I promised some thoughts on the changes (crowns) after actually trying them out. So, here they are:
What didn't change:
The quality of the trees of course, those changes are independent from the crowns. There is a new French tree, which is better than the old one but I can't say by how much, and I am not gonna use it even out of curiosity. And truth be told, it is rather easy to be better than the old French tree
. And there is going to be a new Spanish tree soon. German is still the best, but I've read Dutch is even longer. But I really have doubts about the quality of the hastily made Japanese and Mandarin courses and those are not the only ones.
Also the choices you can make are still more or less the same.
I am very content with the ability to turn the too easy exercises off, which are the boxes and listening. I've said it many times: language apps are the best when they do one thing right, not when they try to do tons of stuff. Easy translation exercises divided by skills, which are interconnected by the content, that is great for my German. That is the main strength.
The app is still horrible for me. The layout in which half the screen is taken by unrelated pictures of people, which bring no value, is making the app uncomfortable in a few ways. Otherwise, the app can be useful too, with the listening, speaking, and boxes exercises turned off. But I can't stomach the amount of ads, those feel very disruptive. Sure, Duolingo needs them to earn money, there is nothing wrong about that. But I personally find the amount of them in the app overwhelming. I know it is the main motivation to make people pay for otherwise useless Duolingo plus. But I still think there should be a compromise between not earning enough and disgusting the users.
What sucks about the Crowns:
There is
still no way to test out of the easy skills to the higher levels. That means I am unwilling to use Duolingo for my better languages (which is ok, there is no need for that) and also for Italian. The "so just take it to level 1 and go on" advice is not that useful as the exercises at level 1 and 2 are easier, for example single words are there more often than in the later levels. I am not sure I'll be using Duolingo for any language I know a related one to (my plans include Russian and/or Polish), at least not till the test out function is there.
What is awesome about the Crowns:
The tons of basic practice are great for a language I completely suck at, which is German. I think it will show as soon as I return to my more serious resources, I expect to be making a bit different mistakes and progress faster. I have a streak of 8 days in my German tree, which is the longest I've ever had The crowns are more motivating, as they stimulate the childish part of me, that wants to collect them all
What is new and awesome and independent from the crowns:
duolingo.eu brings the main gamification part that has been missing on the official site. The statistics and leaderboards. It is not motivating to progress in a random group of people who happened to click on the follow button. It is very motivating to see my own stats in a clear form and to want to get to the leaderboards, which require either a streak of 100 days (less likely for me) or 90000xp. My childish part loves competition
What I disagree on with tons of duo users the most:
I am glad the decay function is gone. As I said: I find it better when an app is good at one thing. And SRS was not that thing, my attempts to use Duo regularly in the past were failing partially due to this: losing the completed easy lessons and weird SRS that wasn't showing me what I really needed. The primary effect of things decaying was keeping people on the site ad infinitum. Now, you get a clear ending to the tree, so we might see the end of some of the problematic beliefs widely spread in the community. People will be moving on, which is great.
The bottomline:
Duolingo is definitely not to be relied on fully but that is no news. It is also not the best option out there for various languages, the most striking example is the quality of Kwiziq for French and Spanish. However, I think it is getting better and turning into a more useful tool, thanks to the Crowns (those add practice), duolingo.eu, and some of the tree updates. Until now, the main advantage has been the price. We couldn't have asked much from a free tool, and it was clear that the main focus of the staff was marketing. But now, especially if they take a few more steps in the right direction, I might be more likely to recommend
some of the courses to newbie learners.
P.S. I wish I had much more free time. I would love to make a French from Czech course, I think this form would be very good for my boyfriend, who will need to learn French and isn't a bookworm. Or for my younger sister with crap French classes at school. I have a more or less clear idea about the content and the needs of such learners. But I simply cannot spare a few thousand hours. And I'd be unlikely to get any coworkers or approved by the staff. Kwiziq and a few more online resources could serve them well, but I think the English base would be a bit of a problem.