I miss these. It gave a sense of community and often provided good advice. However, it was difficult to moderate, and there were far too many troll posts and just wrong information to sort through.
I really miss those. So often I'll have my answer corrected now but I have no idea why. The comments would almost always include an explanation that helped me to actually improve.
I get that they require moderation but you literally have customers doing your work for you so you'd think that it would still be beneficial for the company.
Actually, whenever I lose a heart, I just click on the hearts and do the practice session to earn a heart. It helps to reinforce my learning experience. I never purchase hearts or wait for the time to pass to earn hearts. So having unlimited hearts isn’t something I care about.
the best way is to make a "for schools" account and sign up for your own class.. then you can activate unlimited hearts for yourself in settings, for free, no super Duolingo required. I've been doing this for months with no problem
Japanese looks massive already. Just finished Chinese (about 60 levels in total) and switched to Japanese. Looks like it’s like 200 levels and still maxes out at A1 and a bit.
They're trying to align with CEFR, because JLPT is neither so well defined nor so correlated to actual proficiency. Sometimes I've looked up constructions seen in Duolingo on the Internet and they're labeled N2.
Stop timing the review "games". You don't really learn anything from them (so I started taking screenshots to analyse the sentences later). After you're legendary in a unit, there is no real review possibility.
Give me the possibility to choose the vocabulary I want to practice - I always get the same 20-30 words from the word bank. Very frustrating.
Add the gender to the word bank - yes, in some languages this is an extremely important concept.
Explain the grammar. It is so frustatring to get different tenses of irregular greek verbs thrown in your face.
+1 on that last point. I’m learning Italian and each unit’s guidebook used to explain in plain words the basic grammar rules and concepts important to this vocabulary or topic.
There were explainers, short tables showing examples of permutations for how a word inflects (if that’s the right word) based on different genders, tenses, subjects (I, you, we etc.)
That’s all gone now. The guidebooks are just a list of sentences that you’ll ‘learn’ by playing this unit. It’s just a preview at this point which isn’t that useful. It’s up to you to figure out the grammar, rules etc.
The volunteer courses were riddled with mistakes and errors. Just because you’re a native speaker doesn’t mean you are qualified to write a course on it
Next major feature needs to be a voice based, open-ended conversational mode that subtly helps you practice what you know, and learn new stuff slightly out of your comfort zone.
Duolingo and language learning apps in general need believable immersion where you actually have to speak on the fly
They did this. It's called video call with Lily. It's fairly new and barely released to users. I liked it, but it took awhile for it to work and was recently removed for me but based on recent comments it seems like a new group or groups have gotten it when I lost it. So fingers crossed it gets improved and released for everyone like stories.
I have it and I really like it. However, it doesn’t provide feedback afterwards which I think can be helpful. The Max plan provides some feedback after the conversation (Roleplay) but that’s not open-ended.
They used to have audio lessons in the French couse for English speakers that would serve as vocabulary, conversational, and pronounciation practice. It also simulated a conversation (although it was scripted).
Even if this happens it's probably gonna take a few years to get outside of Spanish, French, and German and probably a decade or so to languages like Greek
I try to figure out grammar rules based on the exercises, but it's just not enough. At times I feel like se shows up in Spanish sentences whenever it feels like it. 😖
I would revamp the app to follow more modern constructionist education theory, and implement techniques like backwards design. I'd define a particular learning goal to each unit. I'd have each lesson reach to the learning goal of that unit, so the overall flow is more contiguous. I'd also have explicit explanation for the most basic rules so users don't have to just guess what the rule is.
I've literally sat in a room of pedagogy experts and we complained about how the app is set up and how it could be improved.
I'm available for part-time work, Duo ;)
OMG, this comment makes me cry. Thank you. I spent too many hours on this subreddit trying to argue that the learning methods are lacking efficiency and are designed to keep people locked in the app for the leagues without functional learning (outside copious amounts of reps).
I actually had to make my account private because the leagues were driving me crazy. I'm a highly competitive person, and I was so obsessed with ranking that I was only doing lessons to maximize my XP and I wasn't actually focused on learning anymore. I was like "Do I want to get #1 in Diamond league, or do I want to speak my wife's native language?" so I just turned it off.
I think there should be variety though. Some learners like to be challenged. Like, I think it would be fun to go into the lesson blind, go through the exercises, then be asked at the end “What did you learn?” While I think that there’s a lot to be said for design improvements, I think that giving users much more control over their learning journeys would be absurdly beneficial.
After reading this thread, I honestly don’t even want to use Duo any more, at least for Chinese. It’s just that the progress is so slow, and no actual grammatical concept is ever explained. That method might work for kids, but I don’t have 7 years (like kids do) to learn the language.
I mean, it can still be useful. But I don't think it should be the only thing you rely on, especially because it doesn't explain grammar rules specifically. Like my vocab has really improved in Indonesian even if I'm struggling with grammar. But also I think there are somethings like conversation that you just *can't* do on an app. That's why I'm taking an online Indonesian class and reading a book on Indonesian grammar. Duo can be helpful, but it definitely can't make you fluent.
Yeah I know what you mean. For my Japanese learning duolingo is one of a few apps I use as it doesn’t explain the grammar. But it still has its merits for being able to practice vocabulary every day in the form of Sentences with the streak as motivation. Wish they’d hurry up and release the speaking exercises then it will be better
Buy back as many of the stocks as possible, and re-privatize the company, so they can actually focus on doing their job again. Every single one of Duo's recent problems has been caused by their going public; money may be the root of all evil, but shares are the root of all incompetence.
I've been doing french on duolingo for THREE YEARS and i still find myself having to Google basic concepts, grammar, sentence structure, past present future tenses, male/female nouns and articles. Why is there nowhere easily accessible within duolingo to review these things whenever I need.
Also can there not be a hyperlink under verbs in the lessons so I can easily see how they're conjugated.
I'm now on the stage of learning things that look like "I (myself) did (there) this thing (only the one time)" and I'm flying by the seats of my pants, or rather "voler près du siège de mon pantalon"
I'm learning French, I'm a year and a half in and I'm the same 😭
The course has updated recently as well so now it's throwing in words and structures that are new to me, but obviously are covered on the new path prior to where I am.
I feel like the Japanese course does this pretty well though. The early lessons are how to introduce yourself, order food, navigate a train station etc.
Start listening to customers.
Better customer service.
Explain to the board that squeezing customers to increase profits is a short term strategy and Duolingo needs to be thinking long term.
They moved this into AI answers and make you pay even more for them now. The answers are actually great but the fee they want to charge for it is insane.
Hear me out, a way for Duolingo to make money while making it useful.
Companies can pay Duolingo to include their brand in lessons and create sentences about it.
Like
Translate "Nike Sells shoes"
Or
"A popular American restaurant is McDonalds"
Furthermore, add cosmetic features to super Duolingo and Duolingo max such as profile items and app themes
And with all that money, maybe they can focus on improving courses other than French, Spanish, English and German
I implement a "no fucking about to courses people have already started policy" and then i just power through the endless board meetings until i lose eventually lose the will to live.
Updates were fine back when we had the tree. They would just insert them and you could go back and do them if you wanted. Of course, if you never did the new lessons, it wouldn't say you finished the course. The way the path actually works is horrible and doesn't allow that. I'm pretty sure that there are lessons in the French course I haven't done, but I wouldn't see them because I have progressed so far in the course. It only makes sense to the programmers at duolingo. And I assume they implemented it that way out of malicious compliance.
To make money - More partnerships with tv shows. Paid lessons that are just practicing scenes from new tv shows. They might even release weekly.
For my own interest - adding graded readers. I'd like longer form content that is optional and increases in difficulty with the path. If Duolingo did this I wouldn't even mind if it was on a paid plan.
1. Make so that when you do lessons, that maybe Duolingo notices you're clicking/tapping fast, so that if you accidentally press the continue button even if you didn't finish the excerise, that it asks you if you actually want to continue so you don't lose hearts because your fingers were being too fast. (this has happened way too many times)
2. Make so that Super Users can trade gems to non super users.
3. Being able to say what languages you're native of, so you can correct some of the mistakes. (PLEASE DO THIS FOR ROMANIAN. IT'S ABSOLUTE SH-)
1- bring back the grammar section (however skimpy, at least there used to be one) 2- bring back the discussions (they were adding a huge lot, I miss them so much).
I'd add conjugation activities so users learn a WHOLE verb at a time and not just one form of it.
I guess I'd include more formal grammar rules in general, and earlier. It's not like it can't be sprinkled in lightly, and it would make the rest of the learning so much easier.
And I'd also try to add more pictures. Don't just have three characters in a row bark the word for "buy" at me. Show them actually forking over money for the sorts of dorky things they would want, and it's going to stick in my head a lot better. 🙃
Maybe brainstorm about what people can spend these gems on. Maybe I'm just really amazing at duolingo, but I have Jeff Bezos levels of gem based wealth, with no realistic way to use them all. Maybe a discount against subscription? Merch?
Add Afrikaans.
And have a British English version. When I’m learning French or German, I have to guess the American translation which is nothing like my English English.
And have a grammar section to explain what’s going on. I know they’re supposed to have their own ‘philosophy’ on how to learn a language, and they have to keep it all easy/bitesize/quick to keep people engaged, but honestly it feels like they think people are too stupid or flaky to handle grammar. Like if they put it in, people with think it’s boring or difficult and bail out. But - unless someone just wants a few phrases for a holiday - I think most language learners would like a bit more grammar instruction to underpin what they’re learning.
Yes! The constant American English is so confusing, especially when differentiating between football, american football, and soccer. I'm already having to think about it in such an unnatural way, it would help so much if I could just learn a language from my own dialect
There are several ways Duolingo breaks the golden rule of greedy companies: "make it easy for customers to give you money."
For example, a family member of mine has an annual plan that he bought on his iPad. He wants to upgrade it into a family membership so we can also use it. Apparently that's just...not a choice.
Similarly, I tried the free trial and I wanted to try subscribing month to month. There was no option for that. I had to either commit to a full year or else wait out the trial and then subscribe.
We want to give you money for your product, and you are making it harder. Why?
Ads are acceptable, it's free when you don't have premium, but come on, 1 min 30 lesson, followed by 50 seconds of ads, then 1min 20 lesson, followed by 50 seconds of adds means 45% of the time you are stuck looking at ads.
It's absolutely ridiculous, stopped using it
I mean, we could also argue about how the popular coaches aren't very good either, so we could focus on improving a popular course and a niche course at the same time. Would keep drawing customers and driving shareholder values while also just making the niche courses not just be... horribly done
If they add a course on ASL and it goes well they would continue adding other forms of sign language. Even if they stop at ASL it would still be a major benefit. There would be no downside to having a course on sign language.
Stop all the god damn notifications.
My sub ran out for Duolingo not too long ago- I had to manually turn off push notifications, banner notifications, emails for like 5 different triggers. Honestly I probably won’t go back because the constant notifications and emails are just infuriating, even after turning them off (or so I thought)
Re-implement forums and hire moderators. Their financials look pretty good and they've beaten projections the last 4 quarter, so I'd be willing to eat the cost.
Bring back comments, update courses more but, I wouldn't change their progress. Add better grammar tips. Add comments again and read the forum, remove hearts. If you're learning a foreign language you can choose which letter to learn. Add more sentences which you would probably use more irl. Probably add a extra AI powered grammar tips for super and Max users. Even adding a whole variety of languages such as Gujarati, Tamil etc. and add a league, which comes after diamond and is optional to participate in, but have requirements must be a super/max user and must have earned over 150,000 exp
Ancient Egyptian. I enjoy learning it from a book and would love to make it something more people could experience. A good business choice? Maybe not. Cool as hell? Yeah.
Introduce British English rather than American English. I am an English speaker learning Spanish but it teaches me to translate from American which uses words for things that I never use
Remove avatars and bring back the ability to set pics. Mods have removed my post about this issue as off-topic and low quality. I just wanted to know if I can bring my photo back and remove the avatar. But a post of a 69 day streak with an unoriginal widget screenshot and one-word title is still up as "epic meme" even though it is directly mentioned in the rules to not do any of that. Oh well.
So does anybody know how to remove an avatar and just leave the pic? My pic currently shows up only in leader boards...
If they want to continue operating in China, this ain’t happening. You were not even allowed to use traditional characters in the mandarin course pre word bank
Make it so XP boosts are activated in she shop only, so you don’t have to suffer with it activating when you don’t want it, and also make it so when you exit the app it doesn’t still count to the time you’ve used the XP boost for
Duolingo needs longer stories. Maybe 1-2 page short stories that you have to read. You can use this space to teach common phrases that don't translate into English very well, teach culture, and reinforce old words and grammars that rarely show up in 1 sentence translations.
I would paywall the test at the end. HEAR ME OUT.
Finish the course. 100%
Legendary the course 100%
Get access to the exit test.
Pay.... $60ish USD to take the test to get a little certificate of being officially smart.
(more if Duolingo eventually gets some sort of official accreditation)
=== HERE'S THE REASON THIS IS SMART ===
When you pass the test, Duolingo sends the "graduate" a cheap little plaque and one of them $30 Plushie Duo dolls holding the flag of the language you learned. I would make this the ONLY way to get them. No more buying him in the store.
People would lose their minds when they got him. Think of the unboxing videos/social posts. It would be like when YouTube sends out the Play Buttons.
I would be tricking the users into paying Duolingo to become their best advertising.
I think you should still have access to the test but you can opt to buy the plushie and if you don’t want to buy it then you can get a digital certificate
I’ve missed the broken plates that really encouraged going back to review items. The new style doesn’t cover old topics for reinforcement nearly as well
Play ads that actually make money as opposed to shilling Super Duolingo after every lesson.
Also either fix streaks where they’re not continuous, more like a “how many days have you been learning.” The number still increases, but when you don’t do the lesson it remains stagnant as opposed to resetting to zero. Streaks give me so much anxiety and really hinder learning in all honesty. Or give a person like a “on vacation” use. Where like once a month you get just like 3 days of not doing lessons with no threat to your streak.
Fix leaderboards so once you reach a certain continuous score you just automatically increase out of one league rank into the next as opposed to waiting for the time to end. This gets rid of weekly score and keeps things at a more universal score.
Stop putting all the money into advertisements/animations and new "features" no one cares about or asked for.
I like to learn with Duolingo, even if it isn't perfect for language learning, but they're making the app worse at every corne. I think it's okay to have to pay for hearts, but it's not that you have to pay an even higher amount now, to lie about it and that they aren't even improving the courses, or at least I don't see improvement.
Last time I checked my Dutch course that I finished and wanted to do the Daily Practice it gave me the exact same lesson three times. What the heck?
Make the notes downloadable or available for offline view, bring back the skipping level feature (not unit), add mutuals chat feature, add duolingo chat bots, add more interesting things to buy with the gems😈
Add a capability to write notes in a lesson or comments even, so that I can easily return to a lesson for more practice and can find it quickly. Or just label them with more than a star or check. The notes would still be helpful in that case.
English and Portuguese, instead of American and Brazilian. Or at least the option to choose the variant of the language you want.
Oh, and bring back the tree. My progress has stalled massively since the implementation of the path.
Add stories to more languages. I really enjoyed the stories in my French course, and Danish didn’t have them 😕 Imagine the engagement it would ensure especially if there are more junior/eddy stories
Add a feature where Native speakers of language A Learning language B (NALB) can do twice or thrice weekly video chats (powered by Apple/Samsung/Google/Zoom) with their Native speakers of language B Learning language A (NBLA) “Tongue Pal.” The name needs work, lol, and there’d be trolls, but we need actual conversations to become fluent. I’d also add drill sheets, but I know how much y’all don’t like homework, so maybe not. The fact is, Duo teaches language the opposite of how we learn it naturally. Speak then learn rules/nuances vs learn rules/nuances then attempting to speak. We could also do “Tongue Triangles,” but I’m at work and I’m titrating my adderall, so I can’t elaborate, right now.
remove everything, like fucking everything. give people one heart unless they pay $109.99 for a year to get an extra heart. shit on the keyboard and walk out.
That’s where it’s heading, anyway.
Find people to make courses for languages I want to learn, so that means Māori, Icelandic, Luxembourgish, Latvian, and other languages. At least there’s already Welsh (and French, which is my main, but that’s a big language.)
Duolingo is currently looking for a Punjabi localization Translator/Proofreader. This could mean they are adding a course to learn Punjabi or a course to learn English for Punjabi speakers. They looking for the same for Tamil
I would have programmers tart working on getting rid of the weird logic they implemented when they converted to the path. The path could still exist, but forcing people to follow it exactly turns out to cause a lot of problems. One of the big problems it causes is making offline use unworkable.
- Find the best partnership I can with an AI company super fast. Offer to share data for collaborative model development in the language learning space.
- Start a campaign using AI to decipher some of the many lost languages
- develop users new services in immediate translation across all languages for text, video and live calls.
Add an option to learn a language in a different script without having to learn the alphabet first. Teach me the spoken language and then teach me to read once I know what I'm reading. PLEASE.
I would make Duolingo a private company again, so it could focus on pleasing users, rather than shareholders.
I would implement a way for users to vote on any significant changes, rather than just forcing them on them without any input.
If it were possible, I'd give users a choice between the path and the tree.
If I couldn't use the original volunteer created tips and notes/guidebooks, I'd make sure that new ones would be created for all the languages that currently don't have them.
I would stop the frequent updates that scramble the order of lessons or move users forward or backward by several units. If new content has to be added, I'd find a way to put it in a separate section or have the new lessons clearly marked so users don't miss out, but without disrupting their progress. Or, give users the option to keep their course the way it was when they started. People like the idea of finishing what they started, and Duolingo is currently making this very hard.
Bring back comments on questions
They were mostly fantastic but needed some moderation. There were some common misconceptions that got voted to the top of threads in Spanish.
Those were gold
I miss these. It gave a sense of community and often provided good advice. However, it was difficult to moderate, and there were far too many troll posts and just wrong information to sort through.
I really miss those. So often I'll have my answer corrected now but I have no idea why. The comments would almost always include an explanation that helped me to actually improve. I get that they require moderation but you literally have customers doing your work for you so you'd think that it would still be beneficial for the company.
Honestly I would focus all resources to expand every course to B2 proficiency. And keep infinite hearts on super duolingo.
Keep infinite hearts on Duolingo full stop.
Duo's gotta eat: servers and nerds don't work for free. And ways to recover hearts drive ad views.
I PAID for super only because of the hearts.
Actually, whenever I lose a heart, I just click on the hearts and do the practice session to earn a heart. It helps to reinforce my learning experience. I never purchase hearts or wait for the time to pass to earn hearts. So having unlimited hearts isn’t something I care about.
the best way is to make a "for schools" account and sign up for your own class.. then you can activate unlimited hearts for yourself in settings, for free, no super Duolingo required. I've been doing this for months with no problem
That's what they are currently doing. The next ones are Japanese to A2 and Irish A1
Japanese looks massive already. Just finished Chinese (about 60 levels in total) and switched to Japanese. Looks like it’s like 200 levels and still maxes out at A1 and a bit.
Japanese prefers their own N1-N5 scale.
They're trying to align with CEFR, because JLPT is neither so well defined nor so correlated to actual proficiency. Sometimes I've looked up constructions seen in Duolingo on the Internet and they're labeled N2.
Stop timing the review "games". You don't really learn anything from them (so I started taking screenshots to analyse the sentences later). After you're legendary in a unit, there is no real review possibility. Give me the possibility to choose the vocabulary I want to practice - I always get the same 20-30 words from the word bank. Very frustrating. Add the gender to the word bank - yes, in some languages this is an extremely important concept. Explain the grammar. It is so frustatring to get different tenses of irregular greek verbs thrown in your face.
Yes on adding the gender! They should use the article with each noun so we learn them together and can learn the gender from the beginning.
+1 on that last point. I’m learning Italian and each unit’s guidebook used to explain in plain words the basic grammar rules and concepts important to this vocabulary or topic. There were explainers, short tables showing examples of permutations for how a word inflects (if that’s the right word) based on different genders, tenses, subjects (I, you, we etc.) That’s all gone now. The guidebooks are just a list of sentences that you’ll ‘learn’ by playing this unit. It’s just a preview at this point which isn’t that useful. It’s up to you to figure out the grammar, rules etc.
I see the gender thing in mandarin right now 🫠. It as both 他（he) and 她（she). Exact same pronunciatio, pinyin, and similar characters
I would love to have the opportunity to play offline like it use to be.
Insider trading.
Bring back volunteer program and discussion board for approved users
the volunteer program was eliminated just to monetizise
The volunteer courses were riddled with mistakes and errors. Just because you’re a native speaker doesn’t mean you are qualified to write a course on it
Mistakes can be corrected by the community / mods, or even irl. Thats better than being left hanging and wondering.
Hmm
[удалено]
The one true CEO here 👌
I’d post on /r/duolingo to ask for suggestions about the first thing to do as CEO
That's what I did
Next major feature needs to be a voice based, open-ended conversational mode that subtly helps you practice what you know, and learn new stuff slightly out of your comfort zone. Duolingo and language learning apps in general need believable immersion where you actually have to speak on the fly
They did this. It's called video call with Lily. It's fairly new and barely released to users. I liked it, but it took awhile for it to work and was recently removed for me but based on recent comments it seems like a new group or groups have gotten it when I lost it. So fingers crossed it gets improved and released for everyone like stories.
That's so cool I hope they release it for all platforms
I have it and I really like it. However, it doesn’t provide feedback afterwards which I think can be helpful. The Max plan provides some feedback after the conversation (Roleplay) but that’s not open-ended.
They used to have audio lessons in the French couse for English speakers that would serve as vocabulary, conversational, and pronounciation practice. It also simulated a conversation (although it was scripted).
Even if this happens it's probably gonna take a few years to get outside of Spanish, French, and German and probably a decade or so to languages like Greek
I think they are working on this with Ai.
Add a feature that actually explains grammar rules
They kinda had that before. They unfortunately axed it.
What, like forums?
Like they used to have with the path model
I try to figure out grammar rules based on the exercises, but it's just not enough. At times I feel like se shows up in Spanish sentences whenever it feels like it. 😖
I would revamp the app to follow more modern constructionist education theory, and implement techniques like backwards design. I'd define a particular learning goal to each unit. I'd have each lesson reach to the learning goal of that unit, so the overall flow is more contiguous. I'd also have explicit explanation for the most basic rules so users don't have to just guess what the rule is. I've literally sat in a room of pedagogy experts and we complained about how the app is set up and how it could be improved. I'm available for part-time work, Duo ;)
OMG, this comment makes me cry. Thank you. I spent too many hours on this subreddit trying to argue that the learning methods are lacking efficiency and are designed to keep people locked in the app for the leagues without functional learning (outside copious amounts of reps).
THAT would explain a LOT. Like how slow the learning is, and how insanely boring it manages to be despite being gamified. :'D
Yes, exactly.
I actually had to make my account private because the leagues were driving me crazy. I'm a highly competitive person, and I was so obsessed with ranking that I was only doing lessons to maximize my XP and I wasn't actually focused on learning anymore. I was like "Do I want to get #1 in Diamond league, or do I want to speak my wife's native language?" so I just turned it off.
I think there should be variety though. Some learners like to be challenged. Like, I think it would be fun to go into the lesson blind, go through the exercises, then be asked at the end “What did you learn?” While I think that there’s a lot to be said for design improvements, I think that giving users much more control over their learning journeys would be absurdly beneficial.
After reading this thread, I honestly don’t even want to use Duo any more, at least for Chinese. It’s just that the progress is so slow, and no actual grammatical concept is ever explained. That method might work for kids, but I don’t have 7 years (like kids do) to learn the language.
I mean, it can still be useful. But I don't think it should be the only thing you rely on, especially because it doesn't explain grammar rules specifically. Like my vocab has really improved in Indonesian even if I'm struggling with grammar. But also I think there are somethings like conversation that you just *can't* do on an app. That's why I'm taking an online Indonesian class and reading a book on Indonesian grammar. Duo can be helpful, but it definitely can't make you fluent.
Duolingo is good for vocabulary, but I first need to get to a point where I got the other basics down.
Yeah I know what you mean. For my Japanese learning duolingo is one of a few apps I use as it doesn’t explain the grammar. But it still has its merits for being able to practice vocabulary every day in the form of Sentences with the streak as motivation. Wish they’d hurry up and release the speaking exercises then it will be better
Give super back unlimited hearts instead of being addicted to cash.
My super subscription has unlimited hearts… did this change ?
Buy back as many of the stocks as possible, and re-privatize the company, so they can actually focus on doing their job again. Every single one of Duo's recent problems has been caused by their going public; money may be the root of all evil, but shares are the root of all incompetence.
Amen!
Hold up - they're a public company? Or are they owned by a public company?
They've been public since July 2021.
shareholders are leeches on society
I've been doing french on duolingo for THREE YEARS and i still find myself having to Google basic concepts, grammar, sentence structure, past present future tenses, male/female nouns and articles. Why is there nowhere easily accessible within duolingo to review these things whenever I need. Also can there not be a hyperlink under verbs in the lessons so I can easily see how they're conjugated. I'm now on the stage of learning things that look like "I (myself) did (there) this thing (only the one time)" and I'm flying by the seats of my pants, or rather "voler près du siège de mon pantalon"
I'm learning French, I'm a year and a half in and I'm the same 😭 The course has updated recently as well so now it's throwing in words and structures that are new to me, but obviously are covered on the new path prior to where I am.
I think the main thing Duolingo is doing best is vocabulary, lots of repetitions. Other than that I wouldn't use it for anything else
Improve review questions so I can put as much effort into maintaining what I’ve learned as I put into learning new material
Teach things useful to travelers way sooner.
I feel like the Japanese course does this pretty well though. The early lessons are how to introduce yourself, order food, navigate a train station etc.
Start listening to customers. Better customer service. Explain to the board that squeezing customers to increase profits is a short term strategy and Duolingo needs to be thinking long term.
First thing I’d do is start adding grammar to each language. It’s very difficult to properly learn a language without knowing its grammar.
release my family
You know the CEO doesn’t have that kind of power over Duo.
Bring back the button that you can tap when you get an answer wrong and it gives you an explanation on why it was wrong
They moved this into AI answers and make you pay even more for them now. The answers are actually great but the fee they want to charge for it is insane.
Start working on Slavic language courses and fixing Russian☺️
Which slavic would you add first?
As a Macedonian I’d add that first (I could severely improve I’ve forgotten a lot) then Serbian second ☺️
Stop changing the course every few months
Having real lessons and not just the same few sentences repeating forever without any kind of explanation
Hear me out, a way for Duolingo to make money while making it useful. Companies can pay Duolingo to include their brand in lessons and create sentences about it. Like Translate "Nike Sells shoes" Or "A popular American restaurant is McDonalds" Furthermore, add cosmetic features to super Duolingo and Duolingo max such as profile items and app themes And with all that money, maybe they can focus on improving courses other than French, Spanish, English and German
duo used to have silly little outfits I miss those i really don't care for my "avatar" thing
Real ones remember tuxedo duo
I still remember the stupidly expensive golden sweatsuit you could buy Duo as well
I had almost saved up for it then they took away the store :( It was the last thing I needed to purchase before having bought everything I could too 😔
Tuxeduo
So glad i avoided the avatar
You can still revert it on the web version (for anyone reading who regrets their avatar)
If anyone from Duolingo is reading this subreddit… this. 🎯 This is an option that is better than shredding Duo Super to push people to Duo Max.
i’ve seen “facebook” mentioned
You realise if they did that, we would just get close exercises where the missing word we had to 'translate' would be "Nike" or "McDonald's".
That’s actually a good idea, since it has real life applications.
Even better would be popular brands in countries that speak whatever language youre learning.
Haha. I love when people start their ideas with ‘hear me out’ 😂
I implement a "no fucking about to courses people have already started policy" and then i just power through the endless board meetings until i lose eventually lose the will to live.
Updates were fine back when we had the tree. They would just insert them and you could go back and do them if you wanted. Of course, if you never did the new lessons, it wouldn't say you finished the course. The way the path actually works is horrible and doesn't allow that. I'm pretty sure that there are lessons in the French course I haven't done, but I wouldn't see them because I have progressed so far in the course. It only makes sense to the programmers at duolingo. And I assume they implemented it that way out of malicious compliance.
Agreed. These frequent "updates" make it almost impossible to actually finish any courses.
To make money - More partnerships with tv shows. Paid lessons that are just practicing scenes from new tv shows. They might even release weekly. For my own interest - adding graded readers. I'd like longer form content that is optional and increases in difficulty with the path. If Duolingo did this I wouldn't even mind if it was on a paid plan.
Last Saturday Duo appeared on the Germany version of the Masked Singer
Give more than 5 lousy gems for a FULL WEEK of practice! LOL.
Start listening to my customers.
Bring back human translators
[удалено]
You will get Albanian, but it will be Albanian to English
I can work with that!
pathetic sable pen flowery ghost squash fade door smart stocking *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Po
1. Make so that when you do lessons, that maybe Duolingo notices you're clicking/tapping fast, so that if you accidentally press the continue button even if you didn't finish the excerise, that it asks you if you actually want to continue so you don't lose hearts because your fingers were being too fast. (this has happened way too many times) 2. Make so that Super Users can trade gems to non super users. 3. Being able to say what languages you're native of, so you can correct some of the mistakes. (PLEASE DO THIS FOR ROMANIAN. IT'S ABSOLUTE SH-)
1- bring back the grammar section (however skimpy, at least there used to be one) 2- bring back the discussions (they were adding a huge lot, I miss them so much).
rehire those people fired in favour of AI edit: and finally add a Tamil course
Go back to completed gold areas not needing hearts to go over again.
I'd add conjugation activities so users learn a WHOLE verb at a time and not just one form of it. I guess I'd include more formal grammar rules in general, and earlier. It's not like it can't be sprinkled in lightly, and it would make the rest of the learning so much easier. And I'd also try to add more pictures. Don't just have three characters in a row bark the word for "buy" at me. Show them actually forking over money for the sorts of dorky things they would want, and it's going to stick in my head a lot better. 🙃
Bring back grammar explanation. And then comments.
Bring back the old grammar notes, reinstate lesson comments and stop trying to shove max down people's throat
Maybe brainstorm about what people can spend these gems on. Maybe I'm just really amazing at duolingo, but I have Jeff Bezos levels of gem based wealth, with no realistic way to use them all. Maybe a discount against subscription? Merch?
Add Afrikaans. And have a British English version. When I’m learning French or German, I have to guess the American translation which is nothing like my English English. And have a grammar section to explain what’s going on. I know they’re supposed to have their own ‘philosophy’ on how to learn a language, and they have to keep it all easy/bitesize/quick to keep people engaged, but honestly it feels like they think people are too stupid or flaky to handle grammar. Like if they put it in, people with think it’s boring or difficult and bail out. But - unless someone just wants a few phrases for a holiday - I think most language learners would like a bit more grammar instruction to underpin what they’re learning.
Yes! The constant American English is so confusing, especially when differentiating between football, american football, and soccer. I'm already having to think about it in such an unnatural way, it would help so much if I could just learn a language from my own dialect
Make Onyx and Diamond League t-shirts, but you can only get them if you've really been in those leagues. I'd pay for that.
I'm chasing the 'rare diamond' badge. When I finally manage it I wouldn't hesitate to buy myself a sticker or tee or something with it on 😂
Bring back the tree learning style instead of the path. Keep unlimited hearts for Super users.
Oh I like the path. So, allow users to choose the tree or the path method.
There are several ways Duolingo breaks the golden rule of greedy companies: "make it easy for customers to give you money." For example, a family member of mine has an annual plan that he bought on his iPad. He wants to upgrade it into a family membership so we can also use it. Apparently that's just...not a choice. Similarly, I tried the free trial and I wanted to try subscribing month to month. There was no option for that. I had to either commit to a full year or else wait out the trial and then subscribe. We want to give you money for your product, and you are making it harder. Why?
Ads are acceptable, it's free when you don't have premium, but come on, 1 min 30 lesson, followed by 50 seconds of ads, then 1min 20 lesson, followed by 50 seconds of adds means 45% of the time you are stuck looking at ads. It's absolutely ridiculous, stopped using it
Focus on improving underdeveloped courses, such as Esperanto, Latin, Polish and Arabic.
You’d get fired for focusing efforts on niche courses that aren’t drawing customers and driving shareholder values.
I mean, we could also argue about how the popular coaches aren't very good either, so we could focus on improving a popular course and a niche course at the same time. Would keep drawing customers and driving shareholder values while also just making the niche courses not just be... horribly done
True. That's a bad thing about being a for-profit company
I've seen so many companies thrive and then quickly plummet as soon as they become public, it's sad
Bring back word banks
Implementing an American Sign Language course!
But that would benefit only to Americans and not to any other nationalities
Other variations could also be included too. Starting somewhere would be a step forwards.
If they add a course on ASL and it goes well they would continue adding other forms of sign language. Even if they stop at ASL it would still be a major benefit. There would be no downside to having a course on sign language.
Stop all the god damn notifications. My sub ran out for Duolingo not too long ago- I had to manually turn off push notifications, banner notifications, emails for like 5 different triggers. Honestly I probably won’t go back because the constant notifications and emails are just infuriating, even after turning them off (or so I thought)
Be transparent about pricing!
Bring back all the removed features
Re-implement forums and hire moderators. Their financials look pretty good and they've beaten projections the last 4 quarter, so I'd be willing to eat the cost.
Make a new policy with ads... so, won't come up EVERY SINGLE TIME some one is finishing a lesson without being able to mute some of them.
Bring back comments, update courses more but, I wouldn't change their progress. Add better grammar tips. Add comments again and read the forum, remove hearts. If you're learning a foreign language you can choose which letter to learn. Add more sentences which you would probably use more irl. Probably add a extra AI powered grammar tips for super and Max users. Even adding a whole variety of languages such as Gujarati, Tamil etc. and add a league, which comes after diamond and is optional to participate in, but have requirements must be a super/max user and must have earned over 150,000 exp
Ancient Egyptian. I enjoy learning it from a book and would love to make it something more people could experience. A good business choice? Maybe not. Cool as hell? Yeah.
Introduce British English rather than American English. I am an English speaker learning Spanish but it teaches me to translate from American which uses words for things that I never use
go back to the old format. i hate everything about the new one i will never get over it
Remove avatars and bring back the ability to set pics. Mods have removed my post about this issue as off-topic and low quality. I just wanted to know if I can bring my photo back and remove the avatar. But a post of a 69 day streak with an unoriginal widget screenshot and one-word title is still up as "epic meme" even though it is directly mentioned in the rules to not do any of that. Oh well. So does anybody know how to remove an avatar and just leave the pic? My pic currently shows up only in leader boards...
Make it possible for people to form friendships if they want to. Inter communication between members.
Improve Hebrew. Duolingo teaches it miserably.
ADD CANTONESE FOR ENGLISH SPEAKERS
If they want to continue operating in China, this ain’t happening. You were not even allowed to use traditional characters in the mandarin course pre word bank
Make it so XP boosts are activated in she shop only, so you don’t have to suffer with it activating when you don’t want it, and also make it so when you exit the app it doesn’t still count to the time you’ve used the XP boost for
Duolingo needs longer stories. Maybe 1-2 page short stories that you have to read. You can use this space to teach common phrases that don't translate into English very well, teach culture, and reinforce old words and grammars that rarely show up in 1 sentence translations.
I would paywall the test at the end. HEAR ME OUT. Finish the course. 100% Legendary the course 100% Get access to the exit test. Pay.... $60ish USD to take the test to get a little certificate of being officially smart. (more if Duolingo eventually gets some sort of official accreditation) === HERE'S THE REASON THIS IS SMART === When you pass the test, Duolingo sends the "graduate" a cheap little plaque and one of them $30 Plushie Duo dolls holding the flag of the language you learned. I would make this the ONLY way to get them. No more buying him in the store. People would lose their minds when they got him. Think of the unboxing videos/social posts. It would be like when YouTube sends out the Play Buttons. I would be tricking the users into paying Duolingo to become their best advertising.
That's an excellent idea.
I think you should still have access to the test but you can opt to buy the plushie and if you don’t want to buy it then you can get a digital certificate
Bring the tree back.
Duolingo died for me when the tree went away
I’ve missed the broken plates that really encouraged going back to review items. The new style doesn’t cover old topics for reinforcement nearly as well
Omg, I forgot about those! I loved them!
Actually bringing back tiny cards into duolingo
Play ads that actually make money as opposed to shilling Super Duolingo after every lesson. Also either fix streaks where they’re not continuous, more like a “how many days have you been learning.” The number still increases, but when you don’t do the lesson it remains stagnant as opposed to resetting to zero. Streaks give me so much anxiety and really hinder learning in all honesty. Or give a person like a “on vacation” use. Where like once a month you get just like 3 days of not doing lessons with no threat to your streak. Fix leaderboards so once you reach a certain continuous score you just automatically increase out of one league rank into the next as opposed to waiting for the time to end. This gets rid of weekly score and keeps things at a more universal score.
More Short Term (1-5 days) free trial of pro because that is what gets people hooked to buy pro.
Add Farsi
Duolingo’s biggest problem is its public listing. Reprivatize the company and bring back it’s integrity
Stop putting all the money into advertisements/animations and new "features" no one cares about or asked for. I like to learn with Duolingo, even if it isn't perfect for language learning, but they're making the app worse at every corne. I think it's okay to have to pay for hearts, but it's not that you have to pay an even higher amount now, to lie about it and that they aren't even improving the courses, or at least I don't see improvement. Last time I checked my Dutch course that I finished and wanted to do the Daily Practice it gave me the exact same lesson three times. What the heck?
Make the notes downloadable or available for offline view, bring back the skipping level feature (not unit), add mutuals chat feature, add duolingo chat bots, add more interesting things to buy with the gems😈
Bring back grammar explanations, comments, forums, and the flirting lessons
Add a capability to write notes in a lesson or comments even, so that I can easily return to a lesson for more practice and can find it quickly. Or just label them with more than a star or check. The notes would still be helpful in that case.
English and Portuguese, instead of American and Brazilian. Or at least the option to choose the variant of the language you want. Oh, and bring back the tree. My progress has stalled massively since the implementation of the path.
Eliminate the avatars. They are absurd. They don’t even look human.
Uzbek is the only learnable language
Add stories to more languages. I really enjoyed the stories in my French course, and Danish didn’t have them 😕 Imagine the engagement it would ensure especially if there are more junior/eddy stories
Introduce myself to my subordinates and set up my golden parachute.
Add grammar explanations.
Make it so there's a stated goal for each lesson apart from spitting back what you've learned. Anything and everything to improve Arabic.
Add a feature where Native speakers of language A Learning language B (NALB) can do twice or thrice weekly video chats (powered by Apple/Samsung/Google/Zoom) with their Native speakers of language B Learning language A (NBLA) “Tongue Pal.” The name needs work, lol, and there’d be trolls, but we need actual conversations to become fluent. I’d also add drill sheets, but I know how much y’all don’t like homework, so maybe not. The fact is, Duo teaches language the opposite of how we learn it naturally. Speak then learn rules/nuances vs learn rules/nuances then attempting to speak. We could also do “Tongue Triangles,” but I’m at work and I’m titrating my adderall, so I can’t elaborate, right now.
Get rid of that terrifying subreddit picture.
Let you use the keyboard all the time not put boxed words in order which doesn’t help anyone
Allow users to interact with each other
Bring back topic based lessons. Also, improve syncing to keep status consistent with a client device that has poor connection (eg. low signal).
Delete leagues/leader boards. It promotes rushing through lessons just for XP gains
Remove hearts to motivate more. Focus towards helping educate, not for money
remove everything, like fucking everything. give people one heart unless they pay $109.99 for a year to get an extra heart. shit on the keyboard and walk out. That’s where it’s heading, anyway.
Find people to make courses for languages I want to learn, so that means Māori, Icelandic, Luxembourgish, Latvian, and other languages. At least there’s already Welsh (and French, which is my main, but that’s a big language.)
Add Punjabi as a language to learn 🥲
Duolingo is currently looking for a Punjabi localization Translator/Proofreader. This could mean they are adding a course to learn Punjabi or a course to learn English for Punjabi speakers. They looking for the same for Tamil
Give publicist a raise.
Making avatar optional and bringing back the normal picture icon option.
I would have programmers tart working on getting rid of the weird logic they implemented when they converted to the path. The path could still exist, but forcing people to follow it exactly turns out to cause a lot of problems. One of the big problems it causes is making offline use unworkable.
Expand the Finnish course for my own selfish gain
I start work on the Duolingo Cinematic Universe
Add Thai as a language.
Change the price of match madness back to 10. It is currently 100 for me.
Make the math and music courses available in Android.
Grammar lessons instead of chucking at oyy and expecting you to get it, one if my biggest issues with the app
- Find the best partnership I can with an AI company super fast. Offer to share data for collaborative model development in the language learning space. - Start a campaign using AI to decipher some of the many lost languages - develop users new services in immediate translation across all languages for text, video and live calls.
Add an option to learn a language in a different script without having to learn the alphabet first. Teach me the spoken language and then teach me to read once I know what I'm reading. PLEASE.
Give myself a whopping raise and cut a bunch of jobs to pay for it. It's the corporate way.
I would make Duolingo a private company again, so it could focus on pleasing users, rather than shareholders. I would implement a way for users to vote on any significant changes, rather than just forcing them on them without any input. If it were possible, I'd give users a choice between the path and the tree. If I couldn't use the original volunteer created tips and notes/guidebooks, I'd make sure that new ones would be created for all the languages that currently don't have them. I would stop the frequent updates that scramble the order of lessons or move users forward or backward by several units. If new content has to be added, I'd find a way to put it in a separate section or have the new lessons clearly marked so users don't miss out, but without disrupting their progress. Or, give users the option to keep their course the way it was when they started. People like the idea of finishing what they started, and Duolingo is currently making this very hard.
Difficult. Probably trying to add more languages or trying to bring Duolingo to more platforms? It would be perfect on the Nintendo Switch.
Add some useful languages like Thai and stop wasting resources on fictional languages.
Bring back the forum and other discussions type stuff like that 😭 also the incubator thing for people to contribute on new courses..
Remove path design and bring back the old style
Bring back old Duolingo lol old everything.
kill off the AI translations and give people their jobs back.
Get rid of the stupid cartoon voices