Language tree (2024)

A course's skill tree or language tree is the organization of the course's skills into rows representing the order of course progression. The ones closer to the top are closer to the basics, and as you progress, it will unlock more skills and the skills will get harder as you go on.

Content[]

The content of a course varies; some courses may contain more vocabulary skills, more grammar skills, or more skills in general than others.

Skills[]

Main article: Skill

Skills have currently been replaced by units.

A skill is an item in the tree that consists of one or more lessons. Skills have a levelling system discussed under Crowns to describe how proficient one is in the skill at any given time. Usersmust level allthe skills on each row of the tree to level 1 before moving to the next row.

Skill levels are coloured as follows:

• 0 = purple
• 1 = blue
• 2 = green
• 3 = red
• 4 = orange
• 5 = gold
• When skills in level 5 start to crack on the edges, it means that you have not been practicing for a while and need to make up for it by doing a lesson. When you complete practices and want to do it again on the same day, the skill will not gain you any XP for the rest of the day.

Bonus skill slots[]

Main article: Bonus skill

Some language trees contain certain slots that can be filled with bonus skills.^[1] These can be bought at any time provided that a learner has reached a certain point in the tree. Once the bonus skill has been purchased it remains in the tree permanently.

As a learner advances through the course their crown level goes up and they unlock new skills. Once they have all of the course's skills at level 1 (finished the tree), they will be awarded a Golden Owl trophy. There are also shortcuts a learner may use to quickly complete the skill tree. These shortcuts include:

• Placement test - Tests all knowledge of a language tree allowing learners to skip all the skills they already know;
• Checkpoints - Tests all knowledge of a language tree up to a certain point and once the test is completed it automatically marks all known skills as complete; and
• Skip level - for people who already know a skill(click the hyperlink for more info)

Tree updates[]

Language course contributors continually tweak and update their skill tree. The appearance of the old tree has been changed previously^[2] and new lessons or skills may be added or removed to improve the learning experience.^[3][4]

Path System in 2022[]

Until November 2022, Duolingo had been progressively rolling out a Pathway Progress System to replace the old Tree System^[5]. Updates included restricting to one lesson at a time for progress instead of the usual two or three sometimes allowed. But more importantly, Lesson Reviews have been incorporated into the Path and are now required for progress.
In the words of Duolingo, “even if you review past content, you are moving forward in your learning journey.”

Users' Response[]

Most comments on Twitter^[6], YouTube^[5], and Reddit^[7] are negative.

Users were massively outraged, not because the update was bad, but because they lacked the ability to return to the old layout, although it was possible although not obvious to do so until the end of 2022^[8]. Many users also voiced frustration of despite nearing the end of their courses, most or their entire progress on all courses was wiped out.

Users who paid for a subscription from the Apple Store qualified for a refund under the term, “product changed significantly since user purchase”.

Duolingo's Stock has also plummeted 23.69% within one month since Oct 20. All this while the S&P500 rose 8.17% during the same period.
Severin Hacker, Duolingo's co-founder, finds the need to assert that Duolingo is “financially stable”^[9].
Luis von Ahn states the crash has no relation to Duolingo's update and this is a ‘Conspiracy Theory’^[10].

On Fandom, we have not yet decided how to accommodate for the new Path System. The best strategy remains to complete all courses that have almost been fully documented.

Duolingo's Response[]

Luis von Ahn, Co-Founder and CEO of Duolingo in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit said^[11]:

• The Old Layout will never be restored. This is because it costs resources to maintain both layouts, and each update will need be applied to both layouts at the same time, each time. Keeping both layouts will hence, impede Duolingo's progress.
• Denying the claim of people abandoning Duolingo, Luis von Ahn states that his ‘metrics’ tell him the Daily Active Users have increased in the New Layout. Therefore one more reason he wants to keep the New Layout.
• Luis von Ahn claims the New Layout seeks not to ‘increase’ revenue. But neither to decrease it. He claims it only changes the ‘Daily Active Usage’.
• There were a lot of people who spent their time redoing content they already knew just to extend their streak [or compete on Leaderboards]. With the new layout, [Duolingo will now force] the vast majority of the people who extend their streak on a given day actually learn something new.
• Another advantage of the New Layout is offline lessons. In his words about a complaint about an instance of the offline malfunction:
  You should be able to do a number of lessons offline by default. This may not happen when the app wasn't able to download them in advance, but typically it keeps a number of the next few lessons cached in advance (this is one of the benefits of the path layout, since we know what the next few things you will do are).
• General Forums have been turned off because, “only a very small fraction of our users visited them”. Note, it apparently costs money for Duolingo to maintain the General Forums, and Luis von Ahn believes the money does not justify the little use from the Duolingo community.

Duolingo also states there are no plans to remove Sentence Discussions. Although these have long been closed now.

References[]