Lianne wrote:So I got the new Duolingo tree for French, which apparently has been gradually rolled out to people for quite some time. I'm not sure how I feel about it. A cursory glance suggests that more of the skills are based around vocabulary topics rather than grammatical concepts, which I'm not sure I like at all. The worst result seems to be that the discussions are all new? Every time I clicked on the discussion link for a sentence before, there were intelligent discussions, with very helpful mods clarifying grammar points, and you could really learn a lot from reading them. Now, every time I go to the discussion I find dozens of comments like "why are the words switched around????" and "what's the difference between le and la??". So, less helpful.
On the upside, Duolingo-wise, the Klingon course now has some audio!! Duolingo finally made it possible for the small courses to add their own audio, so slowly but surely they're adding it to sentences. This, combined with the fact that I'm currently watching Star Trek: Discovery (which has WAY more Klingon language in it than any previous Star Trek!) (and which I'm in love with), has renewed my interest in studying Klingon again.
As I mentioned in my last post in my own log, I deleted my Duolingo account and the new French tree--and the several months of drama leading up to its site-wide release--was a big part of why. The new course is only aimed at A1-A2 vocabulary, and teaches much less grammar than the previous volunteer-made trees, which had been aimed to get learners close to B2 by foucsing on grammar and less of vocabulary. While I personally prefer the latter design and the previous trees, my real beefs with the new tree is 1) it doesn't teach a long-time Duolingo French learner like myself anything new and 2) Duolingo has treated the volunteer French team, whom many of us long-time users have grown to really respect and appreciate, like garbage during this whole deal.
The first point is pretty cut and dry--I don't see any point in investing time in the new tree so bye bye. If the new tree helps other learners here, great, but yeah, not for me. The second point is more touchy, as a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff isn't known publicly, but it's clear that when Duolingo first rolled out the new staff-made tree last year, the volunteer French mods disappeared from the forum. A couple showed up to inform people that they couldn't help with the new tree (the impression they left on many of us was they were told it was hands-off for them, although that was never explicitly said). Later, Sitesurf mentioned they would begin locking and removing old, outdated threads (this is why the discussions have changed dramatically--my guess is ALL discussions for the older versions of the tree, along with the old mods' very helpful input, has since been purged). Then Sitesurf and another mod put together the Notes and Tips list (which I suspect they were asked to do by Duolingo). But beyond that, our beloved, highly knowledgeable and helpful volunteer French team--some of whom, like Sitesurf, has been there since the beginning, providing much needed continuity--ceased to be a presence on Duolingo and I cannot tell you how disappointing that is for me. Some of those people were beyond qualified for the ever lowering level Duolingo has been aspiring to in recent years, and I learned a lot from comments they made in the discussions that went well beyond the usual textbook explanations. Without those individuals around, Duolingo has ceased being an unique French resource and quite frankly, I saw no reason to continue including Duolingo as part of my French studies.
So yeah, there is a reason you're seeing a distinct drop in quality in the discussions. And really, this is what Duolingo wants--they want to attract beginners rather than progressing learners, because they're the largest portion of the language learner population. Sadly, Duolingo doesn't seem to have much planned to support these beginners in their progress, like getting new, qualified French mods to answer their newbies questions about word order, grammatical gender and the like. I suspect they expect other users to fill that void.
As far as I know the English for French speakers tree has not been touched and it should still have content that mirrors the older French trees, if that interests you. Much of these new "CEFR conforming" changes are for courses aimed at English-medium schools, like French, German and Spanish for English speakers. Given how much work it has taken Duolingo just to get things sorted with the mess they made with the French course, I doubt they will be touching the older English for X speaker courses any time soon.
By the way, I'm watching ST: Discovery too, and the abundant use of Klingon in the series is interesting. I can't say it's inspired me to pick up Klingon (I'd much rather learn Vulcan, if I had the time, although Vulcan has a much smaller lexicon to date), but it's been interesting to see how the show creators try to work it into the show. I admittedly hate the subtitling format--the font and color is sometimes hard to read against the scene background and they sometimes don't leave longer phrases up long enough for me to read them with my ever-failing eyesight. And having to stop and read subtitles--and sometimes rewind to read what i missed--it really messing with my practice of doing extra Memrise or Clozemaster while watching TV!
Anyhow, if you do decide to delve into Klingon, best of luck!
Even with the subs on (which were decent) a lot of parts weren't clear. But, the movie was still hilarious! If you haven't heard of it, it's a Netflix France original about a sexist man who gets knocked out and wakes up in a world where all gender roles are reversed and women are dominant. Hilarity ensues!
