duolingo grumbling

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.