I actually ended up having a surreal and jarring one-on-one conversation with Luis von Ahn, the founder and CEO, who reached out to me after a scathing critique I posted on Reddit started to get significant traction.

Talking to him was like talking to someone who had been brainwashed by a cult. I told him how I and others in my life had found Duolingo so useful and efficient for language learning, and that its usefulness was evidenced by me noticing a real-world improvement in ability to listen to, understand, and speak the languages I had been practicing, but that recent changes had made it dramatically less useful to where I needed to put much more time in to get the same amount out.

His response was like "But all our metrics are up, our data shows that our changes are working." It was so frustrating. The metrics were all about engagement. He was showing people were spending more time practicing languages, not that they were getting more real-world ability to converse in those languages. Practice time was going up but actual language ability was going down. I tried explaining that to him but he seemed completely unable and/or unwilling to understand my point.

It was like talking to a wall.

I left the conversation with any remaining faith in the Duolingo leadership completely shattered, and I completely withdrew from using the site.

Busuu - Busuu is what I used while studying Chinese and Japanese, and the app is comparable to Duolingo.

MangoLanguages - Many library systems are offering access to this to free! Make sure to check to see if your library card gives you access to this resource.

Great Courses Plus - They also have a ton of language material, and are often offered through libraries!

Linkedin Learning - Multiple language (and other!) options, also available through many public libraries.

Anki - Gives you access to thousands of flashcards and the ability to make your own.

Pimsleur - Pimsleur is one of the most highly recommended language programs, especially if you're working for a conversational level.

Other alternatives to consider are Youtube, often a great place for smaller schools and creators to post content. I supplement my classes with Easy German, and I used to be pretty reliant on EveryDay Chinese to practice my tones. If you're looking to learn it, there's bound to be a channel out there that is tailored toward your language learning.

HELLO!!! I thought about it a lot to try to put it to words and visuals ^_^ I hope this helps!

I tried to break down some of my own pieces (links to the individual posts [x] [x])

Honestly, I think I still have a lot to learn. But more importantly, here's a more coherent compilation of notes I did:

A lot of it for me is figuring out how to understand how it bends and twists in a 3D space.

Flow is very very important to really get that sense of movement too, so it's very helpful to get that sense of muscle memory with the curves and edges.

and my final words are go check out @/ciearcab on twitter. the way they draw wings all contorted and with beautiful understanding of depth is my dream...