GoKawiilMegan Ellis / Android Authority
TL;DR The recent Duolingo course upgrade has left some learners complaining that their progress has been scrambled.
Some users say completed units now include material they never learned, while others have been pushed back into basic lessons.
Other users are also frustrated by the strict new flashcards that reject reasonable answers.
As a part of the increasing minority of people who haven’t yet given up on Duolingo, I laid out a bunch of changes I’d ideally like to see to improve the app last month. Well, Duolingo has indeed made some changes, but they aren’t the ones I wanted. Worse still, the recently introduced Duolingo course upgrade that the company implemented instead has infuriated a whole bunch of people online.
Several recent threads on the r/duolingo subreddit are full of users complaining that their language courses have been shuffled around in ways that make their progress hard to follow. In one thread, a user learning Italian said they had been at around level 50 and were working through more challenging material, only to find themselves suddenly being tested on basic words such as sugar, cat, tree, and milk. Other users in the same thread said they had run into similar issues with Japanese, German, and Spanish.
Have the recent Duolingo course updates negatively impacted your progress? 6 votes No, my course is fine 0 % Yes, they're annoying, but I'll keep going 50 % Yes, and I'm quitting the app as a result 0 % I ditched Duolingo a while ago for other reasons 33 % I haven't tried Duolingo 17 %
The exact complaints vary, but the theme is familiar — Duolingo has rearranged the furniture, and some learners are now stumbling into tables. A few say they have been pushed backward into easy material, while others say the app is acting as if they have already learned words and grammar points they have never seen before.
As an example of that latter complaint, a German learner said lessons had been added retroactively to their path, with Duolingo treating unfamiliar material as if it had already been covered. Another commenter summed up the frustration neatly, saying they liked the idea of Duolingo improving and extending courses, but not that completed units were now filled with topics they didn’t recognize.
That leaves some learners with an awkward choice. They can carry on from where Duolingo says they are and hope the missing pieces eventually make sense, or they can reset the course and slog back through material they learned years ago. That second option is even less appealing now for free users affected by Duolingo’s Energy system, which limits how quickly they can work through lessons unless they spend gems or switch to the paid version. They have one other choice: to finally ditch the app, and there certainly seems to be some enthusiasm for that option.
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