The Duolingo Practice your Words feature reviews same early words.

September 21, 2023 6:22 AM

In Duolingo, the app to learn a new language, in The "Practice your words" feature, it always features the same exact handful of words. And they are the same words I learned. This is in the paid version. Is there a way to change this. I have advanced to almost the end of a section with 8 units and I am reviewing again and again words in unit one.
posted by Tziv to Education (9 answers total)

I think it's a bug they haven't fixed yet. It's been that way for a couple of months for me, with only occasional exceptions.
posted by tdismukes at 6:26 AM on September 21, 2023

I don't notice this - but it may depend on the language you are learning, the device you are using, how far along you are on the course, etc. It could also depend on the particular strategy you are following on your learning path. Something which might be worth a try, for strange problems like this, would be to to try deleting and then re-installing the app.
posted by rongorongo at 6:34 AM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Duolingo team is pretty responsive to feedback. For other companies I would not recommend this, but they are pretty good about replying, especially to paying customers. You can reach out via social media, or submit a bug report.
posted by Alison at 7:20 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

Which language are you learning? I'm learning German with the paid version and I don't have this issue.

I recently filed a bug report and didn't get any action other than a message that my report was received. So I would suggest the social media route if you want some personalized attention/explanation.
posted by tuesdayschild at 8:20 AM on September 21, 2023

Like the same 5 words every go around? Spanish was doing that to me (paid) and it miraculously fixed itself a couple days ago.

I've also noticed that most of the words are from earlier units with a few new ones thrown in here and there. That's frustrating.
posted by kathrynm at 8:23 AM on September 21, 2023

Like the same 5 words every go around? Spanish was doing that to me (paid) and it miraculously fixed itself a couple days ago

Thank you for pointing out that it had been fixed! Spanish was the language where it was happening to me and so I had mostly stopped doing those exercises. But I just checked and verified that I'm getting new randomized words again.
posted by tdismukes at 9:43 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I f you're talking about heart practice, I find that I almost always wind up back at the "Je mange un croissant" - not the exact same exercise but very basic ones, although every once in a while I get actual recent mistakes. My wife gets mistakes more often, and I wonder if it's because I make relatively few mistakes and rarely do practice, while she does more Duolingo overall (thus more mistakes) and more practice.
posted by Superilla at 3:33 PM on September 21, 2023

It's doing that for me with Japanese, it's driving me nuts. Water, sushi, rice!
posted by gottabefunky at 10:25 AM on September 22, 2023

(Still using the free version)
posted by gottabefunky at 10:26 AM on September 22, 2023