[Artgor]

> the fact that the linear lessons now also have large yet optional testing components at the end of every section.

If you're referring to the legendary lessons, then yes, I complete them as well and find them to be very useful. However, many people don't mention them because they cost a lot of gems for non-premium users (I use Duolingo Super), so they can't consistently complete these lessons. Sentence translation is an important part of language learning, yet it's kept behind a paywall. While I understand that the company needs to earn money, for non-paying users these lessons essentially don't exist.

> For all the complaining that I've seen in the in-app comments for certain translations being incorrectly rejected, I've yet to come across one myself. Unfortunately, this has become a serious problem for me. I didn't encounter such situations at the beginning of the course either, but the further I progress, the more frequently I come across them. It's to be expected, as the content is mostly created by crowdsourcing, and later lessons have fewer people studying them, so not as many people check them. Despite reporting dozens of such cases on Duolingo in the past year, I have yet to receive a single response.

[lozenge]

Duolingo has 500+ employees, surely they can afford a 5 person Spanish team to actually write content for their most popular language?

[epakai]

I'm doing them non-paying. Its particularly costly when I make mistakes, but I've made it work by re-doing previous lessons for practice and gems. Between that and the monthly badge thing I've been able to motivate enough to keep my gem wallet stable.