Please, Duolingo, Reverse New Percentage Progress for Skills
Duolingo have just made, in my view, a most unwelcome change to our skill trees. Instead of the old "6/9 lessons" for a specific skill, now you get your progress measured in percentages, e.g. "67% complete". And for skills that you have not yet done, it says "1% complete" rather than 0/10 or 0/30 or whatever.
I can live with most of the changes have been made (though the 20 XP cap still rankles), but I ABSOLUTELY HATE this one. I hate it as much as I hate Brussels sprouts, and trust me, that is a very strong and fervent hatred indeed. How are we now supposed to know the number of lessons we have to do in a particular skill? 50% complete could mean 4/8, or 12/24, or 20/40. It is now impossible to know how big or small a particular skill is. And of course, the number of lessons per skill increases as you advance crown levels.
This change was completely unnecessary. Not only was it unnecessary, it has made the site worse rather than better. Considerably worse for me, frankly. I am not happy with it. AT ALL. PLEASE, Duolingo, reverse this change. I beg you. If you MUST give us percentages for our progress, have them IN ADDITION to the number of lessons completed and left, not INSTEAD of them. Oh, and as usual, you didn't bother telling us you were going to make this change. Genius customer communication skills on display again.
Who else is dismayed by this horrible new change? As I say, there are some changes I can adapt to, even the XP cap one, but I find this one quite unbearable. I want to know exactly how many lessons a skill comprises. I don't care a jot about what percentage of lessons I've completed. If I do want to know that, I can easily do the maths myself! What I do want to know is how many lessons I've done and how many I have left. Or when I'm starting a skill, how many lessons I need to do. Far more useful than vague percentages. Frankly Duo, you get a 0% grade from me for this appalling and poorly thought-out change. We did NOT need it, and I for one absolutely DO NOT want it. So one more time, please reverse this! Truly, this is one case where the old way was much, much better!
269 Comments
I'm not as passionately upset about it as you are, but I definitely find it to be less informative and helpful than the actual numbers. I started a different thread about it maybe an hour before this one.
I can see maybe why people want a percent figured out for them, too. But don't give us only one or the other. I suggested to the staff to show both:
75% complete | 3/4 lessons
I could live with both (in fact, I did say that in my original post). But not the percentages on their own. That's just far too vague due to the considerable variance in the number of lessons per skill. Sometimes there may be just one or two lessons. And at other times, you might be staring down the barrel of 40 or 50! It also affects study planning not to be able to know the number of lessons. Like if I see a particular skill has ten lessons, I might set aside half an hour to do all of them. But if I see a skill has 40 lessons, I'll divide up my time to do them in manageable chunks. This vague percentage thing just messes all that up. Again though, both would be fine. If Duo changes to that, I'd be as happy as if they fully reversed the change. As long as I can again see how many lessons need to be done in a skill!
I like this idea better as well. I think it would be nice to show both. Or at least give the users the option to change it to the one we prefer.
543
I don't think the percentage has any relationship to the number of lessons done in a skill. I had a completely golden tree until the last update so I am just testing out of the new lessons to get my tree back to gold.
Today I just moved 11 skills from level 1 to level 2. Ie all level 0 and 1 skills have been tested out and no skills have been completed at level 2 so all should be the same. IE either 0% done at level 2 or 16.6% of total lessons in the skill, (16.6% based on the fact that in the Spanish tree in a skill the number of lessons at level 1 are the same as number of lessons at level 0, number of lessons at level 2 are the the same as the total number of lessons at level 0 + 1, then level 3 is the same as the total number of lessons at level 2 + level 1, and level 4 is the same as the total number of lessons at level 3 + level 2.)
However on my tree "Work 2" is showing 36%, "Childhood", "Traditions", "Social", "House 3" "Info 2" are all on 11%. "Restaur 3" is on 43%. "Rec 3", "Health" and "Descrip 4" are all on 0%. "Memories 2" is on 32%.
All of which makes no sense to me.
- 2098
In my case, they are showing both BUT they are not accurate! The numbers are not changing after I complete a lesson with no errors!
Indeed. Mine are all over the place. Just now I had a skill showing as 100% complete on a level - but I had to do another lesson before the level completed!!!
some of my ones on the lessons that I have completed and then moved on from and haven't went back to to farm XP (e.g. High Valyrian) are showing random 17% complete
(BTW I don't mean farm as to get more XP, I just mean go back to to get a more concrete understanding)
- 1004
This is happening to me too! And sometimes I'll finish a level but somehow already be through 50% of the next level (e.g., I finish the final lesson of level 1, and it reads as me being 56% of the way through level 2).
- 542
I think possible solution suitable for all, is to set up some parameter defining how the UI should look like. The 33% or 2/6 is both user interface presentation of the same information in the system. So it should be pretty easy to let each user choose this UI behavior individually - e.g. for DUO - add some settings of the format (switch) to user profiles.
Have a nice day :)
I have to say, not only does this effect lesson planning which is just not longer possible when you don't know how many lessons are left. It's also extremely demotivating. Not only when you start to work on a new level, finish one lesson and then see how little percent you got out of doing that lesson. But with this change Duolingo has also lost a certain type of extrinsic motivation. Before the change I felt good about finishing a lesson, because even when I didn't finish a level I still saw an explicit progress in the increasing number of e.g. 3/10 to 4/10. Now I only get percents which feel less complete and thus do not offer the same motivation and feeling of having achieved something. The only feeling I get is frustration. I really hope this change that — again — makes the site less fun and usable will finally backfire. But as that already didn't work with prior changes I don't have much hope left.
Very well said! While I have managed to keep my streak going, I felt the least motivated to do the necessary exercises for it that I have since I started, all because of this ghastly change. I normally have no trouble getting on Duolingo and getting stuck into some study, but today I actually had to force myself. All the other changes that Duolingo have made didn't make me feel this way (except maybe the XP cap a little), but this one has. :-(
- 100
This may be an A/B test, hopefully one that fails. This doesn't sound like it would help motivation at all.
What I don't get is that they don't simply show both. This kind of discussion thread should be a serious indicative for the creators hopefully
- 155
I was just about the reply the same. I'm seeing both percentage and x/y. I'm hoping they go with this option as I kinda like the percentage but I wouldn't want to lose the x/y either.
what you are seeing is the number of levels, X/5 not the number of lessons within each group. that has been changed to the percentage system.
A percentage of the entire language course would be nice while keping the courses as fractions.
i would say no. it is very easy to ignore forums and most forums are designed so that problem solving is diverted to the consumers on the forum. it's a create a topic and talk amongst yourselves arrangement. we may listen and respond but if it's something we choose not to or never intended to address we're not checking in. if we do check in we don't respond. for the record on facebook, there is a duolingo page run by duolingo with many posts of them saying how wonderful they are. there is also a duolingo group apparently run by volunteers. it may be worth going to duolingo's official page, NOT THE GROUP PAGE!!! and start posting these complaints. like the page, post your complaint, with any luck someone will pay attention, or they'll shut down the ability to post and well there's your answer. you could also consider installing an ad blocker. adds are of very little use if no one is looking at them. those who paid might consider attempting a refund. you know you won't get it but in most cases, they want to know why you want and clearly, this ain't what you signed up for. as i said before forums can be easily ignored by those in charge and venting is all well and good but unproductive if all your doing is preaching to the choir. they get away with what they get away with because they know all they have to do is ignore the only outlet afforded their customers to register their displeasure. but it isn't the only outlet.
I hate it, I really hope they change it back. It was an unnecessary change and a lot of people don't like it.
trying to cull it back to the absolute die-hards who will eventually pay for premium...
I have yet to receive this percentage label for the crowns system, but I feel like Duo keeps shooting itself in the foot when it comes to changes that make the user experience worse.
UPDATE (April 30): I got the update today and noticed that one of my completed skills in Korean with 4 lessons is 7% complete even though I didn't do any lessons for level 1 yet. This is very confusing and misleading to users and requires using the app (before any update is applied) to actually check how many lessons are there in each skill and whether or not you did any lesson after completing level 0. In my Spanish tree which was extended recently, I see new skills that have some progress in percentages even though I HAVE YET to work on them (before the percentages was implemented, these new skills previously had ZERO progress), this is probably because of lessons/questions I completed in previous skills before the tree was extended. Just showing percentage in skills instead of total number of lessons is very confusing to people who want to know how many lessons are in the skill and how far they are before completing the skill, and it is absolutely an unnecessary change that worsens the user experience (just like forcing Health onto iOS and Android users).
This change is just like how the crowns system was rolled out around a month after I joined Duo in March 2018, replacing the old system of lessons and no levels where you can choose which lesson in a skill you want to work on and preview the vocabulary you will learn for each lesson (when you complete a skill once the skill becomes gold). Not that I have anything against the crowns system, but these features in the old system were taken away when the crowns system was implemented and it forces you to cycle through a skill to complete a level without letting you choose lessons you want to work on. You can't go back to previous lessons until you complete a level which resets the cycle but makes it twice as long.
I am guessing that the % on a previously-untouched lesson addresses the fact that, in a well-designed course (which Duo strives to provide us, no doubt), we would be constantly building on prior skills. So really, if we are working thru the tree, ideally, we would not need to refresh old skills and vocabulary (unless we had already completed the entire tree to Gold level) because these would be being "pulled forward" and used again in later lessons. (They know what words are used when, so by the time we get to lesson X, in theory everyone working that tree needs to refresh on [subset of words that haven't been used in a while] which should start making an appearance to refresh our memories, no?)
That said, knowing the % of an untouched course that will be repeated material is not as helpful to how I plan my time on Duo as is knowing how many lessons a given section has. So I TRULY hope they will either go back to counting by # lessons or find a way to present both to us.
Happy learning!
It truly hurts motivation, too. I want to see how many steps I've made, not how much I'm far from the goal.
Agreed. This is clearly a backward step - presenting less information than before. "50%" gives me less information than "4/8" or whatever.
I haven't yet received this change (it might also be a glitch, several months ago I saw some posts similar to this one, but they were just glitches/bugs in the system), but I can see why that would be frustrating. Hate is a very strong word, especially in connection with a free website that offers us a ton of awesome content. Good luck learning!
EDIT: While I haven't got this yet, it appears that it's not a glitch.
I really hope it is a bug, because if it's an intentional change, it's an extremely bad call on the developers' part. The site might be free, but I'm a Plus member, so I have actually paid money (I did so, actually, because I like Duolingo so much and use it on a very regular basis, so it was partly my way of thanking the developers). Yes, it does offer awesome content, I quite agree, but that does not give the developers carte blanche to make changes that are detrimental to their users. At least, I don't think it does. So like I say, I really hope that your conjecture that this is just a glitch will prove correct. If it's a bug, then hopefully it will be fixed before long. But it it's intentional, well Duo, you've got some 'splainin' to do!
Sorry, I didn't look to see if you were a plus user, massive blunder on my part. I like that while you argue strongly, you're pretty respectful and have good arguments. (Not just "Duo sucks.) Good luck, I hope that gets resolved.
i was considering removing my add blocker and even becoming a plus member but neither will happen now. i'm going to stop recommending duo lingo also. i can't and won't abide by changes that are detrimental to the learning process. thankfully i haven't paid for the privilege of being screwed, but i feel those who have.
- 543
I wouldn't do that. All these changes to have started to happen more frequently since Duolingo started to gain income from the ads and the plus members. Before that the changes did not happen so often.
- 460
I agree. The percentage system just started for me tonight. I assumed it was a glitch, because most (but not all) of my skills were suddenly at 47% when earlier today they were at zero at each particular level. Then I started on one skill, Weather 3. Yesterday I saw that Level 2 on this skill had 5 sessions and I was at 0. Today, starting at 47% on Level 2, it went to 88% for my first session, then it said I had achieved level 3. But when I got back to "Home", Weather 3 said it was 75%. I completed another session, and it was 81%. Another session, 88%. Another session 94%. When I hover over "Weather 3" on duome.eu, it now says 3 of 8 sessions completed for Level 2.
Seems like a glitch to me.
- 418
Same for me (on the new French tree). All of a sudden I supposedly completed 50% of the units I hadn't even started yet, and after leveling up a skill the website claims the next level is also already 50% done. On my phone I'm seeing 'Lesson 0 / 8' on a unit the desktop version claims is 63% complete.
Yeah I have the same thing! I got confused because my mobile and online website did not look the same at all and I am not sure why some things have progress online only? Wish they could explain changes they implement more.
I am in the same situation. Introducing these percentages when we clearly should just be shown the absolute numbers is so stupid.
- 460
Yes, yesterday all my skills at the 0 level (I just transitioned into Tree 12), were at 47%. Today all the 0 level skills are at 50%. It has settled down a bit for me today though - the percentage numbers are not going backwards for any particular skill... Maybe not a glitch.
- 460
go to https://www.duome.eu/Qextor/progress and search for 'Weather 3', or any other skill on your French tree. (I am on Tree 12)
- 817
The people working here don't know what they are doing they just change things for the sake of change im sure they will end up completely ruining duolingo in the future i just hope i can get all the trees i want to do done before they self destruct.
I have been in Duolingo for more than a year now and so many changes happened in just one year (and way before I joined). I don't understand why they keep making changes that ruin the user experience or remove features that are useful; in other words, removing them to make the experience and usability worse EVERY TIME. Now they are forcing Health onto Android which will force people to uninstall the app, preventing it from updating, or quit.
- 102
I have never posted a comment on duo before but felt strongly enough about this pointless change to post here and support this thread
- 190
What dismays me about this, is that I find I'm gaining "% completion" in various lessons when I do practice. I don't want that. I do practice to practice and when I want to progress in a lesson I choose to work on the lesson. What is being gained by taking this out of my hands?
- 100
Are you talking general practice, or skill-specific practice?
I don't hate that actually. I'd love to do general practices and help it increase my skill levels.
- 142
I respect your opinion but I disagree.
I have a method/routine that works really well for me (learning-wise and motivation-wise) that would become impossible if I got this change. It wouldn't be awful, I would just stop using the practice feature. I do like the timed practice feature so I would miss it a bit. But it serves a totally different role for me in the learning process than the tree lessons.
- 271
I agree that this is a bad change. While I have no problem with percentages, if you don't know how many lessons are in a given level, the percentage is virtually useless.
Perfectly agree with RowanM.1, this percentage system is AWFUL!!
You are removing information by showing us a mere imprecise and nonsensical percentage that is pretty useless. What are you trying to achieve Duolingo ? This isn't progress, this is regression!
Personally, I don't want vague interpretations like "7% complete", I want raw facts: I earned 40 XP today, this skill's level need 8 lessons, I have completed 3 so far. Period.
- 203
As a Duolingo User, I would like to both learn new content and be able to review old content in a manner that is similar to Spaced Repetition.
With the old system I was able to accomplish this: I give myself 5 lessons a day, one is used to learn new content, and the other are used to cycle through old content. I tried to keep them all even (get each topic to the same number of exercises completed, and when something changes levels because it required less lessons it gets skipped over until the other topics match that level). By doing this I would space out the amount of time that passes between reviewing old content as I learn more and more. It was working great, and it was simple, I just had to look and see the number of exercises I've completed.
A percentage does not give any new usable information. Percentages hide what is in the numerator and denominator; they are used to normalize across different things. To my knowledge nobody needs this. If they do need this, it would be better to get rid of the level system altogether, because being 80% of level 1 versus 20% of Level 3 is not a useful way to see this data.
Please either revert back to the straight number system with levels, or if you insist on percentages get rid of the level system.
Thanks, Riven333
- 333
This change is not helpful as it introduces the unknown which does not help the learner. I use the number of lesson in a unit to help me plan my daily work. If I plan on doing a certain number of lessons and get interrupted and return to working I have no idea where I am. Likewise the deletion of the visual graph which displayed the daily accomplishment leaves me without needed feedback. All I have is a total from which I must remember the previous days number and subtract the current days total in order to ascertain what work was completed. All in all very poor data tracking on your part.
I agree entirely. This new addition makes it so much less user-friendly. Not knowing how many lessons to get through a topic lowers my ability to plan my time and thus my motivation to use Duo. Please go back.
- 104
I concur with this poster. I break down how many of each of the skills I can do each day by how many lessons are left in that skill. Now, it's pure guess work. I see no real rationale for changing this to a percentage, and it definitely negatively affects how I use Duolingo as I can no longer plan out how to proceed through skills.
Edit: After working on my French today, I realize the rationale behind it, as the new French tree (and I assume the new Spanish tree and perhaps the coming new German tree will adopt a similar system) does skill completion progressively so that the number of lessons in a skill actually change by how well you are doing. I'm still not pro the percentage model as it really affects how I use the site, and it makes absolutely no sense on trees that have not implemented a system that awards success in a lesson with greater progress in the skill (e.g., for me, as of writing this, 3 of the 4 languages I am working on)
- 145
I'm sure this situation would have been a lot better had Duo communicated the change and their reasons before hand :(
they knew it would cause issues and didn't want to have to deal with angry people who said, " why did you make this change, we told you when we told you we didn't want it?"
I usually set daily goals based on the number of lessons in a set. This insidious percentage complete method of showing progress is going to drive everybody crazy. IT'S NOT AN IMPROVEMENT
I don’t know about anyone else, but it is not encouraging more time on the Duo site / more time learning, for me.
If this is an A/B test I’m pretty sure it’s a fail for me.
- 126
I agree. Please restore the number of lessons completed (whether or not you keep the percentages.)
- 130
I also am not a fan of this change. I have been trying to maintain 100 exp per day by completing 2 of the new Level 1 skills added every day. Now my progress looks a lot less uniform as skills that I know I only did 5 lessons for before moving on are all showing wildly different percentages.
Yes please, another vote from me to reverse this change. Please - and quickly. Stared for me this evening and I find it much less clear how far I've progressed on my unit.
Ok, I am actually one of the apparently very few people that is in favor of the new aesthetic redesign in general, but I have to agree with you here that the percentages are a mistake. Hope they rescind them soon.
- 166
I just got this, and I’m probably a little more upset than I should be given the ways I was navigating the updated French course. If I found a concept I was a little shaky on, I was marking it out for additional review by doing one extra lesson after I cleared the level (so I could tell at a glance what I judged myself as needing work on — those were 1/X rather than 0/X or a multiple of 5/X). Now ... the percentages are all over the place, likely from leximes that carried over from the old tree, and I can’t tell where I actually am on any of the lessons anymore.
I realize that’s not something many people do, but it’s incredibly frustrating to have lost my method on a tree I was just starting to figure my way around again. I guess I’ll be avoiding an app update for awhile so I can keep an eye on how many lessons I actually have left.
- 1864
You're definitely not the only one. I had my own method of study similar to yours, and it only took a quick glance at the tree to know where I left off and how I'd want to continue. Now I'm totally lost.
For whatever it's worth, I'm one of the few who welcomed the crown levels and updated trees. Still not a fan of the ugly graphics and site layout. And now I'm unable to measure my progress in a way that makes sense to me.
Yes please! Percentage seems to meaningless without a concept of how many lessons there are in total! 10% could could mean you have 9 more lessons or 90.
my lesson progress indication was "upgraded" today from the fraction to the percentage. the % indicator conveys less information and hampers lesson planning by the user. the % is redundant, as it is already shown by the circular yellow progress bar (the progress bar precision is sufficient). it's nice to see that you are working to improve user experience, but in this case, the change was counterproductive. you know what to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke
Another case of messing with the system because they can and not because it improves anything. I'm not impressed and fail to see the value in this change but as with every other change I have commented on in the past, I'm sure it will make no difference.
- 214
This change is really bad. I'm doing 10 different skills every day, all of them have different progress. I start with the newest, because they are more difficult and I need a fresh brain for them. Well, now it's much harder to track my progress properly. I'm thinking how to organize my learning process with this change, and still don't have any idea.
I am totally unhappy with this change as well. I looked directly in the discussion area to see if anyone else was upset about this recent change and immediately saw your thread at the top. So, it's good I am not alone with this disappointing change.
I think it should be changed back to the former status as well.
- 234
Percentage only is not too informative. They should show both (percentage and lesson number).
- 1264
Ye gods. It's not as bad as the XP cap, and if we could have gone a year without changes beforehand I probably would have just been mildly annoyed. But with so many changes in a short time, and virtually all of them detrimental, it's just too much. It's like, you know when you get too many blackfly bites, and you wind up with a systemic reaction where your immune system hulks out on everything? It's like that. I even reacted to the new French content with dread and sorrow, because in the context of everything else getting worse and worse it's hard to see any change as positive. (German and Norwegian, though, warned me ahead of time, and I'm feeling better about those.)
I find the progress tree confusing and frustrating. It feels like I'm constantly having to revisit lower levels before progressing to new content only to be knocked down again with the latest improvement. The percentages only add to the frustration. I'd like to budget my time and lessons and forecast what I may accomplish in a week. This latest morass is another step backwards and instills no sense of real accomplishment. My sympathies to those who paid for this.
I very much dislike not having the useful information that was previously available. it's more of a mental thing than anything else of course, but it's honestly kind of irritating.
I suppose it's fine if most users prefer it like this. by the way, you can still see what number you're on by looking at the address bar while you're in a session.
If this thread is anything to go by (and there have been a few others too), most people definitely do NOT prefer it like this! I've seen all of one positive comment, maybe two, about the change and dozens upon dozens of negative ones. So I think it's safe to assume that most Duolingo users want the useful information back, or at least a compromise solution where you can see both the number of lessons and the percentages.
- 443
I have an idea that these percentages do not accurately equate to the number of lessons under the old system. So bad move, Duo. From my experience of you, it would be vain to hope that you'll revert to the old system. You never do that. You'll just wait a short time for everyone to complain and then announce that you're making the change which you have already made.
I don't like it either. It seems arbitrary. I liked knowing exactly how many lessons I had to go before I hit that next crown level.
- 1014
They tried it last year on the iPhone ap. This student found it a pain in the drain as well. Knowing exactly how many lessons to complete a level is very helpful when you are trying to pace yourself on DL and decide how many XP's to gobble up in a day--as you try to fit in DL with the rest of your life.
Well, the percentage scale was there for a month before they just as suddenly returned to the old progress-reporting system. Yerz truly rejoiced; now he wishes they had left well enough alone.
(BTW, has anyone noticed that in shifting to the new system, they seemed to have added roughly 10-20 XPs worth of credit to each skill at orange level or under? Perhaps some kind of compensation?)
(PS [5/1/19] Should have known better. What appears to have been "freebie" XP's turns out to have been no such thing. If there's a new level consisting of 4 lessons and it looks like you are "50% completed"; well, you still have to do the four lessons anyway: instead of getting 25% after after a lesson, you just get 12%. This makes an already chaotic situation all the more so. Working with the iPhone ap, even though it forces you to pay forfeits after 5 mistakes in a lesson and subjects you to more lingerie ads by far for middle-aged people, looks all the more attractive by comparison. Why that might be so can be left for our community to decide.)
Just to add my voice: I don't understand how I can have so many lessons - the new lessons - that I haven't even looked at and now I see I'm 29% or 17% complete on them. First, I should be 0% complete on them and second, what does 29% mean? It's not really 1/3 or 1/4 or something obvious, and I know it's probably not 29/100 lessons. For what we all do here to learn a language, I think the percentages are a waste. Bring back the X/Y format and let 0% done be 0/Y.
I have certain goals for each day for multiple languages, and I spend a year going through each tree for the first time. It has obviously worked for me, even if some people would find it somewhat obsessive. This change makes my method of study harder to track. I do not like it at all.
- 434
What the hell is wrong with the developers lately? Why can't they resist fixing what isn't broken?
- 404
Exactly what I was thinking yesterday. At first I thought they had erased a bunch of my work, but then see they have percentage completed on lessons I haven't even gotten to yet. BTW, congratulations on your 365 streak. Have ten lingots!
A percentage works ONLY IF we are also give the total. It's very motivating for me to know how many lessons are in a section and then how far along I am toward completion. I'm okay with the old method (10/15 complete) or a new approach (15 lessons, 67% complete). I'm not happy with this change!
The research of Dr. Hoax McDoctorson shows that it's 95% better this way, and if you don't find it better it's your fault.
I've kind of already left Duolingo, I'm just around on the forums a bit, but I do agree that's super annoying. About Brussels sprouts-- have you ever tried olive oil, a bit of salt, and putting them halved on a baking sheet? They're no more offensive than kale that way.
- 252
TIP: DuoLingo IS looking for our feedback!
I saw this post from Helpfulduo: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/31849174
... within it they give you this link to offer your feedback
GO HERE: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeBY_RqEwl2x9heBSKL0jZSnNNiW4WzNSM33ztgMJA7Y9OahQ/viewform
Amazing!! Thank you!! This should be posted everywhere, but your post is the first place I've seen it. Thanks again.
I agree, now it is really hard to know how many lessons you have done and how many there are left to go!
Very much agree, it has made it harder to tell where you are, and appears to be quite glitchy.
Yeah, I logged in to do my lessons today, and I was immediately put off by this. I don't know why they thought this was a change that needed to be made.
this is incredibly annoying. i'm learning multiple languages and have determined the optimal number of lesson for each session. now i'm trying to keep track of lesson numbers. this was totally unnecessary and utterly thoughtless on your part. there's an old adage, if it ain't broke don't fix it. you should keep that in mind when considering unnecessary changes. well duo lingo it's broken now, what are you going to do about it?
- 809
I've just got this change and I agree with everyone else that it's really unhelpful. For some reason I've also been credited with lots of progress towards most of my skills - and after testing out of one skill I've been immediately given progress towards the next crown level. For me the most annoying part is that I no longer know how much work I've got to put in before the next crown level; as I already think that there's too much practice needed at the higher levels, this is just going to push me to test out earlier, as I can't keep track of how much practice I've already put in.
- 809
I see that Duome still does show progress in the old way (1/10 lessons). On the https://www.duome.eu/[name]/progress page, on the Skills tab, hovering the mouse over the crown level for each skill shows the progress towards completing the next crown level. It also shows that the percentage progress we're seeing on Duo is unrelated to the number of lessons completed; maybe a mod could comment on what this percentage progress is supposed to mean?
- 40
Thank you for this work around. Not nearly as convenient as having it in page, but at least it's accessible. As for what the percentages mean - it could be the percent complete of that skill from lessons you've already done. In other words, 15% (for example) of what is taught in that skill has already been learned in previous skills.
I completely agree! With this change came a bunch of random progress on all of the French skills I was at level one on: they now all say 50% progress. I hadn't done any of them ever since they reset the French tree (again!) a couple of weeks ago. I'm not happy with all the random little changes that keep being made and it too is making my experience less enjoyable.
I completely agree with this post. And unfortunately it's one of the many terrible changes this website has implemented the last few weeks or so. Why are you people constantly changing things on your website that were working just fine? Are you trying to get us to stop using duolingo? It really makes no sense.
- 254
I have to come out of lurking to agree with this topic, this change makes it difficult to plan around how long a course might take and also takes away the motivation one might have when nearly completing a course, for instance many times I'd close the day at 17/20 to maintain my streak and I would figure "might as well finish this level and start on a new level/course tomorrow!" Using percentages means I will have to guess, which I will probably not even bother doing.
Please listen to your consumers Duolingo. Help us help you help us lol.
- 252
I read a lot here, but hardly ever comment on the forums. This time I will though.
This change to percentages only is absolutely not helpful, to put it mildly.
For the past few days I've tried to get used to this, but it's very disorienting. It just doesn't work with planning and making progress if you only know percentages, but do not know what they're a percentage of. It's as if you're far out at sea, and can't see any land at all, while both the compass and the map have been removed.
Please revert back to the the indication of "x/y lessons".
It's all right to add the percentages if you must, even though I can simply work that out myself - or better still, while I can see them roughly on the graphic. And as for that graphic: it was far more logical when the counting started at the top of the circle (twelve o'clock - mark), then it is where it's starting now (at the four o'clock -mark). However, that is not half as bad as this new percentage-only feature.
- 139
Alright so I have no idea if anyone else has noticed this, but the "practice" button actually contributes to your tree now. So after you finish a session using the practice button, it'll add various percentages to your progress on a few skills (obviously based on the content of the specific practice session). My guess is that Duolingo changed the fractions to percentages so that they could smoothly integrate the lessons and the practice this way.
- 418
Oh, wow, you're absolute right! It's too bad, though, that they don't show you after each practice which skills you progressed in. In a large tree in which you've already made a lot of progress, this is pretty much impossible to notice.
- 271
I don't see removing useful information and putting it on another website where I don't need it is progress. Adding percentages is fine, removing the information that tells you what the percentage actually means is not.
I think they must have some sort of sweep-stake going. Lose X million learning days in a week for a ten dollar bet or something. Horrible customer experience.
Oh I agree completely. I got so confused that I almost made a new account because I thought mine broke.
- 284
I really do not like this change. I liked to use how many lessons I had left to push myself to do a few more, now I do less because I don't know when I hit a milestone or not. This change is honestly killing my motivation because it is very difficult to put my progress into quantitative terms. I think Duo should give us both % and fraction.
Agreed. I really like the idea of spacing out large lessons. German "Abstract Objects 4" has 50 lessons. I don't want to have to guess at that. I want to do a couple of those one day then power 1/2 a course with 10 lessons another day. I want to plan my learning and maximize its effectiveness by allowing the larger lessons to happen over the course of time.
Percentages need to be in addition, not as a replacement for lesson count
- 1120
Duolingo is showing less and less information too users. Last year, Duo removed the word lists for individual lessons. Today, they replaced number of lessons with fractions. At some point in the future, you know nothing about the skill tree except the percentage you have completed for the whole tree.
P. S. : I see some skills that I haven't completed a single lesson for some skills having at least one crown, but shows a percentage greater than 0.
So many changes seem completely arbitrary, and, like this one, change for the sake of change. What's worse, is that this isn't a superficial change (like demonstrating progress from bottom of the circle to top of the circle, which I'll never understand why they changed that but whatever), this tangibly affects my learning. My goal is to do 5 lessons per day. I have a hard time keeping track myself, esp if I'm busy that day and am trying to squeeze my French in on my phone standing on the bus. Potentially, I could have still kept track using the point system, but now they are frivolously adding "bonus" points, so I know I can't stop at 50, bc who the f knows how many bonus points they decided to give me now. I would rather do without the points, and the percentages, and be able to keep track of my lessons so I can stay on my goal each day. Otherwise, I get frustrated, which makes me not care as much about my streak because I don't even know what goals I'm hitting.
STOP CHANGING EVERY ASPECT OF DUOLINGO PURELY FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGING IT.
I agree that this is an unwelcome change. The old system let me see exactly where I was in a skill, and plan how many review "sessions" I could do before the questions would start to repeat. In theory I could reconstruct this from the percentage if I recorded how many sessions there were in the original lesson - but it would be better to just provide both, or go back to the old way if there isn't room.
I'd prefer if DL developers were to put in effort to give me control over translation direction, instead of making it switch randomly. Choices:
- random (current)
- translate first from target language to my language, then reverse
- translate first from my language to target language, then reverse
(Actually, the switches currently happen much more often than random probability.)
I would like to have both percentages and the x/y display. And I think I would like to have the percentages both on the current level of the skill + on all levels of a skill. This would be great.
Sure, if this cannot be true, I would choose x/y. I can calculate some percentages myself (although I would prefer not to).
Yes. The percentage method is too vague for me too. Knowing exactly how much I have left to do to finish a level is very motivating for me.
I was in a complete shock today when I saw this change. My motivation to learn has disappeared instantly. Does anyone from Duolingo check these discussions? Maybe we are writing here in vain.. Where should we write? Maybe to the support? If everyone will write to the support about this maybe they will change it.. Let's do that!
like their facebook page and post a complaint their. maybe if the admins have to waste all their time putting out the dumpster fire of duolingo's creation something will get done.
Except for being annoying it is also really buggy. Sometimes when I complete a lesson, that percentage and the percentage of another skill goes up. It is really confusing. Luckily, while I am writing this, the app still shows the number of lessons completed. I don't for how long they will keep it that way though. I won't update the app for as long as I can. I literally use it just to keep track of my progress.
Now it automatically completed that other lesson because it kept increasing the percent. I guess their thought behinds are that the lesson I am doing implies that I understand what is taught in the other lesson. I have made my own learning schedule though where I go back to a lesson after a certain amount of days and this is really annoying since it messes everything up.
- 641
I noticed that it increased two different lessons at a time, too! Very annoying!
- 306
It's essential, ESSENTIAL for me to have the total number of lessons to organize my study. And the percentage without the total is simply USELESS. Duolingo, thanks for your hard work, but please, PLEASE, change this update. Thanks
- 1141
I've said this several times now in the past month or so, but why, every time I log onto the site every day, there's some change that drastically affects my learning?
In this case, after Crowns was implemented, I built lesson plans, two weeks out, of the number of lessons I was going to do in each skill for each language I'm currently working on. So... gonna have to chuck that out the window.
I saw someone mention that in some trees it's because you'll have to do each skill less times if you are doing well at it? And other comments say that it's affecting other skills (perhaps with some shared grammar or vocab?) Is this some weird way of adding back in something similar to Space Repetition (because... no, try again Duolingo)? Or another way to regulate XP or something?
Also, HelpfulDuo... where's the thread explaining this change?
- 412
Please please please! I like to do a number of lessons each day based on how many there are in the skill. Is there 25? Maybe I'll do 5 a day to get through it quickly. Are there 10? 2 a day will do.
Actually, mine still shows the '5/9'. But it also shows the percentage of the lesson that i've completed. It helps people visualize the ammount of work they have yet to complete for a particular skill set in 2 different ways. And it shows '1%' because one of the words in that skill set were covered in another. Hope this helps!
Gabrielle
- 102
I haven't seen this yet myself, but I was thinking along the same lines. They may be giving credit for some of the overlap between skills. When some people in the thread said they had lessons jump from 1/x to 40% or 50% that was the first thing I thought of. Whether or not that's the case remains to be seen.
I, myself, would vote for both. I like seeing how many lessons are available and how many I still need to finish before I move on. Percentages have their place, I'm sure, in the hearts of some people. Why not throw them a bone as well?
As far as implementing changes go - that's usually why you run a production and a development environment....
As I've said in one or two other places, I would actually be perfectly happy with both too. But not the percentages on their own!
There's nothing wrong with changes per se. The site would start to feel a little stale if nothing was ever changed. But making changes that are unnecessary and more detrimental than beneficial to users is not something to be encouraged.
This a big same from me. I have a hard time understanding just how big a fraction is (save for the obvious ones like 25% 50% and 75%) and it makes it really hard for me to know how much of a level is left for me. Having both like OP and others have said would be perfectly fine but just the % is not great.
- 317
I completely agree. Just got this tonight. With this change there's no way to know how many lessons are in a given skill without doing one first. Not helpful at all.
Also agree, I hate this change personally. If others like the change and find it helpful then then please give us an account setting to choose our preference one way or another.
If percentages are going to stick around in any form then at least calculate them correctly - 6 out of 12 lessons complete is not 51%!
- 194
Agreed. I would rather see my progress as a number. We could all see our progress as a "rough" percentage anyhow, by noting how far the coloured ring had moved around the central icon of a particular skill... that was more than enough maths for me.
- 396
I hate this change too. Please change it back. Knowing how many lessons were on the next topic down the tree often gave me some extra motivation to finish the topic I was on.
I fully agree - Duolingo - 1) please listen to your audience; 2) Please, please do some sort of consultation before just changing things that are working - AND DON'T NEED CHANGED.
Re the adverts, don't tell the organisations that are paying - but I totally ignore them. I could not tell you what any of them are about.
I also hope they reverse this change. Many changes have been good but this one makes it more unclear on how many lessons there is to do.
UGH! Just getting on Duo today and see the %-owl flew my way last night. No more helpful X/Y information; now just 22%. What does that mean? How is that helpful? I see the ring around my skill; which is more helpful than 7%. Misery loves company I've heard. Guess I'm part of the unhappy team now. :-(
- 501
Yes, show percentage and number of lessons. Only showing the percentage is annoying the heck out of me too!
This is confusing. Now i do not know how many lessons to complete in to achieve my XP goal. Before, I would complete say, 5 lessons to get 50xp and so on. Now, idk what to do
I agree this would be better to revert to the old fractional system which is much more useful for planning study effort based on time available.
- 1264
I just realized. One way I was still getting some of the shortcut benefit of testing out was to do a bunch of lessons up to within two modules of finishing the crown level, and then saving them for days when I was pressed for time or very tired, and it would be half the work of a normal day. And now I can’t do that anymore. It’s all just guesswork.
I know that probably Duolingo doesn’t have the resources to devote an entire R&D team to changing the site interface in ways that are designed inconvenience me personally and deliberately disrupt the way I learn, but it’s really starting to feel like it.
- 141
I've only learned percents on my third grade and in my opinion this concept is harder to comprehend than amounts of lessons. Very disappointed duolingo doesn't care about intellectual minorities!
I learned to tolerate brussel sprouts, but it took over 50 years. Please go back to the old way, or list both percentage and fraction.
I totally agree with you on this one. I am not at all active on this forum but I check it once in a while. Lately I've seen some changes in my User Experience and I wanted to know how others think of this totalitarian regime.
In regular life, I support freedom of choice at any level. I really liked the old design of DuoLingo and to be honest, the classic designs used to be one of the main reasons to keep coming back. The modernistic new looks are appalling to me and rather repel me than attract me to this site.
As I have been a web developer myself, why should Duo extrude regular users by enforcing a new design instead of making these new looks optional? The same holds for the % progress instead of #lessons. Allow for freedom of choice and let users decide what works for them.
Yes, please change this back. It's very annoying not being able to see in advance how many exercises are required to complete a new level, or having to guess how many remain based on a percentage.
- 274
Agreed. When I found Duo almost a year ago I was so ecstatic. Even though I thought it look a bit childish, the benefit of it was worth it and I over looked it, even got used to it. But with all the changes I am not enjoying Duo it is causing me stress. I do one lesson a day just to keep my streak in hopes and prayers they fix their problems.
Seriously, Duo. It's been like this all week, and I'm down to just doing the minimum to meet my streak goal. If this is an A/B test, it's not conducive to learning for me -- and I'm not seeing any more of your ads then either. (Test = Fail. Revert to # lessons please.)
The new update is absolutely the worst thing in life. I am so utterly dismayed that I am looking for a new method to use for my students to learn Spanish. This last udate totally derailed most of my students and made grading a NIGHTMARE. If Duolingo does not undo this new update, I will delete Duolingo. It was working fine ---- PLEASE JUST LEAVE IT ALONE.
If it ain't broke Duolingo, don't fix it. RowanM.1, you said it very well. Bring back the total number of lessons and the number completed, and if you must, Duolingo, add the percentage. This new change to percentage only is NOT at all helpful.
- 184
I understand completely, especially the xp ranks, for someone who uses duo lingo for new languages but also languages I'm currently at an above intermediate level in, its incredibly demotivating to get 20 xp for showing that I already know something. It values new people who take their time learning new content, over people that just want to skip the simple stuff and reach the level where they start being challenged. this is why I'm not starting my Spanish reverse tree any time soon as I will naturally complete every skill during the test and get what? 50 XP for the whole thing?
- 759
2019-06-13:
Recently, I found more confusing from % of levels.
When I just finish one level, I see the % is NOT zero, but some irregular number. And, Only those of level 5 are in full %; all other levels show some different %.
Therefore, I suspect that the % seems to be the TOTAL number of exercises DONE per the TOTAL number of exercises existing for this lesson. However, this is NOT true when I saw a very low % in a level 4 lesson.
What is the % ???? I am completed lost!
- 619
I just think the percentages are confusing and having used a tablet (no percentages) as well as a PC (percentages) over the past week or so I find it so much easier to know how I am progressing through the tree with '7/10' than 86%! Other than trying to teach us to do percentage calculations (without knowing the algorithm that sets them) in our heads I see no benefit. What ever is going on in the background just show the number of exercises done of the total as you have to do them all anyway!
- 460
I agree. As I am progressing through level 12 (just got switched in April 2019), it becomes more confusing, or shall we say unhelpful. On level 2, for some skills (when I have 0/5 completed) I start out at 50%, some at 36 %, some at 17%. For the same skills, the % changes from day to day e.g. a level 2 skill with 0/5 completed may be 47% one day and 50% the next. When I think I know how many skills are left in a level, the % may not change consistently - e.g. it may go up by 8% for each lesson done, then end up at 96%, so the last lesson goes up by 4%.
I am getting used to just looking on duome.eu for the number of lessons per skill. That is usually, but not always, an accurate workaround.
- 736
When you work on one skill, you also train on words included in earlier skills and that could earn percentages for you. And you might lose percentages if you do not train for a long time.
- 619
Yes but what is the point of percentages you still have to do all the exercises in a level!
- 736
It sometimes (but seldom) happens that work on a higher skill gives you a crown on a lower skill.
- 194
I just got this change today as well, and I am really not eager about it. I'm more irritated by the removal of the typed answer questions (really, clicking the words in the correct order is only time-consuming and not any difference from typing out the answer myself), but this percentage change is still really bad in my eyes.
Did the ability to type get removed on the website for you? That would be a lot worse than this cosmetic change. I really hope that's not permanent or site-wide.
- 418
You should see the option 'use keyboard' between the 'skip' and 'check' buttons when you get a typing exercise. It reverts to the word bank if you've logged out.
- 1275
Oh so that's what happened!
That confused the heck out of me. Yeah no i don't see the point in this, here's hoping they'll change it back.
I agree. This is super annoying and not helpful in anyway. I'm confused by the logic of this change. Just display both if you must use percentages. This is not helping my learning.
I view it as less helpful, too. Maybe a toggle between x/y lessons and x%? I always viewed seeing x/y complete as better than the percents.
I would like them to have some consistency between their various platforms. Iphone, browser, and windows app are all different in how they track things and how its presented to the user. The phone one seems to be the most updated one, with the windows app being vary vary basic and outdated.
- 117
I agree that this is a horrible change. The percentage means nothing and gives you no idea how much you have done and how much you have left to do. And planning is out the window. You may stop with only one or two lessons left instead of finishing the level and gaining a crown!!
Agreed, not a fan of the new changes. I didn't mind the recent changes made to French, in fact I quite liked it. Even though my progress all but vanished, it gave me the opportunity to re-drill the language. We all like to learn in our own ways.
However, with this recent change a lot of that earlier progress has returned. Now, not only does my tree look a mess because I have random percentages all the way down but it has deprived me of the chance to re-drill. I think I'm the only person bothered for this reason, but I am bothered by this change.
- 127
I agree wholeheartedly! I find the percentages wholly de-motivating and much prefer to know how many lessons I need to finish a given level. I am much more likely to push through if I know that the end is near. Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Please, Duolingo, either offer both options or put back the lesson-only format.
A horrendous change, completely nonsensical. I don't know how it is justified or what the reason could possibly be for even coming up with this change.
- 185
I don't really mind the new system, but it would be helpful if they'd show us how many lessons each level of a skill has.
I wonder if they might give us the sentences we've struggled with in earlier lessons again towards the end of the course (which would be way easier with the procentages than it would have been with the old version.
I agree with you. I may not feel as strongly about it, but I definitely preferred having it as a fraction than a percentage. I liked being able to tell right away how many lessons I had left. Now I can only see the progress slowly build with the percentage. It looks less impressive to me for some reason.
Yes, I absolutely hate this change. I like to keep pace so I have generally about the same number of lessons remaining on my current Lv. 0 course as I do on Lv. 1's of the group predecing, and there's no way to do that anymore. I am not one to complain about new website changes, given that I know that often things do need to change to make room for new features etc, but this is just flatly less functional -- it's not really that hard to calculate what % you're at if you've done 4/10 lessons. If I can use a website to teach myself languages I think I don't need help calculating percentages from single digits.
I absolutely agree with you, I HATE the new system!!! It's totally inconvenient! It's impossible to understand whether the new topic is difficult or not, and it is impossible to realize how much time do you need to complete it. PLEASE, give us our favourite old system back!
- 164
To please both worlds they could have made a setting option, or better, clicking on it could switch between the two options.
- 430
Havent seen this yet. Sounds really silly. XP cap though is extremely annoying.Soon the Health system will be introduced on Androids so then there's maybe not much point staying around anymore.
So sad because Duolinge really was great, but keeps changing for the worse in many ways.
My confusion is that on my iPhone it says Basics 1 Level 1/5 Lesson 1/4, my work phone which is android says Basics 1 Level 1/5 Lesson 0/4, and the website says Level 1/5 13% complete. It looks like I will be using my work phone to learn as it is the only one that knows I haven't tried level 2 of Basic 1 yet.
- 501
2019-05-02 I would give this 10—nay, 100 upvotes if I could. As the original poster implied, one could calculate his own percentage knowing lessons completed/needed. 1/2 or 10/20 = 50%, 1/3 or 3/9 = 33%, and so on. Even though I'm testing out of many skills, I'd still like to know how big the skill is.
(Maybe part of the reasoning behind this change was the fact that people were upset about missing out of 80 or 100 XP by testing out. Now that you don't know how many lessons you skipped, you don't know how many XP you didn't get.)
After reading more comments, it seems the % is intended to represent all the lessons from all the crown levels for that skill. This is silly. Why break it up into 5 levels, then lump it all together into one percentage? Get rid of the crowns, then.
- 118
I agree with you and am giving you 25 lingots to keep this conversation active.
- 162
I do have to wonder what they were trying to accomplish by implementing this change. I hope that they can take everyone's opinions into consideration and convert it back to how it was before, or as suggested, have both displaying together. It is a change which I see as unnecessary and unhelpful, and has upset many people. Not the best business strategy. I do have a hope that Duolingo will learn from this feedback and realize it was not the best decision to have made.
I do have a suspicion that perhaps Duolingo is working on more changes, in which the percentage-displaying will work a lot better than lesson-displaying. However, in such a case, I feel it would have made more sense to release these changes together, or at least told us about them beforehand. These surprises are rather hard to receive.
- 39
I am very unhappy about the recent change to percentages. I like to know how many lessons I have to do. Of course it is possible to work it out by noting the percentage before and after doing a lesson - but why should I have to waste time doing it for each topic? I want to know the number of lessons in a topic before I do the first one. It was better before the change.
Yea. New percentages are confusing. I just got a lesson up to 99% and still had one more set to do before leveling up the lesson? So I'll toss my vote in with bring back the old more understandable system back.
Luckily IOS is still by how many lessons. However, I would completely hate it too and dread that they will do it to the app. I like to know exactly how many lessons I have to do and the percentage instead would not inspire me at all. Like you said, if I wanted to know the percentage I would just do it in my head. I always like to know what I am in for before I start anything. How horrible. What Duolingo employee would even think this was a good idea? I’m now upset and I don’t even have it yet. They need to change it back or like you said put in addition to how many lessons there are.
It's still 0/10 for me, no percentages to be seen but I completely agree with your sentiment.
I am not as upset as you but I just wanted to say that it is AMAZING how many languages you do. I only do one and you have now inspired me to try some more out. THANK YOU :)
- 246
I have just discovered another problem with the percentages. Because they are rounded off, you can complete all the lessons of a level, and find that you have not completed the level, you are only at 99%! Today I had a unit that I was expecting to reach level 5 and turn gold after I completed the last lesson. But , no, I was only at 99% so had to do another lesson to reach level 5. That is just nuts!
This is so ridiculous, today I got to 100% and still needed to do another round before leveling up !!!!
- 759
2019-05-23: I see 304 comments following this post, and 702 up votes! It shows how many of us (duo users) really dislike this new function.
- 68
I agree !!! It's so annoying not knowing how many lessons I have done or how many I still need to do. I like to see my progress and a percentage gives you no idea because there could be a differant number of lessons required to complete each skill. I have no way of knowing that now.
- 619
I love Brussels sprouts just don't overcook them go for 'al dente' (which I just learnt is Italian not French!) as this avoids the sulphur smell/taste.
Anyway I digress! Unless there is some convoluted (AND useful) way of making top of the tree easy lessons suddenly become crowns because you have come across the words and phrases lower down the tree I'd take numbers over percentages any day.
Personally if this is the case I'd still rather do the simple top of the tree lessons myself as the practice is always good and sometimes you don't feel like doing complex grammar, tenses, phrases everyday.
- 312
I totally agree with....................................... RowanM.1PLUS . "Please, Duolingo, Reverse New Percentage Progress for Skills" ..........................................Enough said!
- 882
I agree !! Bring back the lesson count. The percentages do not motivate me at all, and they hide information. If I had done 10%, there is no way to tell if that means I have done 1 out of 10, 2 out of 20, or 10 out of 100 lessons. It makes a difference as to how I feel about my progress.
I assume all the trees have this layout, since it makes sense and is how German works.
Crown 0 = x Lessons.
Crown 1 = x lessons.
Crown 2 = x2 lessons.
Crown 3 = x 3 lessons.
Crown 4 = x5 lessons.
Each repetition lasts the number of lessons that crown 0 had. So if it had 4 lessons, crown 3 will have 12 lessons and repeat after 4 and 8 lessons for three total repetitions of the material.
- 142
Not all of the trees work like that. In some trees, like the new Spanish tree, it works like that for part of the tree but not for all of it.
It seems possible that this is the pattern for the newly designed modules, as in the recent Spanish and French expansions. But I'm pretty sure it's not the pattern elsewhere. In older material, Crown 1 almost always requires more lessons than Crown 0. My rule of thumb for Italian and German and the older Spanish/French modules has been 1-2-3-4-6, not 1-1-2-3-5, but that's just a rule of thumb. Also, there doesn't seem to be any periodicity to the material in the later crowns. My sense is that at the higher crowns all the new material does get introduced in the first third or fourth of the lessons, but after that it's largely unstructured review. (That's why I always do at least 1/4 of the lessons on any level before allowing myself to try to test out of the rest.)
Meanwhile, I second everybody else's complaint about the percentages. Before writing the last paragraph I checked my mostly-golden Italian tree to see if the total number of lessons for each skill was a multiple of 1+1+2+3+5=12, but that information is no longer available. All I can see is that I've done 100%. (sigh)
- 736
1-1-2-3-5 has been the pattern for alltrees that I have seen. But please note that now you also get percentages for easy skills when you implicitly exercise them while working on a harder skill.
Yes, but from what I have seen, it doesn't alter the number of lessons you have to do when you go back to that easier skill.
So let's say I'm doing a skill with ten lessons, but I've got 50% for it as a result of doing another skill or two after it. Do I get five lessons instead of ten? No, I still get the ten, but the percentage now adjusts until it's realigned with the number of lessons I've done.
Which, frankly, makes the "bonus percentages" completely pointless, a bit like this entire change from lesson numbers to percentages in the first place.
- 736
This is not my experience. And sometimes I get a crown when implicit training pushes a skill over the 100% border. But today I saw a new feature: Some percentages decrease, probably because it was some time since I trained that particular skill.
- 1264
If you test out of a skill, you used to get all of the points for that skill, but now you're limited to 20 XP.
I used to test out of languages I knew well on weekends, so that I could keep my XP consistent and still have a bit of a break. Now I have to spend a couple of hours a day, every day, whether I like it or not.
It makes perfect sense though. In the app people are competing with each other and a native speaker could simply complete a huge number of skills instantly.
Also, what's the point of keeping your XP consistent if you're not actually learning anything?
- 1264
The point was that I could take a break on the weekend. I’m not competing with anyone, and I still have to practice languages I know well in order to keep them current. I just wanted to have some kind of weekend, or a way to maintain during the heavy work weeks when I live on smoothies because I don’t even have time for proper meals. There used to be a way to do that, and I increased my daily limit in response, and then they took it away and now I’m struggling to keep up.
- 184
because for intermediate learners who may already know a lot of the basics, the xp limit only serves to be a demotivated aimed towards new learners, I understand why they did it partially, but I think it was a stupid thing to do
While I'm not thrilled about this change and I'd rather have back the old way (yes, I'm an unlucky person that's in the labrat group) I understand the reason and motivation on Duo's side to do that. There's a lot of criticism on sites like youtube and twitter about duolingo and the exact numbers got used again and again to compare different Duolingo courses and used to back up these argumentations. Without the exact numbers, there is no easy way to compare that anymore and there will clearly be less profound and backed up criticism on social media. If you have clear numbers out there, people will use them and quote them. Blizzard has stopped revealing subscriber numbers on wow too.
While I also think that replacing numbers with a vague percent is completely idiotic, here's at least a possible solution for knowing if you're have 4 or 40 lessons in a skill:
Check at what percentage you're at for a skill. Then do a lesson for it and check the percentage again. It's still super vague and I hate the idea as well, but at least this way you'll know if you're required to do a lot or a small few lessons.
- 1403
It looks like this change is a (possibly misguided) way to give us some credit for previous achievements. For instance, even though the new tree has a skill at level zero (purple), if I had previously completed the old French tree I am not really at level zero but receiving some credit for the previously covered material and that is why the percentage bar is partially complete on skills I haven't worked on yet. However, to get the next crown level still requires completing 4 lessons or 5 lessons or however many "new" lessons are assigned to that skill. I agree that the percentage does make it much harder to determine how many lessons are required to get the next crown. But in all fairness there have been a lot of users complaining bitterly that all their previous progress was "lost" and they were having to "start over", and that is now no longer the case. This is just recognition that even if you haven't been working on the skills on the new tree yet, you have been exposed to some of the material previously.
something they could of done without destroying the system by which people keep track of their progress and budget their time.
If they wanted to have the "circle bar" around the lesson reflect "% of content covered" but have the hover-over go back to showing the # lessons in the level, I would take that. Or even have the hover-over show me # lessons AND % covered content, whatever.
First, I thought like you. But it looks like practicing (using the "practice" button) increases the percentage of the skills (again). So there is now an easy way to practice the skills and words that need it most while increasing the crown levels. So I tend to actually like this update.
Not only practising, but doing lessons in a particular skill now results in an increase in the percentage for two previous skills. However, I am not a fan of this. It messes with my methodology. I want to drill myself thoroughly in each skill, especially in languages that are more difficult for me and also when my Crown level is still low (meaning I'm some way off really mastering that particular skill). Now it seems like the number of lessons for the next Crown level in some skills will be all over the place - not that I can even know how many lessons I'll be doing anyway until I've done the first one (because only then can I calculate the number from the percentage). So this still does not work for me, although it might make the rationale behind the change slightly clearer.
practices are not lessons.
What do you mean? The progress is in the lessons of the skills where you have at least level 1. And the percentage increases through practice. It`s the closest to the old SRS that it has been for a long time.
Edit: There has also been new material from the skills in the practice. So basically it looks like you can now just use the practice button after getting to level 1 in the skills (if you want to).
i do both general and targeted practice i frequently go back to previous lessons on the tree to refresh my memory. i know how many skills are in a particular lesson and if i did a horrible job i hit the little x at the top cancel the lesson and start over. lessons offer new skills, the practice goes over skills already addressed in the lessons. if i've done 15 of 25 lessons and i think i'm ready i can test out. the long and the short, lessons are for learning new skills, practice is for reinforcing skills that are acquired in a lesson. and quite frankly, i need to be the one that decides when i'm ready to move on to the next set of skills, i know better than duolingo where i'm having difficulty.
- 907
So with the new Spanish tree where the new skills have 4 lessons (well that's what the app shows) at level 0, I'm still scratching my head trying to work out exactly how I've done 14 or 18% of some of these when I know I've done none of them
DUO Programmers: Reverse this change please. PLEASE. I cannot say this enough times. Reverse it, or make it a user preference setting so learners can use the display method that best suits their approach to choosing lessons for the day. You're killing me with this.
Has anybody from Duolingo explained that there may be a real good reason for the %?
no. complaints and comments are being ignored.
No, there has been no explanation at all. And I would contend that even if there is a good reason intended by it, it is not doing me any good if I am so distracted by it that I am spending more time here in the forums than actually taking lessons. Which, since they show me ads here, MIGHT be the point, who knows?
when you look up contacting duolingo you find a good number of discussions and complaints with regard to not getting anywhere, not being able to find anyone who will help. one post does recommend using their facebook and twitter page to make complaints it also has thes link for a bug report. time to get off the forum that is being ignored and find way to actually be heard. here's the link to the bug report. https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
- 736
Maybe they give you credit for doing half of a lesson. Maybe lose percentage points when you solve a listening exercise by clicking Can’t listen now
That last one would be kind of lousy, since if I click “can’t listen now” it means I am somewhere where I literally cannot hear the lesson. When I click ‘can’t speak now’ it means I am somewhere I can’t speak aloud or on a device without a microphone. I would rather they give a different type of question in its place than penalize the user for it
- 736
Agree, but sometimes when I click it, it finishes the whole lesson even though I am only halfway through.
- 1009
I also vote for reversal. The new system is not informative and is unnecessary. Why is DL fixing something that was not broken???
- 736
Today I did a lesson under Food and got the logical percentage upgrade, but I also got an upgrade of Basics 1 from 98% to 100% and a crown.
- 118
Bringing this post back for discussion. Please if anyone in Duolingo programming land is listening. Get rid of the percent completion.
I wonder why this discussion isn't in popular discussions?... 703 people upvoted it...
Because this was a discussion a month ago by people in the A/B test group. As you can see they did not like it, but Duo rolled it out for all of us anyway.
(-.-)
- 965
I too am very disappointed by this change. It makes it far harder to know where we stand in a given tree. Knowing how many lessons I have to go is important information for me. I really hope that Duo changes back to the previous system.
- 254
This post is three weeks old? I only saw the change happen a few days ago.
Also, I find it extremely unhelpful as I like to do 1000xp in each language before I move onto the next one, as I am one of those with many on the go at once.
- 882
I agree !! Bring back the lesson count. The percentages do not motivate me at all, and they hide information. If I had done 10%, there is no way to tell if that means I have done 1 out of 10, 2 out of 20, or 10 out of 100 lessons. It makes a difference as to how I feel about my progress.
