700 days of Duolingo
Last week I mentioned that there was a new thing and a milestone (new main cable box; 3000 days on the Wii), and that I'd be hitting a milestone with something that got updated fairly soon. Well, that time has come: I hit 700 consecutive days with Duolingo, the app I've been using to learn French.
Here's the thing: There was an update for it that I ran, and it changed a lot of things, and for the most part I haven't cared for the changes. The biggest thing is that there are now ads on the app, and of course the only way to go ad-free is to pay for it ("these ads keep education free!"). What bugs me is that you earn these things called lingots, which is like the in-app currency. There's really not much you can do with them that I can see. I bought the two expansion lessons (flirting and idioms), and there's a space for a third, but there isn't a third lesson to buy. And I'm not interested in buying either of the two outfits for the Duo owl mascot. And…that's pretty much all you can buy. So I just keep accumulating lingots for no good reason. I'm not sure how they added up before, except that when you reached a new level, you'd get that amount of lingots (so, for level 19, you got 19 of them). I would LOVE to see, like, a week free of ads for, I don't know, 50 or 100 lingots. I'd have a use for them and would be more inclined to participate in the new ways to accrue lingots that they've come up with. Like, at the end of every lesson, three chests appear and you *have* to choose one to move on. You then get a second chance to open a chest if you choose to watch an ad. Uh, no.
There was also a change to how it looks when you go into the app. You used to press the icon and it would open directly into it, and tell you how many consecutive days you were at. Now, there's a sort of front page and it takes a minute to load the various lessons. At the top, it gives you your consecutive day number, then next to that your percentage of fluency. I suppose that's nice, but I could swear to you I was at 69% fluency. Somehow I went down to 68%, and now it's showing I'm only at 67%. Whether or not I'm actually that fluent, I doubt it, but I also don't know how I'm moving backward since I tend to do pretty well with the exercises.
And, this was kind of interesting--when I logged in today, it loaded in a bunch of new sub-lessons within the various lesson segments, and even reordered them within the app, so it's almost like I'm starting over. I don't necessarily mind that, actually, but it was weird to go into it today and see that, instead of the lessons being gold-colored to show I'd mastered them, most of them are colored and have a number stating that there are now this many sub-lessons to go through again. Hmm. That's kind of nice in a way, yet it also took away the little trophy I had at the bottom which signified that I finished all the lessons. The lesson icons would occasionally change to a color to signify an area in which I needed more work, but all that would take was a refresher and it would turn gold again.
Overall I was really disappointed by the update, and I really really really dislike the ad aspect for it now and kind of wish I hadn't updated, but it is what it is, and I do like that things have been reset in a way. I think the notice I got when I opened the app today said that there were 68 new lessons or something that had been uploaded. Well, whatever can keep me interested and keep me going. I do feel I've improved over the past couple years, so that's been helpful.
Here's the thing: There was an update for it that I ran, and it changed a lot of things, and for the most part I haven't cared for the changes. The biggest thing is that there are now ads on the app, and of course the only way to go ad-free is to pay for it ("these ads keep education free!"). What bugs me is that you earn these things called lingots, which is like the in-app currency. There's really not much you can do with them that I can see. I bought the two expansion lessons (flirting and idioms), and there's a space for a third, but there isn't a third lesson to buy. And I'm not interested in buying either of the two outfits for the Duo owl mascot. And…that's pretty much all you can buy. So I just keep accumulating lingots for no good reason. I'm not sure how they added up before, except that when you reached a new level, you'd get that amount of lingots (so, for level 19, you got 19 of them). I would LOVE to see, like, a week free of ads for, I don't know, 50 or 100 lingots. I'd have a use for them and would be more inclined to participate in the new ways to accrue lingots that they've come up with. Like, at the end of every lesson, three chests appear and you *have* to choose one to move on. You then get a second chance to open a chest if you choose to watch an ad. Uh, no.
There was also a change to how it looks when you go into the app. You used to press the icon and it would open directly into it, and tell you how many consecutive days you were at. Now, there's a sort of front page and it takes a minute to load the various lessons. At the top, it gives you your consecutive day number, then next to that your percentage of fluency. I suppose that's nice, but I could swear to you I was at 69% fluency. Somehow I went down to 68%, and now it's showing I'm only at 67%. Whether or not I'm actually that fluent, I doubt it, but I also don't know how I'm moving backward since I tend to do pretty well with the exercises.
And, this was kind of interesting--when I logged in today, it loaded in a bunch of new sub-lessons within the various lesson segments, and even reordered them within the app, so it's almost like I'm starting over. I don't necessarily mind that, actually, but it was weird to go into it today and see that, instead of the lessons being gold-colored to show I'd mastered them, most of them are colored and have a number stating that there are now this many sub-lessons to go through again. Hmm. That's kind of nice in a way, yet it also took away the little trophy I had at the bottom which signified that I finished all the lessons. The lesson icons would occasionally change to a color to signify an area in which I needed more work, but all that would take was a refresher and it would turn gold again.
Overall I was really disappointed by the update, and I really really really dislike the ad aspect for it now and kind of wish I hadn't updated, but it is what it is, and I do like that things have been reset in a way. I think the notice I got when I opened the app today said that there were 68 new lessons or something that had been uploaded. Well, whatever can keep me interested and keep me going. I do feel I've improved over the past couple years, so that's been helpful.