200 days of Duolingo
As promised in the 100 days update, I am here to celebrate my 200th day streak.
This milestone reflects a change in my Dutch learning journey. I had the opportunity to meet someone who was Dutch, and they discouraged me from continuing to learn. They explained that the Netherlands is too boring and small of a country - arguing that Melbourne is a more exciting city than Amsterdam.. They also said that Dutch has too many quirks and idiosyncrasies, which may deter foreigners. As a result, I decided against studying the language too intensely, and rather focus on my other career pathways. Nevertheless, I was determined to complete a full year streak before moving on from the app.
In regards to the app itself, the criticisms from the previous post remain the same. In the last 3 months, they have not been addressed at all: ads still fail to load intermittently; and the text-to-speech is still buggy. Unfortunately, I would even dare to say that the app has gotten worse since.
I appreciate that the company is constantly looking to improve its app. At the time of writing this post, the current interface has Duo hovering over the most current lesson. I think that this is visually confusing, because it obscures the actual user progress. Additionally, the tooltip hovering over Duo is broken, as part of the tooltip text is obscured. Finally, upon completing a lesson, there is a loading bar animation on the statistics screen before moving on. Though I'm sure there are technical justifications for slowing down the app, it is frustrating from an end user's perspective.
Despite the criticisms, I still quite enjoy the Duolingo interface. My honest opinions stem from a place of care. I understand that the app is a labour of love from the Duolingo team, and I wish them all the success. In fact, I'm actually thinking of learning a new language once I have finished the Dutch module, so I may continue this update beyond the 300th, 36th and even 400th day mark.