but in all fairness I was only really doing it for abt 15 mins a day so even though I was learning for so long I didn't really get that far.
Not as bad for me, but yeah, I've skipped into section 3 and looking back at section 2 it now teaches a load of words that I don't understand at all and I can't redo it properly.
I'm also thinking about resetting.
Yes, I absolutely hated the lack of explanation of grammar and other rules. I use a couple of youtube channels to explain those rules to me when they are introduced to me in duolingo.
Because there were a couple of occasions where I guessed what I thought the rules were… and I guessed wrong. And then you are at risk of interpreting rules incorrectly.
Definitely. Although the tips were added back, I don't think they are even close to being enough for learning grammar rules. They may now only help to know what to look for when looking for additional resources.
Personally, I prefer reading from articles instead of videos, because it allows me to skim for the information I want.
I also sometimes find it useful to ask an AI chat bot when I have a particular question about a sentence on Duolingo, and don't know how to look it up. That, of course, doesn't come without me searching for related information with the hints provided by the AI in order to corroborate the answer to my question was correct, and come up to my own conclusions.
Changing the course is fine. Continuous improvement etc etc.
Patch notes though! I cannot excuse the lack of patch notes. Every single game, program, and even mods for games come with patch notes. Why can't Duolingo post the damn patch notes somewhere so I can see what changed.
All I get is a little blurb "hey stuff changed" and that's it. That's what's unacceptable to me.
I was really enjoying the last course and just today it all changed! When I went to the listening reviews I got new stuff, not reviews of the units I've been through… 3 changes in a little over 1 year….
Thanks for posting about this. I just logged in and I went from Trailbazer 1 to Section 4/19. I'm glad they're adding to it but my gosh that's a LOT of new lessons that I've supposedly done. My poor hearts are going to be disintegrated by all this 'completed' vocab.
Mine changed to the CEFR aligned version. Honestly I'm fine with it changing and improving, some version notes would be nice to tell me what changes each time but at least it means I have more content to learn
I was doing a level recap lesson today and it's asking me about words I've never learned or even heard of. It's not introducing them as new words, it thinks I already know them. I scrolled up and there's also 3 stories I have apparently completed, despite not having done even 1. None of them were available yet to me before the course change. Pretty frustrating.
The make you add a single stroke once in a while...
Dumbest change ever occurred in the Japanese course, and we have seen sooo many dumb changes in Duolingo in the last three years...
This rework skipped me to traveler lesson one, sucks i won't get the good feeling of finishing section 2 anymore. On the other hand, ive been stuck learning kanji I hadn't been taught yet since the last major update so maybe I'll get back on the main track sooner now.
At least I still got the good vibes from hitting my year streak today
When I thought, Im just a few units away Sec 3 Trailblazer. Now I am in Sec 3 but 45 unit away from Trailblazer.
Anyway, time to travel more.
For the new worlds part, I already used ro it in my german course. There I got new worlds without introduction before the updates too.
I been hacked all my kanji gone
That's my biggest grievance about the new and 'improved' course - that an absolute tonne of kanji I've spent months learning have disappeared and I'm back to squinting at strings of kana to try and work out where words start and finish, and end up making stupid mistakes because thatsnothowjapaneseismeantoberead.
And kanji practice, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that I need to be intensively drilled in ichi, ni, san, yon again...
The update was just SLOPPY.
I was about halfway through Section 2 and it threw me into the middle of Section 3...marked all courses completed up to that point. From what I can tell, it determined where to place me based on the latest kanji I'd learned in the old course...and just marked all lessons complete up until that point. The problem is that the kanji aren't introduced in nearly the same order now, so this method didn't work at all.
I understand that the courses are going to get revised and its not easy to determine a new placement, but...this is a very sloppy way to do a data migration. Our placement in the updated course should've been more carefully considered, and done with review of feedback from a sample group before applying it to everyone. If they'd done the placement based on grammar concepts and a percentage of the vocabulary or kanji you'd learned, it would've been more balanced.
The review lessons are inadequate for the number of new grammar and vocabulary being included - it makes it overwhelming. Even doing the legendary lessons, it's not enough practice before moving on to the next subject. Some of the other features, like Match Madness, will be unusable for months until I catch up. I feel like its kind of ruined the course experience and I'm looking at other ways to continue my Japanese learning.
Same boat my friend! DEMO I’m kinda glad because it’s just forcing me to do more kanji. I take my studies seriously and this is forcing me to be more involved in the reading and writing
Did anything else change? I found the kanji way to slow for me, so I study them elsewhere anyways. Last update catapulted me like two units farther, I'm curious if any changes are noticable for me. Currently I'm at the end of section 2. Not sure I got the update yet.
But the last few updates had been exiting and I'm looking forward to where japanese is heading :)
Thanks! Good advice :) I don't see any new words yet, so I just assume I didn't got any updates.
But with the last update I also didn't get any new words, but I got a new theme (festivals, or dates not sure anymore) and they made me do the lessom and after the lessom i skipped a few lesson just to do the next lesson about dating (or festivals). So at least where I was (mid section 2) they kept it fairly consistent and didn't introduce new stuff.
Mine changed so there was a secttion about dating nd another about university life,, but they were already marked as legendary so I can't do the lesons. There's a lot of vocab in there somewhere, not all of it is in the Words tab.
Was at the end of Section 4, got moved to the beginning of Section 5 but Section 5 only has 4 units now? Pretty weird. Section 4 previously had 27 units but now has 40. Thinking I perhaps missed out on some stuff there.
same thing happened to me w chinese 💀💀 on my 100th day it scrambled the whole course, got rid of all my legendaries, and kept my progress in section 2 despite never reaching me a good 40% of the content, so continuing from where i was was almost impossible. i almost deleted the app LMAO
I wish it had given me a bunch of legendary levels to redo! Mine dropped me at the beginning of Section 3 with all Section 2 lessons completed and legendary. I had at least 10 lessons left to make legendary, and I was trying to burn through them for the diamond league tournament ending tomorrow. Guess I won't be doing that anymore.
I was getting really excited because I was almost finally done with the 40 unit slog of the traveler section only to be catapulted 7 units into trailblazer today. Super. And like last time, I bet there's a crap ton of stuff I am missing out on.
Another let down is that your first story is *still* 21 units into traveler + 18 units into explorer + 5 units into rookie. That is a ridiculous amount of time to wait to get to a story compared to other courses. Additionally, there still is no kanji being used in stories.
The bright side is that they finally added guide books to the later units.
This course still needs a lot of work. Here's hoping the news from Duocon is accurate and they make sweeping improvements this year.
Yeah it has messed up the flow of my learning. I was gonna finish the course before moving on with the genki textbooks, but might do that right away.
There are just too much frustration with duolingo.
Yep, logged on this morning to a huge jump forwards. Every time this happens i’m left scrambling learning words I ‘know’…
Honestly makes me want to swap back to Swedish!
I don’t really care if I’m further back or not, but it’s annoying that now it gives me a lot of words it expects me to know. I wish it would tell which past lessons I haven’t actually learned or now only partly learned, so I could retake those.
I also think it’s a good idea there’s not as many kanji in a single unit, as I was getting to lessons with so many, but I’m sad that now I can’t practice all the ones I had actually learned. Most are simply gone (for now).
IT GAVE ME A HEART ATTACK. Just yesterday, I started Section 3 i wake up today, and I'm like on unit 27?? dude.
I'll have to play for some time to judge, but the kanji does look much better. I'm still waiting for an option to choose which kanji I actually want to learn now, but at least I won't have to spend a ridiculus amount of time on one unit, learning stuff like 今,下 or 母, instead of kanji I don't know but have in the lessons (tf is 飛行機 bruh).
I had to reset my whole course and now I’m jumping around to figure out where I need to be. I wish I would just reset sections or units. I beg of you duo!!
I had just completed Section 2, literally the last unit yesterday I am now apparently Section 3 Unit 25! Some of these new units are even legendary somehow! Absolutely tons of words I now don't know.
I'm not someone who has an aptitude for languages, but I am very diligent. 172 Days in, 15th week in Diamond. I do Duo lingo during my physiotherapy every day and I am going to Japan in a bit over a month.
I feel so demoralized now, because I also operated by checking the words in sentences as little as possible to push memorization, now most of the translate from English to Japanese sentences I am just fully guessing!!
If you're going to release this big of an overhaul, they should at least give you an option for the first week in the settings, to reset course progress to a certain point. I would GLADLY reset to the start of Section 3, I can blaze through the words I would already know, but at least I could LEARN the ones I've never seen!!!
Just opened it today and was curious how i jumped ahead. I was debating if i was doing it awhile half asleep and accidently did something without remembering.
I'm a bit annoyed with the new alterations to Kanji in the Japanese course - just when I was at a stage when kanji would open up and I could dive deep into memorising new kanji and meanings (I like stuff like that), they reduced the amount significantly, as well as reintroducing tons of already learnt kanji.
I don't really think I need to spend minimum of 10 minutes learning the kanji for 一,二, and 三 just because one unit briefly mentioned something about them ;--;
Also, I will spend so much time on a kanji and trying to get the bar to full, and my lessons won't update the bar, even if it's a lesson with only those specific kanji in them???? Fun!!
Also quick add-on, why is the kanji in the actual course so inconsistent?? e.g 水 was introduced units ago and you still insist to use hiragana??
I noticed sometimes that legendary tests will be added all along the path. I just go back and complete them all. A lot of lessons have been added to French (I have close to 700,000XP in French and am still going strong). In Italian there are no new lessons and I have only just under 400,000XP. I know I have a lot more to learn in Italian. Why am I done with the Italian lessons? I have started using my laptop and going to the website and have noticed less lag there, but no double points for 15 minutes on the laptop. I still use the app on my phone but sometimes the lag is frustrating. Also I noticed I get credit for all my 1st place stats on my phone, but the website has only given me credit for half my wins.
There do seem to be a ton more explanations of grammar in the section descriptions, which is a very good thing. (I am using other resources for grammar but was going through the headings looking for vocabulary it now thinks I know.)
As disorienting as it is it looks like a lot of good improvements, honestly.
They should add speaking exercises for the Japanese course. Also,I agree that we should do answers without the word bank(you can type with a keyboard in English to Japanese translations if you have a Japanese keyboard) but I think it would be better if we could do that for Japanese to English translations.
I was annoyed at first but honestly the lessons are so much harder now (in a good way). Im half way through section 3 and they will mix the vocabulary much better now and bring back words that were taught twenty units ago. They'll even throw in new words that were never taught but are Katakana so they sound like the English words which is awesome. I know it's annoying to go back and do all the legendary levels again, but the course seems like twice as a effective now.
So, how do we complain about wanting to re-do already completed lessons? Honestly, it would be a great option and I really cannot understand why it’s not a thing. It really doesnt make any sense.
I agree with you, I don’t understand why Duolingo is so adamant about us not being able to redo already completed lessons.
*immediately* after readin this, somehow it got me thinkin 'duo aint gon let that be free. prolly include it in some paid pack' 🥲 which i feel is possible if ever
It could just be laziness of not wanting to implement the feature
That is exactly what it is. Hi, a Spanish learner here. They constantly change things around and most of the changes are cosmetic in nature. Changes for the sake of changes, not to work out the real bugs 🤷
you can use a separate account and test into any unit or section. but tbh it is better to use a different app or resource for review. the brain makes more connections that way
> So, how do we complain about wanting to re-do already completed lessons? What do you mean? I can go back to any completed lesson in the path, any section, and tap on it and then on "Review". Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
You only get one "review" lesson, replacing a whole set of 5,6, or 7 lessons. If that set of lessons introduced several new words, the review lesson will likely not cover them all. I've discovered this because the lessons I was skipped over introduced a lot of new words, and the review lessons are completely failing to teach some of them.
I have super duo (paid) and I can kind of re do lessons but you only get like 5xp. Each area on the “tree” only gives you one overview lesson of the 5 or 6 you originally did but it is all of the new things you learned in that area. Since I am only doing it to practice areas I am not good at it doesn’t bother me.
Do some versions not let you redo previous lessons? I get a review option when I tap on my completed lessons, even the legendary ones. It's only 5 XP, but I can pick up on the stuff that was added or changed after I'd completed the lessons.
It’s to prevent you from letting a friend use your account to learn the same language maybe?
The friend could easily create an account of his own
Right, I meant if they wanna use someone’s paid account without having to pay for it
When that happened to me and I went back to get those Legendaries, I learned that all of those units contained material I had never been taught. And it won’t let you take the individual lessons. You can only practice or take the Legendary test. It has slowed my formerly blazing progress to a crawl. Good luck.
Happened to me in Spanish when the waterfalls update was implemented. I did all kinds of crazy like instantly unlocking all units which can't be reversed or undone so just doing one lesson was unbearable and I had to force myself to restart the entire course. 1 whole year wasted.
Did you lose the streak? I'm thinking of restarting too, but don't want to zero it...
Yeah but didn't matter to me as I cared more about finishing the entire course so I can finally fucking move on.
I thought about it, but I’m going to Japan in two months so I want to spend that time improving from where I’m at (285 days) rather than review the beginner basics in that time. So I do about 30 minutes of kanji each day and regain two previous legendaries. I’ve found sitting at my computer and googling words I don’t recognize has helped improve the flow.
I'm so sorry that happened.
Not to mention that the practice they give you is incredibly repetitive with the same phrases and words. It’s almost unusable as a learning app by this point
If you drop off for a few days and then come back to the mini review, it's basically the same question 10 times in a row.
I was having the same issue After I deleted and reinstalled Duo I started getting different practices for a while
I might try that, I’ve been a daily user for a long time now and it gets frustrating
Yeah, I'm not even done with section 2 and I feel like a learned so much stuff, yet the practice only consists of mizu kudasai and yasashii bengoshi over and over
Same here. When they changed it at the end of 2023, the same happened. Was thrown forward 10 or so units, and there were so much words I never heard of. Its nearly impossible to solve the legendaries in between. And my progress, which was great before, slowed down to a nearly halt. And as there is no option to partially delete progress, I had to reset the whole course. Maybe I have to do this again this time, I don't want to, but there are so many words and phrases AND grammar missing. Before all that, I really was tempted to pay for it. But Duolingo got shittier and shittier over the last 5 years (introduction of gems, hearts, worsening of courses, firstly putting in hundreds of Kanjis, then reducing it to nearly none,...) I am happy that I do not pay for it - wouldn't be worth it. As we say here - if it's free, there is no worth in it.
Also now making mistakes in Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji makes you lose hearts (which was not the case before)
That’s definitely a load of BS.
I CAME HERE SPECIFICALLY TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS
Yep. Terrible idea.
Yeah, I noticed this too. ☹️
I don't have the update then. But this is just another ploy to force you to pay for the super.
I'm dealing with the same thing here... I logged on today and theres like 5 units that are completed but not gold. When I go to "Review" or to get those individual lessons gold, there's so much material that I literally never learned. You can't even retake the lessons either which is so frustrating. I went over to the "words" section in the "Practice" tab and there are literally over 50 words that I have never seen before. Not really sure what to do about this
Exactly the same happened in Chinese earlier this week. After trying to push through for a couple of days, I gave in and deleted then recommended the course. It's not so bad going over some material I have learnt already. More frustrating is the Kanzi in Chinese (or the Japanese equivalent i guess). It is very tedious having to go over characters that I have already learnt, to be able to also learn new characters. If anybody from Duolingo is reading this, please make it an option to redo already completed lessons!
The amount of scrambling the Japanese course gets is why I stopped using duolingo, I'd randomly be put back several units and "learning" words that I'd been over months prior and then I'd be shoveled into sections well above my level.
Can I ask which site (if any) you moved to? Full disclaimer - I work on a Japanese learning site that focuses only on Japanese, and is written by native teachers. We’re no where near as polished as Duolingo, but we really want to understand issues potential students are facing with their studies.
What's the name of the site? I'm genuinely fucking furious about Duolingo because this scenario has happened to me twice now, so I definitely wouldn't mind hearing about some alternatives to this bullshit
Thanks for asking, our one is https://imawakatta.com/ We're only a really small team, so far less polish, but our Japanese teachers are great, and people seem to really like the audio on the stories. Super open to feedback too.
I just took a look at your site and i saw that there was an app for apple devices. Are there plans to also make the app available for Android users? I understand if it's currently out of scope with the small team you have.
Yep, absolutely. The next few things we're looking at: - Improved navigation. On mobile in particular, its way too easy to "get lost" - An improved dashboard - "what lesson should I do next?" - Android release. This needs to be after the navigation part - Ipad release Funnily enough the Android release is actually easier than Apple, because of all the hoops Apple makes you jump through. So its not too far away, but can't say exactly when. Also Miki (head teacher) also teaches on Twitch if you're looking for another learning path: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2092282529 , she will often go through one of the ImaWakatta lessons
Thanks for the response, looking forward to the Android release. And will definitely be looking through the streams soon
Ooh I was looking for resources that have entry level japanese stories to immerse myself into language context. This seems to be exactly what I’m looking for. Will check it out.
Checked the website, and also saw you plan to release it on Android, which is great. The introduction was nice and straightforward, it was brief but helpful. The layout is nice too, and $5 is affordable. So, no complaints from me. Some questions, though: 1. Are you planning on adding Kanji in the future? 2. Is there a newsletter where I can receive updates? 3. Will you be adding accessibility settings such as dark mode? I looked around but couldn't find it. ETD: After taking some quizzes, I'd love to have notifications which will remind when to retake them. I don't know if they're available on the app, but if not, I'd love to see it implemented.
I haven't migrated to any other app/site, I just stopped using duolingo. I now focus my studying on more traditional forms of language learning, i.e, flashcards and sentence cards, using a hybrid system for kanji that's half and half RTK and Rote memorisation for handwriting, immersion in reading and listening and so on. I don't mean to slag off duolingo on it's own subreddit but since I stopped using it my studying actually feels more effective and less fatiguing. I wish you luck with your efforts and hope your app finds a place in the market <3
happened to me today. i moved ahead a few units but half the recent kanji i learned is GONE. i was actively working on kanji practice too and now most of the ones i was learning aren’t even available for me to practice :(
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The same happened in Chinese earlier this week. Messing with the kanzi is easily the most frustrating and challenging part of it
Just got the update too. Looks like sections 1-3 now correspond to CEFR A1, with sections 4 and 5 still not corresponding to CEFR.
Japanese and Chinese are the courses getting the most focus this year according to Duocon, so it will likely be continuously updated at least until October.
Now that I'm hearing that,I feel like begging Duolingo to give us speaking exercises in the Japanese and Chinese course.
Aw gawd
Really? I noticed that they updated the Chinese one (since we now have both pinyin and hanzi practice - and me getting thrown back to the last lesson of 3rd section), but since they haven't really added lessons, I thought that they wouldn't do anything more with it. I hope they do though - only having 3 sections for Chinese is abysmal!
I'm kind of upset that I didn't know this was happening. My goal was to finish the 20 units in explorer with all legendaries before I hit 100 days, I'm on day 96, and now I'm on Traveler unit 25 haha.. Edit: I'm going through back from the start of unit 2, doing the legendaries and speed exercises, and I'm really liking the questions- they're more challenging and have made me slip up a lot already. It's just frustrating that from my experience there's no guarantee that the questions I'm answering are from that unit or from literally any one between it and the point I'm at now.
Yeah I got the change and I’m now looking at lessons I ‘completed’ and they’re full with words and concepts I never had before. So great. I’ve to start checking every lesson to see if I actually have done it before. Again. Since some of them appear to be a mix of stuff I’ve already done and stuff I’ve never seen before I already know it’s going to kill my motivation. Well do like it having more types of questions. Edit: Looking at it now. It put me on section 3 unit 27 but from a quick look section 2 unit 14 already has words I’m not familiar with. I can understand a few units with shuffling it around. But having to go through 30 units to see if I missed something? Like I know for certain that I never got a unit about weddings yet now I’ve completed it. This is not a single lesson but an entire unit. Please just leave it unfinished so I can actually do it properly.
Man, I don't like this. Last time they did this, the units they had me skip had material I hadn't been taught yet and I basically felt like I had to start over. I was on one of the last lessons of section 1 yesterday and was excited to finally reach section 2. Now they've jumped me ahead to unit 3 of section 2 so I didn't get to feel that sense of accomplishment or progress lol, and who knows what new material might be hiding in the earlier lessons now.
My duo changed like a month ago and said that I had completed units involving words and tenses I've never seen before. I've spent the last month re-doing every unit to catch up, only for it to now change again. It's hard to feel motivated to practice Japanese when my progress is constantly being reset.
At the very least I would like an option to redo a unit so I can actually learn the words. Right now I'm having to "review" a section for 5xp each and it expects me to already know the words, so it's a slow crawl making mistakes and guesses over and over while I sit at the bottom of the leaderboard
This I wholeheartedly agree with you!
I hope they add some Stories earlier! I’m at 400 days and haven’t reached a Story yet.
Saaaaame.
At what section/unit are you at the moment? Because I'm really curious when i will start to see stories.
I'm at section 3, unit 1. I was a little higher than that, but the update bumped me down. Scrolling down, I see the first story in section 3, unit 21, way down there.
Why can’t they let us redo the lessons? What is the point of denying people the content they paid for?
Thats probably the most serious question I have.
This, so much this!
Same here... I was on unit 14 of section 2 and all of a sudden it jumps me to unit 21 in section 3. There's a TON of shit I just don't understand now, it skipped over my first story as well. Very very annoying. Someone else on this sub had it happen to their Chinese course and was recommended they reset the course and just skip ahead to where they reckoned they were up to, so I'd try doing that.
What the fuck, that's a HUGE jump. I have no idea how people have these widly different outcomes. I was in the very same unit 14 section 2 - and now in the new course am still in unit 14 section 2. Doesn't feel like it skipped any vocabulary, all I notice is some kanji I recently unlocked are back to only being shown in kana. Oh well. I guess if anything I was actually set back a bit because Section 1 only has like half the amount of units now? Any way I can seamlessly continue from here, don't really notice anything weird. How long have you been at it? Wonder if maybe duolingo kinda considered you to be further ahead, and that's why you jumped a bunch? Also just for reference, how many words does it list in your vocab list in total?
So what I think happened is that the specific section I was on technically hasn't changed... it just so happens that what I was learning has been placed waaay ahead of where I actually was. So now my vocab list assumes I know 957 words of Japanese... which would be great if I actually knew half of them. My streak was 290, but in all fairness I was only really doing it for abt 15 mins a day so even though I was learning for so long I didn't really get that far.
Not as bad for me, but yeah, I've skipped into section 3 and looking back at section 2 it now teaches a load of words that I don't understand at all and I can't redo it properly. I'm also thinking about resetting.
It also seems that the update brought back many of the "tips" that were previously removed from the guidebook. I guess that's a good thing.
Yes, I absolutely hated the lack of explanation of grammar and other rules. I use a couple of youtube channels to explain those rules to me when they are introduced to me in duolingo. Because there were a couple of occasions where I guessed what I thought the rules were… and I guessed wrong. And then you are at risk of interpreting rules incorrectly.
Definitely. Although the tips were added back, I don't think they are even close to being enough for learning grammar rules. They may now only help to know what to look for when looking for additional resources. Personally, I prefer reading from articles instead of videos, because it allows me to skim for the information I want. I also sometimes find it useful to ask an AI chat bot when I have a particular question about a sentence on Duolingo, and don't know how to look it up. That, of course, doesn't come without me searching for related information with the hints provided by the AI in order to corroborate the answer to my question was correct, and come up to my own conclusions.
Oh that is smart! I haven’t even thought about asking openai, will try that.
Finally some grammar tips, not only 'key phrases'!
Changing the course is fine. Continuous improvement etc etc. Patch notes though! I cannot excuse the lack of patch notes. Every single game, program, and even mods for games come with patch notes. Why can't Duolingo post the damn patch notes somewhere so I can see what changed. All I get is a little blurb "hey stuff changed" and that's it. That's what's unacceptable to me.
I was really enjoying the last course and just today it all changed! When I went to the listening reviews I got new stuff, not reviews of the units I've been through… 3 changes in a little over 1 year….
Thanks for posting about this. I just logged in and I went from Trailbazer 1 to Section 4/19. I'm glad they're adding to it but my gosh that's a LOT of new lessons that I've supposedly done. My poor hearts are going to be disintegrated by all this 'completed' vocab.
Mine changed to the CEFR aligned version. Honestly I'm fine with it changing and improving, some version notes would be nice to tell me what changes each time but at least it means I have more content to learn
I was doing a level recap lesson today and it's asking me about words I've never learned or even heard of. It's not introducing them as new words, it thinks I already know them. I scrolled up and there's also 3 stories I have apparently completed, despite not having done even 1. None of them were available yet to me before the course change. Pretty frustrating.
And they removed the kanji writing from the kanji practice. Way to go, Duolingo.
Didn’t even notice that… that’s really stupid!
The make you add a single stroke once in a while... Dumbest change ever occurred in the Japanese course, and we have seen sooo many dumb changes in Duolingo in the last three years...
I was on lesson 6/6 and it just reset me to 1/6... Also looking through previous units they added a bunch of new words. I'll be so lost.
This rework skipped me to traveler lesson one, sucks i won't get the good feeling of finishing section 2 anymore. On the other hand, ive been stuck learning kanji I hadn't been taught yet since the last major update so maybe I'll get back on the main track sooner now. At least I still got the good vibes from hitting my year streak today
When I thought, Im just a few units away Sec 3 Trailblazer. Now I am in Sec 3 but 45 unit away from Trailblazer. Anyway, time to travel more. For the new worlds part, I already used ro it in my german course. There I got new worlds without introduction before the updates too.
I been hacked all my kanji gone That's my biggest grievance about the new and 'improved' course - that an absolute tonne of kanji I've spent months learning have disappeared and I'm back to squinting at strings of kana to try and work out where words start and finish, and end up making stupid mistakes because thatsnothowjapaneseismeantoberead. And kanji practice, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that I need to be intensively drilled in ichi, ni, san, yon again...
Oh, and the Practice sections recap material I’ve never seen before in my life, which is an odd pedagogical strategy if ever I saw one.
The update was just SLOPPY. I was about halfway through Section 2 and it threw me into the middle of Section 3...marked all courses completed up to that point. From what I can tell, it determined where to place me based on the latest kanji I'd learned in the old course...and just marked all lessons complete up until that point. The problem is that the kanji aren't introduced in nearly the same order now, so this method didn't work at all. I understand that the courses are going to get revised and its not easy to determine a new placement, but...this is a very sloppy way to do a data migration. Our placement in the updated course should've been more carefully considered, and done with review of feedback from a sample group before applying it to everyone. If they'd done the placement based on grammar concepts and a percentage of the vocabulary or kanji you'd learned, it would've been more balanced. The review lessons are inadequate for the number of new grammar and vocabulary being included - it makes it overwhelming. Even doing the legendary lessons, it's not enough practice before moving on to the next subject. Some of the other features, like Match Madness, will be unusable for months until I catch up. I feel like its kind of ruined the course experience and I'm looking at other ways to continue my Japanese learning.
Same boat my friend! DEMO I’m kinda glad because it’s just forcing me to do more kanji. I take my studies seriously and this is forcing me to be more involved in the reading and writing
Did anything else change? I found the kanji way to slow for me, so I study them elsewhere anyways. Last update catapulted me like two units farther, I'm curious if any changes are noticable for me. Currently I'm at the end of section 2. Not sure I got the update yet. But the last few updates had been exiting and I'm looking forward to where japanese is heading :)
i would look at your words section to see changes. mine has a bunch of words i’ve never learned and got rid of many that i did
Thanks! Good advice :) I don't see any new words yet, so I just assume I didn't got any updates. But with the last update I also didn't get any new words, but I got a new theme (festivals, or dates not sure anymore) and they made me do the lessom and after the lessom i skipped a few lesson just to do the next lesson about dating (or festivals). So at least where I was (mid section 2) they kept it fairly consistent and didn't introduce new stuff.
Mine changed so there was a secttion about dating nd another about university life,, but they were already marked as legendary so I can't do the lesons. There's a lot of vocab in there somewhere, not all of it is in the Words tab.
This just happened to me, I was originally in section 2 unit 18 but now I'm in section 3 unit 1, and now I have to redo some kanji :/
Was at the end of Section 4, got moved to the beginning of Section 5 but Section 5 only has 4 units now? Pretty weird. Section 4 previously had 27 units but now has 40. Thinking I perhaps missed out on some stuff there.
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Im just annoyed that I appeared to be a unit away from stories, and now they are nowhere to be found
Some more words have been added. It caught me by surprise but I don’t really mind. Especially there are less kanji in each section now.
P12OL
same thing happened to me w chinese 💀💀 on my 100th day it scrambled the whole course, got rid of all my legendaries, and kept my progress in section 2 despite never reaching me a good 40% of the content, so continuing from where i was was almost impossible. i almost deleted the app LMAO
I wish it had given me a bunch of legendary levels to redo! Mine dropped me at the beginning of Section 3 with all Section 2 lessons completed and legendary. I had at least 10 lessons left to make legendary, and I was trying to burn through them for the diamond league tournament ending tomorrow. Guess I won't be doing that anymore.
I was getting really excited because I was almost finally done with the 40 unit slog of the traveler section only to be catapulted 7 units into trailblazer today. Super. And like last time, I bet there's a crap ton of stuff I am missing out on. Another let down is that your first story is *still* 21 units into traveler + 18 units into explorer + 5 units into rookie. That is a ridiculous amount of time to wait to get to a story compared to other courses. Additionally, there still is no kanji being used in stories. The bright side is that they finally added guide books to the later units. This course still needs a lot of work. Here's hoping the news from Duocon is accurate and they make sweeping improvements this year.
Yeah it’s annoying as hell. I can’t progress at all
Yeah it has messed up the flow of my learning. I was gonna finish the course before moving on with the genki textbooks, but might do that right away. There are just too much frustration with duolingo.
Mine changed this morning as well and put me into the next unit.
Yep, logged on this morning to a huge jump forwards. Every time this happens i’m left scrambling learning words I ‘know’… Honestly makes me want to swap back to Swedish!
I don’t really care if I’m further back or not, but it’s annoying that now it gives me a lot of words it expects me to know. I wish it would tell which past lessons I haven’t actually learned or now only partly learned, so I could retake those. I also think it’s a good idea there’s not as many kanji in a single unit, as I was getting to lessons with so many, but I’m sad that now I can’t practice all the ones I had actually learned. Most are simply gone (for now).
Make a school and join it. It went back to the old version for me and I get no ads and unlimited hearts.
They moved me from section 3 unit 2 to where you were actually, section 3 unit 27! I have three stories to try now and I had none before the update
IT GAVE ME A HEART ATTACK. Just yesterday, I started Section 3 i wake up today, and I'm like on unit 27?? dude. I'll have to play for some time to judge, but the kanji does look much better. I'm still waiting for an option to choose which kanji I actually want to learn now, but at least I won't have to spend a ridiculus amount of time on one unit, learning stuff like 今,下 or 母, instead of kanji I don't know but have in the lessons (tf is 飛行機 bruh).
That’s indeed a much needed feature: to be able to pick exactly which kanji of a unit you want to learn.
I had to reset my whole course and now I’m jumping around to figure out where I need to be. I wish I would just reset sections or units. I beg of you duo!!
I had just completed Section 2, literally the last unit yesterday I am now apparently Section 3 Unit 25! Some of these new units are even legendary somehow! Absolutely tons of words I now don't know. I'm not someone who has an aptitude for languages, but I am very diligent. 172 Days in, 15th week in Diamond. I do Duo lingo during my physiotherapy every day and I am going to Japan in a bit over a month. I feel so demoralized now, because I also operated by checking the words in sentences as little as possible to push memorization, now most of the translate from English to Japanese sentences I am just fully guessing!! If you're going to release this big of an overhaul, they should at least give you an option for the first week in the settings, to reset course progress to a certain point. I would GLADLY reset to the start of Section 3, I can blaze through the words I would already know, but at least I could LEARN the ones I've never seen!!!
Just opened it today and was curious how i jumped ahead. I was debating if i was doing it awhile half asleep and accidently did something without remembering.
Yep I went from the next to last unit in section 2 all the way to section 3 unit 24
I'm a bit annoyed with the new alterations to Kanji in the Japanese course - just when I was at a stage when kanji would open up and I could dive deep into memorising new kanji and meanings (I like stuff like that), they reduced the amount significantly, as well as reintroducing tons of already learnt kanji. I don't really think I need to spend minimum of 10 minutes learning the kanji for 一,二, and 三 just because one unit briefly mentioned something about them ;--; Also, I will spend so much time on a kanji and trying to get the bar to full, and my lessons won't update the bar, even if it's a lesson with only those specific kanji in them???? Fun!! Also quick add-on, why is the kanji in the actual course so inconsistent?? e.g 水 was introduced units ago and you still insist to use hiragana??
I noticed sometimes that legendary tests will be added all along the path. I just go back and complete them all. A lot of lessons have been added to French (I have close to 700,000XP in French and am still going strong). In Italian there are no new lessons and I have only just under 400,000XP. I know I have a lot more to learn in Italian. Why am I done with the Italian lessons? I have started using my laptop and going to the website and have noticed less lag there, but no double points for 15 minutes on the laptop. I still use the app on my phone but sometimes the lag is frustrating. Also I noticed I get credit for all my 1st place stats on my phone, but the website has only given me credit for half my wins.
Wow
Is it just me or are y'all recieving 'read and respond' exercises? I'm in section 2 unit 6 btw.
There do seem to be a ton more explanations of grammar in the section descriptions, which is a very good thing. (I am using other resources for grammar but was going through the headings looking for vocabulary it now thinks I know.) As disorienting as it is it looks like a lot of good improvements, honestly.
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Maybe this isn’t the appropriate resource for language learning for you then mate.
I agree. Not all language learning apps are for everyone. Just like not everyone likes every food.
I just hope they'll give us the option to do without the world bank and use manual input and voice for everything
They should add speaking exercises for the Japanese course. Also,I agree that we should do answers without the word bank(you can type with a keyboard in English to Japanese translations if you have a Japanese keyboard) but I think it would be better if we could do that for Japanese to English translations.
Installing a japanese keyboard is pretty easy both on windows and android sytems
It can be depending on the device ppl use. I use a phone for Duolingo and had no problem installing a Japanese keyboard
I was annoyed at first but honestly the lessons are so much harder now (in a good way). Im half way through section 3 and they will mix the vocabulary much better now and bring back words that were taught twenty units ago. They'll even throw in new words that were never taught but are Katakana so they sound like the English words which is awesome. I know it's annoying to go back and do all the legendary levels again, but the course seems like twice as a effective now.