Improved Norwegian Course: Overview and F.A.Q.
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The new version of the Norwegian course is now being A/B tested on new users. It’s been ten long months in the making, and I’m as excited as can be to finally get to share it with some of you!
First things first! I want to take a moment to thank fveldig for holding down the fort in the forum and Regney for tirelessly working through user reports, freeing up time for me to focus on the course. You’re the best!
Thanks also go to our three alpha testers, BafouillCharabia, Tranklements and Trofaste, who have been testing the new course, providing great feedback, and graciously putting up with my moving their skills around at least once a week - and to endless_sleeper for some last-minute feedback on the Tips & Notes.
Last but not least, thank you to my Incubator partner in crime for more than four years, Luke, for tricking me into starting a new tree version and then emigrating to Japan. I love you really. ;)
While the tree now looks quite different (SPOILER ALERT), the philosophy behind it is the same: We want to bring you a course that is fun and engaging, jam-packed with cheesy 80s hits, obscure film references, terrible puns, tongue-twisting alliterations, geeky indulgences, existential dread, trivia galore, and an obscene amount of sentences about Canadians and a certain chicken. If you end up learning some Norwegian in the process, then that’s of course a plus.
I kid, I kid… but only about the last part! We do want to teach you Norwegian, as well as we possibly can within the Duolingo format, and that is the reason why we embarked upon this tree versioning journey to begin with. About a year ago, Crown Levels were introduced, and with them came changes both to how Duo would present the content of our course to you, and, consequently, to how you would use the course. The old course version (Tree 3) was optimized for a format that no longer existed, and so we decided it was time to roll up our sleeves and make some serious changes.
The new course version (Tree 4) has shorter skills, with a maximum of five lessons, so that the higher crown levels won’t feel like such a slog. We have kept the old grammar skills, so that you can easily identify and practice the trickier concepts, but we’ve also added a generous number of new thematic skills, where we reinforce the grammar and sprinkle in some new vocabulary. We’ve also taken care to introduce difficult concepts a little more gently and thoroughly where possible. You should now be presented with a better introduction to the various prepositions and to the different possessive structures, as well as some common, yet confusing, phrases and expressions.
The new course includes over a hundred new image exercises, featuring some new illustrations made specifically for the Norwegian course, such as the snowy cabin, cheese slicer, winter hat, moose, reindeer, and polar lights. All the essentials! I’ve experimented with adding image exercises for more abstract concepts, whereas they were previously reserved mostly for concrete nouns, so I’m interested to see what you think of that approach.
The Tips & Notes have been revised and expanded upon, and now contain word lists for every skill in the new course. If grammar explanations aren’t your cup of tea, you’ll still want to check out the Tips & Notes for the thematic skills, as they tend to contain more cultural context and information about the specific vocabulary introduced.
Course Statistics
| Unit | New Course (Tree 4) | Old Course (Tree 3) |
|---|---|---|
| Skills | 172 | 117 |
| Lessons | 590 | 531 |
| Lexemes* | 3 600 | 3 428 |
| Sentences | 19 400+ | 14 666 |
| Image exercises | 633 | ~480 |
*These don’t necessarily represent lexemes in the linguistic sense, though many of them are. In the Incubator, the words we teach are organized into lexemes. A lexeme could be a single word, a phrase, or a collection of several words and/or phrases. Basically, it’s a chunk of language that we want to teach you.
Feedback & Changelog
If you’re among the lucky ones who already got the new course, please share any feedback you may have for us in this dedicated feedback thread: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/32196823
For those interested in the finer details of the new course, we’ve made our internal changelog available to you here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/32204363
F.A.Q.
How do I know if I have the new course? If your first skill is named INTRO, you have the new course. If your first skill is named BASICS, you’re in the control group and still on the old course.
What will happen to my progress?
For unchanged skills, you will keep your progress. For skills that have been renamed or had their vocabulary updated, your crown levels may be reset. However, you will still keep your total crown count, as a reflection of the work you put into the previous tree. Your tree should stay unlocked up until the skill you last completed, and all the knowledge you’ve gained is of course yours to keep. :)
What are those fancy blue dots?
The blue dots mark skills which have had lexemes added to them; they're there to alert you to new content. They'll disappear within a day or two, so take a screenshot or make a list if you want to keep that overview.
I’m an advanced learner, is there anything for me in the early tree?
While you’ll probably want to test out of the first checkpoint or two, there’s actually some new content to be found pretty early. I believe the first brand new word appears in the Chatting skill. We’ve also added more than 4 000(!) new sentences throughout the tree. Yup, you read that right: fire tusen nye setninger.
Can I opt into the tree test?
No, not without creating a new account and having some luck. Note that it's important for us to have a control group, to make sure that the new tree is actually teaching better. Of course, we think that it's better, but we still want to test it so that we can know that we're providing you with a kick-ass course and a definite improvement.
Can I opt out of the tree test?
A/B tests only provide meaningful statistics when the composition of the two test groups is fairly equal. While there is a workaround for opting out, we kindly ask that you help us test the new tree and make it as good as it can be.
How long will the test period be?
Our course has a relatively small user base, so it takes some time to get solid statistics. Unless the early numbers are overwhelmingly positive, it will likely take upward of 6 months. I’ll do my part to make sure you all get the new tree as quickly as possible, but the decision ultimately lies with Duo. I’ll let you know when we know more!
What happens if the new course doesn’t pass the A/B test?
Then I’ll go cry in a corner and then back to the drawing board, while you'll all go back to the old tree. Having said that, I’m not particularly worried that it’ll perform poorly. Actually, I have such high hopes for this new tree that I gave it its own HOPE skill, so it better deliver.
I think that should just about cover it, but if you have any questions you’re more than welcome to ask them in the comments below.
Have fun reclaiming your Norwegian owls!
173 Comments
Thank you for all your hard work! I seem to be in the control group, which is partly disappointing and also partly a relief. I look forward to seeing the new course when my turn comes.
Team, you've done a wonderful job! This will undoubtedly be one of the best courses here on Duolingo. #Congratulations!
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Congrats on the first rollout!! Hope your new 'baby' gets lots of enthusiastic response!
Loved the course description!! LOL.
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Kind of bummed that I am not to be apart of the half that's testing the new tree. Eagerly doing my lessons in anticipation.
If it's any consolation, I'm not in the test group either. Maybe Duo knows I need a break from my own tree. :')
What level does the Norsk Bokmål course take us to on the CEFR scale approximately?
Quoting myself from this thread:
While we have a redesigned course more or less ready to launch, it's not structured to correspond to CEFR levels as such. Of course, it does progress in a similar way, as it makes sense to learn the basics first and then build on those.
Our goal is to teach Norwegian as well as possible within the Duolingo format, and it is with that in mind that we've structured the course. The current tree should cover the grammar and vocabulary required for B1. Actually, it covers most of the B2 and C1 grammar as well.
However, that doesn't mean that you'll be able to pass a CEFR test at any of those levels, because Duolingo is better at teaching you to process language than to produce it. Without plenty of outside practice, you just wouldn't pass the oral exam, and you'd struggle with the listening part as well, as there's only one voice used for the audio here and a wealth of dialects in Norway. No amount of restructuring is going to fix that; you'll need good old conversation and listening practice. :)
Since you're already familiar with the course, you can compare it yourself: https://www.examenglish.com/CEFR/cefr_grammar.htm
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Guys! I love this Norwegian course, it is sometimes scary though. :) I practice every single day to have some progress. I just wanted to ask you if it’s possible to make stories in Norwegian like they exist in Spanish, Portuguese, French and German? I think users would appreciate it. It’s a really interesting activity! Thank you! :)
Got to watch out for the trolls! And the man behind the curtain.
Unfortunately, the story infrastructure has not been made available to us volunteers. I would love to play around with it. :)
I appreciate it a lot.I really do want to learn more Norsk in the future ;)
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I would really like to be on the new tree as fast as possible. I like this course a lot but the lessons with 18-20 levels with the same sentences over and over again feel like such a drag. I'm really glad to hear you're working on improving the course still. Thank you!
Bare hyggelig!
The last crown levels will still be rather lengthy, as that's how the framework is set up, but they will be shorter than before. Of course, you don't have to take the skills to level 5 if you don't want to or feel like you're getting something out of it. Do what works for you!
Seems like I started at the same time as the new tree. I can't compare it to the old one but I'm sure it can't be as good as this. It's hilarious, for one (I couldn't help myself and bursted out in laughter at "Bjørner har sykler" and "Bjørnen drikker øl"). And it's teaching language in a fun and easy way. I'm gonna cry in a corner, too, if they decide to drop it and go back to the old one. Don't take those tiny pictures away from me! :'D
I was about 3200 XP into the old version. I zeroed out for the new tree--because it had been a long time--and now, about 2000 XP in, I understand way more than I did before. The bite-sized chunks, the tips and notes that really apply to the unit at hand, all help make this an absolute model for how to construct/revise a language course here. Tusen takk!
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How did you manage to "zero out" and restart the course, dave.pretty? I am about 4300XP into the old course, but this new one looks like so much fun that I'm really tempted to start over just to try it! Not that Norwegian Tree3 isn't a great course already, because it is. :) I'd really prefer not to have to create a whole new account just to try to win the Great Norwegian Test Course Lottery, though ....
Also: interestingly, I've noticed that all of my Tips and Notes sections have the header "Tree4" on the vocab lists, even though the first skill on my tree being Basic would certainly seem to indicate that I have the old course. Does anyone have any idea why this would be? Or is this unrelated to the tree version?
The Tips & Notes are, unfortunately, shared between trees for skills that have the same name/ID. This means that we'll have an awkward phase where they're not 100% optimized for either tree, but I'll do another overhaul once (fingers crossed!) Tree 4 passes.
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I had to create a brand new account, with a different email address, to get the new course.
I would if I could, but I haven't quite figured out who I need to bribe yet. Maybe if I send some lutefisk to the Duolingo HQ...
Oh, I would if I could, Andy!
Consider yourself put on the list of people who want to be put on the list.
I dropped out of Duolingo about a year ago with a streak of ~950 days. It seems I returned at the perfect moment - I do not have the new tree yet, but will be checking regularly. New lessons are what I need to get motivated again.
Thank you for making this possible!
Katja! So good to see you here again. I hope life has been treating you well. I just went on a short vacation trip to Lofoten. Returned more tired than before, but many memories and beautiful views richer.
Can you believe we're two tree versions from Tree 2 already? I'll poke you when the test is expanded, so you can check if you managed to sneak in. :)
Thats an interesting comment MR Tattamin. Present thinking about learning languages is that it has to be interesting, in a personal way. So it is one's attitude to learning that is important, rather than the method used. Does that make sense? Duo (isnt for me) the be all and end of learning..rather just a drop-by asset. It might have actually done its job now..and I have moved on rather. Maybe like yourself one does, in the end, get somewhere, and hungry ants, Swedish salesmen and sadly Deliciae, too, can get left behind. Its the pathos of teaching..in the end the pupil goes off into the world and what is left is fond memories. Good luck. (find a penfriend..that worked for me).
good time to start using duolingo again... i keep telling myself to do it but i procrastinate too much and eventually forget... :/
The trick is to use Duolingo to procrastinate other things. Works for me, at least!
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Thank you very much for what you do for us. Your work is highly appreciated! Can't wait to have the new tree as I have started learning Norwegian just a few weeks ago and want to be even better in it from the beginning :)
Tusen takk!
Takk for meldingen! Jeg har faktisk planer om å få alt gull i norsk kurset deres!
Thanks for your work. I really like this course, no doubts! By the way, with the last Norwegian Constitution Day <3
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Gratulerer med den kjempegode jobben :) Dere prøver alltid å forbedre kurset og gir aldri opp, tusen takk :D
This tree looks amazing! Thank you for your dedication and hard work. I've been using this course ever since the first day it was released and your level of engagement and responsiveness to the community is exceptional.
Would you guys happen to have word lists for each skill in the new tree. I have a course on memrise that I'm planning on updating, and the changelog looks a bit chaotic.
Haha, a bit chaotic is a nice way of putting it. I appreciate that. Thank you for your generous compliments as well. :)
The new Tips & Notes contain word lists, and you can find those here:
https://www.duome.eu/tips/en/nb
Just search for "vocabulary" and that should bring you to the header of each list in turn. There are a couple of skills that don't have vocabulary lists because all of the words are mentioned in the tips tables, and the skills that exist in Tree 3 but not in Tree 4 also lack lists.
I can't guarantee that they're all 100% correct at the moment, as I still need to go over them one final time, but they're at a good 99% accuracy at least. If you check your Duo mail, I can report any inconsistencies I might find to you later on.
WOW, I wanted to try out the course for a while and now I'm seeing really how amazing the team is and how dedicated they are, your work is incredible, I am definitely going to give this course a proper go!
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Oh wow! I just discovered Duolinguo and have started on Norwegian. Looks like I'm on the testing arm of the test. I'm so excited to realise that I'm testing a new course! And I love the platform.
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I just realised that there are course notes on the website version of the course! There's no mention of these at all in the app, but they're a great help! Any idea why the app doesn't link to these?
I dont know Paul..you see I've not been put up into the top class. I am going to tell my Mum. Its so unfair!
Duolingo does not wish to port our Tips & Notes to the apps, which is a shame, but you can still access them on your phone using the browser version.
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Thanks; that's what I started doing as soon as I realised notes were available. A bit awkward to have to switch to the browser, but no big deal. Thank you for your work on this tree!
Are there new lessons on talking knowledgeably on Cross country skiing? Or "Click the microphone, and breath in, whilst saying Huff da"? Important Skills for us learners to master.
We considered releasing a standalone crash course in skiing, but there was just too much crashing and not enough skiing going on in the alpha version. In hindsight, I think we should have involved a qualified skiing instructor.
I believe that every Norwegian feels themselves a ski-running expert at certain times a year, not that they do it themselves.
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I really liked the shape of the new tree, it looks like a long DNA! Thank you guys, amazing! :D :D :D
So excited for this! So close to finishing the current tree, and because I’m not in the testing group, I’ll try to gold the most as I can before the new tree comes out for everyone. :) Tusen takk Norwegian team for all the dedication to this wonderful course!
(P.S. also excited for all the new pop culture references. Those always add so much charm and fun to the course!)
I'm guessing all the best students are on the old course structure - I'm only a few weeks into it but it is a lot of fun :)
Since most of the updates wee from a couple of months ago, I was just checking to see how the testing is going?! Any news?
I am fine with being patient and working through the old tree, but am also very excited to see the expanded vocabulary and new structure once it rolls out to us all.
Hei!
I can tell you what I know, which is that the numbers I've been shown thus far have been positive. Given that the positive trend continues, we may expect to see the test expanded to 50% of all users in early September and to 100% of all users in mid December.
Ultimately, I'm neither the one making the decisions or flipping the switch, so I'll be impatiently waiting with the rest of you.
Thank you for the response. i'm sorry I didn't see it a bit earlier. I'm glad to hear the response is so positive. I have liked the old tree a lot but think breaking up some of the longer tasks sounds really good.
Much luck with it!
Aww, damn. I started Duolingo Norwegian on the 24/5 and ended up in the control group. :(:( First time visiting the forums and find out there is a new course! I'm enjoying learning Norwegian on Tree 3. I've found it relatively easy to learn though I feel as though going from Def. Plur. to Present skill has stepped it up from low gear into high. Really struggling to remember any of the new words so just have to keep at it till it sticks. Looking forward to seeing the new course. :)
Velkommen!
You're not wrong: In the skills leading up to the Present skill you're often learning new forms of the same noun; it's a more gentle introduction to the vocabulary itself, allowing you to focus on all the new grammar. In the Present skill (old tree), however, it's all new verbs you haven't seen before.
The new tree makes that transition a little smoother, so I hope you get to compare the approaches later on, but I still think additional tools and learning techniques like the ones mentioned by your fellow learners here can be very helpful.
Lykke til videre! :)
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I've found that a good flashcard app is a great addition to Duolingo in order to help drill vocabulary. Duolingo themselves have a little app for this, with a matching website:
https://tinycards.duolingo.com/
I've found that's it's quite limited, though. Another option is Quizlet, which is slightly more flexible. Personally, I think there's a big gap here, and since I'm a Software Engineer, I'm planning my own app :)
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It depends for everyone, but I personally write everything on paper, and it really helps me. It is forcing me to slow down, to take my time, and to look at the words carefully. It’s also useful because I often go to places where I can’t rely on technology, but where I have time to review my notebooks.
I'm a big fan of pen and paper as well! The process of writing things down is proven to aid your memory, even if you never look at that page again.
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Yes, at least for some people! When I had a test at school, I was reviewing by making a cheat-sheet (that I was never actually using during the tests). Forcing myself to put the whole lesson on a tiny paper meant choosing a few keywords that would be enough to remember the rest. And then I just had to remember those few.
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Ostehøvel :D I hope I will see the new content quite soon, it will be very interesting. You said it might take around six months? Then maybe I will challenge myself to finish the old tree before :) Thank you for your hard work! It’s always a pleasure to learn from this course.
Bare hyggelig!
That's my guesstimate for it being released to all users, yes, but testing on 50% of all users will start before that (I hope!). You never really know in Duoland. :)
I protest! My course(s) are the best! :p
Although I am responsible for a few of the sentences (if anyone wonders where on earth the contributors got the ideas for the weirdest sentences, they're probably my fault), so maybe I will allow it the title after all. Having skills such as Dessert, Bugs, Music, and Language certainly deserves a good deal of credit.
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I really think that both the Swedish and Norwegian courses should have a skill near the beginning dedicated to the use of cheese-slicers, just to get all those sentences over with, else people will get the impression that all Scandinavians are monomaniacally obsessed with them...
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Learning how to use that thing was a pivotal moment in my life. I never felt more like a stupid American than when I was stabbing a block of cheese in front of my GFs parents during my first day in Sweden.
Yes, Americans have trouble with the cheese slicer. I have seen that many times, don't feel bad.
What? I've used a cheese slicer practically my entire life. Maybe it's a regional thing?
You're implying that we're not? A cheese slicing skill would be a fine addition to the course though. Definitely taking that under consideration for Tree 5.
Did you know that there's a different technique to slicing round blocks of brunost? You have to be careful not to make them crumble at the edges, especially if dealing with one of the darker varieties of brunost.
Not quite sure how to work that into the course yet, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.
Hi, these are good news for me because i'm a beginner student of bokmal and this could improve a lot the way that I talk and don't sound weird in conversations with norsk people. Thank you very much.
Awesome thank you! Would you guys please make the notes and tips available on the Duolingo Android application? I use the application more often.
If it were up to me, they'd already be there. Unfortunately, Duolingo has deemed our Tips & Notes unfit for the apps.
The good news is that you can still access the tips by using the browser version of Duolingo on your mobile.
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That is such a shame. I often refer to your notes and tips and they are extremely well written and invaluable.
I have two questions, if it doesn't pass the AB testing, will it be removed from the users that did get it in the first place? And the second is, if I wasn't picked to participate in the new tree and the AB test turns to be positive and it is accepted, will everyone, including old users who did not get it in the first place like me, get it?
Yes on both accounts; once the A/B test is completed, all "old" users will be moved to the victorious tree version.
If the A/B test is inconclusive, as it often can be for smaller courses, then the new tree usually gets the benefit of the doubt.
I am really looking forward to the new tree. I always welcome the chance to revisit Norwegian. I was almost sorry when I recaught my owl the last time he strayed. By the time it is released I should have recaptured my chouette and be ready and waiting.
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Will the "Tips & Notes" section be available on the app as well? That's one thing I really miss.
No, I'm afraid you'll have to access them through your mobile browser like before. They are only made available on the web version of Duo.
The third party site duome also cashes the Tips & Notes and makes them available as a single scrollable document, though it shows the notes from both trees, making for a lot of duplicate entries: https://www.duome.eu/tips/en/nb
I would like little more than for the notes to appear in the apps, but that's out of my hands. I just write them. :)
Thank you so much for the course, it is really fun and a bit crazy a lot of the time lol
I just wanted to suggest that it would be really helpful if the progress tests pointed us in a more specific direction of what we needed to work on out of the already unlocked skills.
I am going to do the Bergens test next week (because I need it to begin University education here) and it would have been cool to be able to get down to the more complicated Norwegian near the bottom without working my way through every unit as I am doing - although it is educational! but specific things to practice for the Bergens test would be great. Both of these things could be part of the plus membership (which I have).
I really think that by giving feedback and pointing us in the right direction of what we need to practice will only enhance our learning. There is a lot of content per bubble to practice and get it right which is awesome :)
Thanks again!
Bare hyggelig!
I agree that it would be helpful to get more feedback from the progress tests, but that's not something I can influence. You could suggest it in the general Duolingo forum, where the staff might read it.
Lykke til på Bergenstesten! Dette klarer du! :)
tusen takk! Jeg håper jeg klarer det. Har ikke lært grammatikken før nå og det er kjempe slitsomt lol må stå på!
Also I am having problems with the hearing tasks in the progress tests on the mac...no sound comes out XD
From the F.A.Q. section:
What will happen to my progress?
For unchanged skills, you will keep your progress. For skills that have been renamed or had their vocabulary updated, your crown levels may be reset. However, you will still keep your total crown count, as a reflection of the work you put into the previous tree. Your tree should stay unlocked up until the skill you last completed, and all the knowledge you’ve gained is of course yours to keep. :)
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Hello everyone! my mother languaje is Spanish and i am confused about the trees. I would like to get the new course but i dont know how it works and im afraid of loosing my lessons. Is there someone that could explain it in spanish, please? Alguien podría explicarlo en español, por favor? i dont want to screw up it. Tanks!!
Cuando reciba el nuevo curso, el nivel de coronas de las unidades modificadas pueden restablecerse. Aún conservará las coronas que ya ganó, y todas las unidades que ya ha alcanzado permanecerán abiertas.
No tienes que preocuparte por hacer nada en particular; Un día, el curso estará allí y luego podrá comenzar a aprender el nuevo contenido.
Por favor corrige mi español. ¡Estoy aprendiendo también! :)
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Muchas gracias por la explicación, Deliciae, me ha quedad muy claro. Esperaré al nuevo curso entonces.
Tu español es estupendo, enhorabuena! Sólo podría señalar el detalle de que has mezclado los pronombres personales, has empezado hablándome de usted, que gramaticalmente es la tercera persona del singular, pero semánticamente es segunda persona porque te diriges a mí (cuando [usted] reciba el nuevo curso, Aún conservará [usted] las coronas, las unidades que [usted] ya ha alcanzado), y después has pasado a hablarme de tú (se lle llama "tutear"), segunda persona del sigular ([tú] no tienes que preocuparte, por favor corrige [tú] mi español). Puede resultar confuso porque en españa usamos "usted" como respeto y cortesía (a un desconocido, a un superior), y tuteamos para crear un ambiente cercano, familiar y de confianza (sería lo correcto para usar en un foro como este), sin embargo en sudamérica usan siempre "usted" incluso con los familiares. Cualquier forma que elijas, formal o cercana, es correcta mientras no se mezclen en el mismo mensaje.
Tu mensaje escrito de manera formal quedaría así: Cuando reciba el nuevo curso, el nivel de coronas de las unidades modificadas pueden restablecerse. Aún conservará las coronas que ya ganó, y todas las unidades que ya ha alcanzado permanecerán abiertas. No tiene que preocuparse por hacer nada en particular; Un día, el curso estará allí y luego podrá comenzar a aprender el nuevo contenido. Por favor corrija mi español. ¡Estoy aprendiendo también! :)
Si escoges usar el tuteo, sería así: Cuando recibas el nuevo curso, el nivel de coronas de las unidades modificadas pueden restablecerse. Aún conservarás las coronas que ya ganaste, y todas las unidades que ya has alcanzado permanecerán abiertas. No tienes que preocuparte por hacer nada en particular; Un día, el curso estará allí y luego podrás comenzar a aprender el nuevo contenido. Por favor corrige mi español. ¡Estoy aprendiendo también! :)
https://www.livinglanguage.com/community/discussion/81/tu-o-usted-usted-o-tu
Espero que la explicación te haya ayudado. Me alegro mucho de ser hispanohablante, porque es un idioma muy complicado! Un abrazo! :-)
Huh, a few insignificant comments and I am mentioned in dispatches? Are you trying to rope me in, Linn? O:)
Thanks anyway! ^_^
Kudos to you and the whole NO team! <3
Trying? Don't pretend I haven't already succeeded. ;)
And don't sell yourself short either, the error you caught in the notes for the Objective Pronouns skill was anything but insignificant.
As always: Bare hyggelig!
If I reset or remove my progress on the Norwegian course, do I have the chance to get the new update? Or do I have to create a new account? I'm very excited to try it and have been reading all of your posts in anticipation since I started.
Hmm, I'm pretty sure resetting the progress won't do it, but removing and readding might. Since I've never heard of that used as a method I'm leaning toward a no for that as well, but I can do a quick test on my own account and get back to you.
Nope, 4/4 for the old course. Unless I just had terrible luck, a new account is the way to go if you can't wait.
Alright, thanks so much! Looks like I'm getting a new account. I really appreciate all the hard work and effort you put into this! I'm really enjoying learning Norwegian.
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Well.. I'm still in the control group. How could I get to the new course? Looking forward to keeping learning Norsk!
This course is really well organized and fluid and way more practical than the Danish tree ( krabben overvejer det! hvor er dine seriøse sakse? come on!!) it is great thank you all the way from Iran :))
Thank you for your hard work on the course! I just started studying Norwegian a couple days ago after learning I will be visiting Norway next spring! It seems I'm in the old course...which is fine because it means I'll have to review a lot once the new course is released. It's kind of amazing how much you can learn in just a few days of studying an entirely new foreign language. Cheers!
As others have asked, is there any more recent news on the progress of the testing of the new tree? Thank you for your efforts.
three questions:
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I started the course again yesterday, I deleted what I did before and started again. How do I know whether I have the old or the new tree?
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I did the next lesson in the tree and the previous one got also an upgrade the more I did in the newer lesson, should it be like that?
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Where on Tinycards can I train the trees vocab?
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If your first skill is named Intro, you have the new course.
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I'm assuming by lessons you mean skills. No, it should not be like that. You can report it as a bug here: https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
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There is no official companion course on Tinycards, but I believe there are some user-made decks for Tree 3 at least. You could always make your own for the new Tree 4 vocabulary.
This is all so amazing, but will grammar notes ever be available on mobile? That would revolutionize my ability to study.
You can access them through your mobile browser, but not in the apps.
It doesn't look like the current notes will ever be made available as an in-app feature, unfortunately.
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I love the Norwegian course (but not sure about the early obsession with elephants). I must be on the old course, but something changed in the formatting recently. I can no longer see the entire word bank when it's a bigger word bank. This has been really frustrating. I can't scroll to see it, it's simple too far down. I have a wide screen on my MacBook, but it might be shorter from top to bottom. I can't make the screen big enough on my computer to see the whole word bank on those items. I wish there was a scroll option OR that the bottom chunk (that says "skip" and "check") could be shortened. Not sure why this changed on me?
That's an interesting problem. But entirely confirmatory with my adage that #Technology will always, sometime, let you down#. Changes in technology..and they are sadly usually arbitrary changes, are frequently a backward step. As Powerpoint, Word, Google, Windows10..and arguably Boeing Airplane users are all finding out. Duo works. They really need not mess with it at all. Maybe a parallel, slightly harder, version exactly the same in use and format. Call it 'Duo Medium'. And then even 'Full Strength Duo'
You can take a screenshot and report this as a bug:
https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Duo is always testing and changing things about the UI, with various degrees of success across platforms, browsers, screen resolutions, etc.
While waiting for a fix, you can try zooming out. That seems to do the trick.
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You could try zooming out the page in your browser. If you can't see a button for this, try the key combination ⌘ and - (minus), or Ctrl and -.
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I do have a request/feedback regarding this course. I am on the old course, so hopefully this has been fixed in the new upcoming course. If not, please consider making the changes I'm suggesting.
I think you spend entirely too much time on words that do not see daily use (turtle, elephant, apple, strawberry) and then dump too many new words on learners at once--2 dozen in the present tense lessons and I haven't counted how many in the location lessons. I think it would help learners of the language to see new words in smaller numbers earlier on in the lessons than to load them down with new words after dozens of the same rote memorization sentences using words that don't see daily use.
For instance, you have the words meat and chicken but not beef or pork, only the general word vegetables, and IMO way too many sentences about vegetarians and strawberries.
I'm not a language newbie. I studied Russian for 2 years in school, and I've dabbled in other languages here on Duo and elsewhere, so it's not an issue of me being unable to learn a language. I just think your rate of feeding new words and words that see daily use could use adjustment.
Thanks for reading.
Learning a new language isn't like making a Porche ..Carefully machining perfection everywhere...it's more like walking to Moscow. Sometimes you are going to go up the wrong road. Sometimes you wonder why you don't just take the plane. The first month's view looks almost like the third month's view. ..trees everywhere. But you keep going trusting the sign posts and those who walked before and who help you. Sometimes for fun one walks backwards, or goes on a detour to see the mountain view. But its all part of the journey. Some run all the way and do it in record times..others enjoy the walk and even make a holiday of it. Seems to me that Duolingo watch you walking from space. They try to keep it fun..but in the end you are the one doing it. And if you just keep going, whatever comes your way..however many strange words that you might not always need, you will get there. And that's OK for me.
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Just to say that, where I am in Norway, being able to speak about strawberries is vital. Like, really.
I could not agree more..One does not know when they will come in handy. I heard 'turtle' one time and it jumped out at me. And another time 'telephone salesman' and suddenly burst out laughing...."Hva hendte Andy... Hvorfor ler du??" they asked "Jeg kan ikke begynne å forklare" I said back.
I think they’ve tried to solve this by having shorter (fewer sentences/words) and way more lessons. I’m on the old course too but I’ve read through this entire thread.
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I'm on the new course. I think they must have improved this considerably: turtles and elephants have not appeared at all, strawberries appear only very rarely after the first couple of lessons, and apples appear at a frequency that seems justifiable to me. There are also very few lessons that introduce enough words to make me feel overwhelmed. But I have started to use a flashcard app to help me keep vocabulary fresh and drill words that I struggle with.
turtle, elephant, apple, strawberry
I like to learn the words for common animals or fruit :)
Hopefully they will still appear in the new tree, though maybe not as frequent as before.
The present tense skill was the hardest one for me, with all the new vocabulary. But this should be improved in the new tree (which I don't have yet) - comment from Deliciae:
... In the Present skill (old tree), however, it's all new verbs you haven't seen before.
The new tree makes that transition a little smoother ...
Thank you, Sara! Consider it fixed. :)
You can use this thread in the future: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/32196823
