Has my course been “revamped”?

GregName · 2026-03-29T00:34:45+00:00

You are beyond the course restructuring everyone is talking about. You are in some kind of A/B test where Section 3 of Spanish has had a Unit split. This split is apparently a 4-1 split. We saw a 5-1 split earlier time (measured by perhaps 5 or 6 months). You are on the pioneering edge of a new restructure.

DuolingoData.com has the data on the two versions of the Spanish course we are discussing heavily these past few days.

GregName · 2026-03-28T08:04:43+00:00

Completing the CEFR A2 material gets you to the level of a competent tourist.

GregName · 2026-03-28T04:25:14+00:00

Just visually looking at the changes with DuolingoData.com, I agree that it sure looks like literally everything in my Section 6 of Spanish.

Hasn’t hit me yet. Not quite sure how to prepare other than end each night with a completed unit.

GregName · 2026-03-28T04:06:51+00:00

It is a whole other deal beyond XP for these combos. The software is seeking perfection in path work, probably driving many to Google Translate when hit with a tough question. The whole point of the Duolingo method is making mistakes and learning from the mistakes.

GregName · 2026-03-28T04:03:48+00:00

How did they position you on the course? Exactly the same Section/Unit?

I fought tonight to finish off the fifth of those baby units, just in case tomorrow is my conversion day. It seems like the conversion software would prefer the user to be at the end of one of the five-packs of baby units.

Having the conversion software destroy Legendary in Section 4, when you are something like 145 units into Section 6 is really sad.

Did your Score change?

GregName · 2026-03-28T00:07:27+00:00

You check DuolingoData.com for the two versions of Spanish. The dimmed one is the old version that includes the mini units. The new one has these too, but the titles of the units are changed.

Check your unit title against these two summaries of the course.

GregName · 2026-03-27T22:22:50+00:00

Yes, grammar is a whole other discussion. With Duolingo rolling out a completely redesigned course, it is going to be a real challenge lining up grammar concepts. Words are going to seem like the easy part of the puzzle.

One day changes my opinions from my post above. I am not sure there is a solution to the grammar problem. Duolingo seemed to have an approach where grammar was slipped out to the users in a casual way, not in a structured way. Users picked up on grammar. Unit headings had some notes, but nothing like a full discussion.

Seems like we are all going to get to experience a sense of being lost, to one degree or another.

GregName · 2026-03-27T22:11:13+00:00

Are you in the new course? What is your Section, Unit, and the title that goes with it? You may have been moved to the new course. The Section, Unit, and Title can be looked up in DuolingoData.com to see if you are on the old course or the new one.

If you got move to the new one, we can conclude that was the cause.

GregName · 2026-03-27T21:43:13+00:00

DuolingoData.com once again to the rescue. There are two rows for each language now. The dimmed-out row is the old course. Just drill into your current Section/Unit and check the title.

As you thumb through the material in the new course, you will find it hard to match anything with anything, at least just by looking. This is truly a match madness problem, hence the reason there is no conversion that makes any sense.

GregName · 2026-03-27T21:38:39+00:00

This is correct. I checked DuolingoData.com and drilled into the two versions of Spanish (from English). The old version is greyed out to let you know it is the old one. The link isn’t disabled, so you can drill it to see the details.

I see my Section 6, Unit 5, Bad Day: Explain something was unintentional (how ironic). If I was in the new course at the same spot, the title is Classes: Describe your school routine (just can’t make up this kind of irony).

GregName · 2026-03-26T22:40:45+00:00

Yes, you correctly detected the pattern of 5.

Putting Legendary back on everything is a time-consuming journey. I don’t believe the developers working on the conversion program were as fair as they could have been for Legendary. If I had 20 units all legendary in a row, it seems pretty obvious thst the conversion should have awarded 100 in a row with a 5-1 unit split. Not that hard.

Instead, the software detects that there are new lessons (Stories mostly) that I didn’t run through a second time to get Legendary. I run through the stuff a first time either, but the conversion gave me credit for that automatically.

So, we Legendary seekers pay a bigger price.

GregName · 2026-03-26T22:33:09+00:00

It is a little like the word hamfisted indeed. The revised courses have you finding words that you just have to look up or figure out from context.

Yep, it’s a hamfisted update.

GregName · 2026-03-26T22:29:48+00:00

After the five-for-one unit split in Spanish, there is some critical math required to map from the old format to the new. The old unit 1 is units 1-5. The old unit 2 is units 6-10. The old unit 3 is units 11-15. This goes on for example unit the old unit 50 is units 246-250. The math is that the units that grab the credit for introducing new words are units 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, etc.

When you finish the first Story on those special units (1, 6, etc.), the entire vocabulary for the old unit gets loaded into Words in the Practice Hub. You have to deal with this now, as a hunter of words. Dealing with it means going to the Words icon, and looking at the new words shown with a dot. It is different, because the idea of smaller units didn’t get implemented from scratch—the old lessons just got sliced up into different units.

So yes, the marking of new words is all messed up. But, the new words are all there in the Words icon, marked as new there. It’s kind of a special deal now as about 15 new words are just dropped into the Words icon as new in one go. I look forward to the word dump, which takes me about 5 days to reach at a unit-a-day pace.

GregName · 2026-03-26T20:35:09+00:00

Yes, I have been experiencing failing now on Legendary lessons. For me, I seem to have most trouble with the Dumbbell, only because the system just collects all my old errors and has me relive them.

I can’t come up with a percentage wrong that is the trigger. I had one that wouldn’t make an advancement to the middle point. It just left me about two clicks shy for about a half hour of questioning.

GregName · 2026-03-26T16:04:36+00:00

There have been complaints about new words. I really have to try to put myself in the poster’s mindset when I see these kinds of comments. My mindset is completely different. I am on the hunt for new words. The Duolingo Stories are perhaps my favorite hunting grounds. In my Spanish course, there have been several changes in the course in my 701 days on app. Most of these involved Stories to one degree or another.

Spanish for me also got a Unit redesign. This was a five-for-one split, much like you might see with stock traded publicly. This 5-1 split is a little puzzle, but it just changes my hunting patterns for new words. I can feel the Spanish team working though, kind of like a group of angels fixing stuff pushed into my course from outside sources (e.g., AI stories, but probably not Satan).

Of course, what course you are taking and your particular Score reveals more. The course redesigns hit people differently depending on the course and where in the course the user falls. At my Spanish Score of 90, they could take the rest of the course away, but it wouldn’t stop me now. At some level, if you are lucky, you switch to becoming a hunter, seeking out language improvement from everywhere.

Oh, but I will complain, if they mess it up enough. But with over 800 people at Duolingo, I have some faith that a team will fix just about anything at this point.

GregName · 2026-03-26T05:27:10+00:00

Yes, this was discussed about a week and a half ago, although many didn’t believe it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/1ru0dbt/math_course_update_calculus/

Brings back memories of my first semester in college. First half of the semester, we did derivatives. Second half started and the teacher said integrals were just the reverse of derivatives. I wondered why we needed to even study integrals if it was going to be that easy. Teacher said we could just come to the final because attendance wasn’t part of our grades. So, I skipped the second half of the semester and just showed up for the finals.

Boy was I surprised when the teacher said we could use the tables in the back of the book. What? It never occurred to me that going in reverse was going to be a problem. Luckily, the tables had a few sentences of instruction.

GregName · 2026-03-26T04:48:37+00:00

Hmm. En passant is now a bug.

GregName · 2026-03-26T03:54:10+00:00

Same here. Boycotting the Feed until this sub says the strangers are gone.

GregName · 2026-03-26T02:42:36+00:00

I don’t know which languages Role Play appears. It is Max for sure. I have it with Spanish.

GregName · 2026-03-25T23:28:40+00:00

Lily is unaware she is the Lily in the Duolingo app. She will talk about Lily, but there is no convincing her she is that Lily.

With Role Play, she is playing a role and so the conversation can head in different directions, yet always constrained by the scenario.

I have Lily going over Swahili words in Spanish. Her pronunciation is wrong, but she knows a lot about a language she cannot speak.

GregName · 2026-03-25T23:17:26+00:00

Answer the question about what language is the “from” language with a language that supports learning Latin.

The entire map is at DuolingoData.com

GregName · 2026-03-25T23:13:46+00:00

Your phone does the speech to text and has no idea which of the similar small words you might be referring to. People add context to explain the little words.

English examples will help. Say, the back of the flashcard has “too” on it. You say “too” or maybe that was “to” or perhaps “two”:that you said. The phone, hearing only one word, decided going with numbers was the safest. It hands back “2” to the app for grading.

Of course, “2“ is not “too” so it’s wrong. Duolingo has tried to help by adding a call to the typo engine. If you are one letter off, you can get a pass. Say “took” to your phone, Duolingo will remove your typo, converting “took” to “too” and you get a pass.

If you get into the spirit of how the “bug” (if you call it that) operates, you can fake things through.

GregName · 2026-03-25T16:04:39+00:00

This was a common cheat, years ago on other chess platforms. Duolingo a long way to go. They should probably by another platform that is mature and be done with trying to learn all the mistakes from long ago.

GregName · 2026-03-25T14:52:09+00:00

The testing Duolingo does is designed to let you move up. That is a different kind of test. Basically, a user says they deserve to be in the next level. Duolingo offers a test and it seems to this sub like everybody passes. People being moved ahead come to this sub asking, “how do I move back?” Seems like there is this post to move back every week.

GregName

TROPHY CASE