duolingo grumbling

[kaberett]

Grumble the first: the introduction of exercises where you get to hear a whole sentence spoken, and then have to pick one of two audio snippets to fill in the word that's missing from the written sentence. I have audio processing disorder! I use the context to work out what the word I just heard was! Trying to tell the difference between two brief audio snippets in isolation could not have been better designed to Oppress Me Personally! I am grouchy.

Grumble the second: I am so extremely annoyed with the website having switched to offering the Word Bank by default, rather than letting me just type things in. It seemed to be the case that after stubbornly typing rather than clicking on the word bank for 2-3 exercises I'd start being offered the option to switch to keyboard input again? But either that was a pineapple or the whole set-up has been tweaked again, because this is no longer happening and I Would Like To Scream About It, Thanks. (Partly because keyboard input demands more by way of active recall; partly because I type way faster than I'm able to scan a sodding word bank; partly because I have at this point made multiple "mistakes" because the Word Bank decided I'd chosen words I absolutely had not intended to and I wasn't double-checking sufficiently closely to make sure obviously incorrect words that I did not type had not been selected.)

Grumble the third: I swear I am at about my third go-through this year with turning the animations and the Motivational Messages off in settings, only to swap device and discover that this somehow? reenables them?


I am at least as prone as the next person to This Is Change And Change Is Bad, but also! I am infuriated! it is very vexing! so I am howling into this particular void because I'll only get even more cross if I howl into the void of Duolingo Support and hear not even my own echo.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

There are specific motivational messages that I wish to consign to the winds. 15 minutes of social media can enhance my mostly homebound social life greatly, thanks!

[kaberett]

YEP.

[vass]

This.

[redbird]

I had thought the word bank default was some weird bug, not that they think it's a feature.

[redbird]

I just sent in a complaint, telling them that switching to word bank as default makes the program less engaging, and means I'm learning less. I wasn't even offered the chance to switch to keyboard during the lesson I just did. (Before this, I have used the word bank mostly if I'm tired but trying to maintain a streak.)

I asked them to at least add a choice between keyboard and word bank to the settings page.

Possibly relevant: I am also using Duolingo for German.

[fyreharper]

Augh, that is so UTTERLY rude of them

[karen2205]

I didn't know there were options to turn off animations and motivational messages. Thank you! (Even if the options are sub-optimal).

Also not liking the change to a very structured way through the courses, but theres enough other stuff to do that it's not as terrible as I'd thought it would be.

[kaberett]

I was willing to grudgingly concede that the changes to course structure were pedagogically sound, but that doesn't mean I like them, yeah.

[davidgillon]

This has at least spurred me to get back into my Duolingo account - I got logged out on my phone over the holidays and couldn't remember my password, turns out my laptop browser didn't know the account name - I did - but knew the password.

APD, which my sister has suggested I have without any prompting from me other than a bunch of "Sorry, what was that?" while my brain parses through context, might explain why I find some of the audio exercises frustrating, or it could be that guy who really chews up his lines - today's example, he was saying "liegen" and I was trying to work out WTF he was doing to "gehen".

I'm actually a wordbank fan, simply because I find typing on the phone such a chore. It does make things far simpler, but I'd rather that than type. I do make mistakes with the wordbank, but far fewer than I'd make typing on the phone - generational thing? or just different proprioception issues?

[kaberett]

I use the word bank on my phone! But I prefer to Duolingo on my computer to encourage more active recall.

[davidgillon]

That makes sense, though the wordbank does give you a leg-up on their occasionally innovative, and inevitably American, word-choice.

[emperor]

It seems (for me) to vary by language - I mostly end up typing Finnish, it's a mix with French, and with Ukrainian it's always the word bank (which is a shame, because learning how to spell some of these words would probably be useful, and I have a Ukrainian keyboard on my phone).

[redbird]

I sent in a complaint/support request, saying that I didn't like the changes, and please either go back to making keyboard the default; make keyboard/word bank an option on the "settings" screen; or at least put back the use keyboard/use word bank at the bottom of individual questions.

This message seems to have done some good, based on what I saw today: once again, I'm getting keyboard by default with a "use word bank" option on some questions.

I got an answer that seems to be offering me a way to use the keyboard whenever I want, and the statement that they have passed my feedback to the appropriate teams. What they actually said was

"You may see some changes when translating from your learning language to your base/UI language. We removed the toggle when translating from learning language to base language, but you can still type your answer on web. Simply start typing and the word in the word bank will be automatically highlighted. You still should be able to type in your learning language. You will see a toggle for the keyboard to type free-form in the learning language."

I'm passing it along in case they fixed my defaults, and nobody else's.

[kaberett]

Thank you! The keyboard input with word bank is TERRIBLE but given that answer I might open my own request if it's not magically fixed.

[steorra]

Your second grumble is something that has been annoying me too.

[enigel]

Re: Grumble the third: this has happened to me on the same device, in the same browser, in the same tab that I'd been keeping open for months.

At some point they do an update, and the irritational messages pop back up again, and when I check my settings it looks like the invisible hand of the market has reset them.

[davidgillon]

I just got served up my own pet peeve in the latest lesson, their insistence that the translation for 'S-Bahn' is 'Light Rail'. But S-Bahns are heavy rail my inner trainspotter insists!
The German versions of light rail are Stadtbahnen.

And who even says light rail!

[fyreharper]

:waves from California: I do! hi! We have light rail here! It’s effectively used as a single noun, rather than an adjective + noun. I’m pretty sure it translates to ‘tram’ elsewhere.

Example sentence I might use in real life: “Transit would be A Lot Better if the transfers between the buses and the lightrail and the various trains were better coordinated.”