Asterisks around part of feedback phrase

The feedback for the “writing” portion of my latest lesson (Italian level 1 essere lesson) has double asterisks (e.g., **Noi siamo** simpatici) around part of the shown response. What do the asterisks mean? 

Hi Margie - This has been fixed! There was a slight bug with the latest updates!

Jason

In the new update, when doing a writing exercise, if you record the phrase, you can no longer see what you did wrong (or right) in the writing exercise.

Hi Scott - There is something odd going on there. We are looking into it!

Another thing to look at @Jason - I didn't receive 100 points after completing a lesson. Maybe that is an intended change, but letting you know just in case.

Any update on when the writing feedback will be fixed. It isn't just overwritten - some of the feedback is not there. One example is if you don't include a part of a word, it just flags it as wrong (in the score) but doesn't show a correction.

Hi Scott - We have spent quite a bit of time on looking at how the feedback for the Writing activity works and decided to make it work like the Rocket Record voice recognition system and the other activities do. This standardizes how it works across the members area.

So, if there is an error in the word/phrase then the error is highlighted in red, and the correct characters are dark grey. And, if the word/phrase is 100% correct then the word/phrase is shown in a green color.

We would hope that displaying the Spanish word/phrase, along with a rating that is not 100%, would indicate that something is wrong, even if we are not showing any missing pieces. Maybe it's not the most elegant solution but whatever we do there will be a compromise.

I am so sorry to hear this. The old version was superb. Exactly what you needed. 

The new version is such garbage that I guarantee it is going to be included as a major negative in any review. Absolute garbage. You know I am a fan - I have 803 consecutive days of using this program.

What is worse than no feedback? Wrong feedback. That is exactly what you are giving us. Yes, it is gray and the % correct is not 100%, but if you leave something out (vs type a wrong letter), the correction phrase is only gray, and you literally have to go letter by letter to figure out what you left out. When you do get a wrong letter, the old version would do a line through something that is wrong and put the correct letters next to it.  It really helped draw your eye to what you did wrong. Now I really have to look for the red. And if I left something out and typed a wrong letter, I have a red segment and easily could miss that I left something out. Sorry Jason, but this is completely unacceptable at this point.

Sorry for the negativity Jason. I love this product and it has been helpful, but this is not a matter of liking the old and not the new. You have turned a great product into a product that hurts learning. I sure hope you can figure out a way to get back to the old. I am guessing the back end must have changed, otherwise why would you stick with this garbage and spend so much time trying to fix it?

Things to fix if you can't do it right and you choose to have incorrect corrections:

• - 95% correct is showing as green (not the text, the % bubble) - clearly only 100% should be green
• - The text is smaller in the correction line than it is in the original text. At the very least they should be the same size.
• - Gray on white is not a great choice for people who have contrast problems. I can read it (my eyes are not that great) but it is a little bit of a struggle. Maybe if it gets bigger that will help, but something with more contrast might be more disability friendly.
• - If you speak the phrase, you lose what you did wrong. That is a huge flaw and needs to be fixed.

I agree with much of what Scott has outlined so thoroughly. 

Along these lines, I'm getting marked down on something (i.e., it is indicating an error), but there is no feedback as to what is wrong (i.e., no highlighting anywhere). I can see no difference between my response and the prompt. I took a screenshot if you are interested and you tell me how to submit it.

As outlined in Margie's post, I just noticed the same thing; i.e. in Writing, I scored 95% because one letter was misspelt, but there was nothing to indicate which letter had I not known the letter concerned.

Jason - my vote would be to revert to the previous system prior to this upgrade, based on the fact it isn't an enhancement rather, the opposite.

Chris

Just FYI, I went back and copy/pasted the correction prompt from Rocket Italian as the response, and Rocket marked it wrong (same 95 score and grey text). Either there is something wrong with the prompt (doubt it), or Rocket has a bug in the data for this particular question.

And we can't tell where the bug is since the “correction” is often incorrect, so you can't trust it.

Hi all,

Thanks so much for your feedback regarding the Write It test. Apologies for the delay in responding! I have forwarded a copy of this thread to the IT team to look into, and will let you know when they have any updates for you. 

I think you mean “if”. Ha ha ha

Hi all - Sorry about the delay in responding here. We are in the process of getting some UX designs around the Writing test (re)done. Once these have gone through a testing phase I will update you on any changes!

Thanks for the update, Jason.  It's appreciated.

Chris

Thanks Jason, look forward to seeing the new UX. Happy to help with the test phase if you like, but suspect you have that well covered.

Hi all - You may have noticed that a new version of the Writing results is now online. It's not as great as we would like it to be but there are technical reasons for that. For now, you will be able to see both the errors you make and any missing characters!

Jason

Thanks for the update. I personally think it looks much better. It isn't clean looking (perhpas what you are referring to), but I can now clearly see my errors. It looks similar to what a teacher would do to correct my writing.

If you record your voice, it still deletes the feedback on your typed answer and gives you a new score. This isn't a big deal to me, but just sharing.

Greatly appreciate you always being willing to accept our feedback!

Jason - just noticed a problem (I think) with something else. The exercises (flashcards, listening, etc) are showing as 44/44 but when you click on the actual exercise, it shows X number that “non-easy”. Seems to me the fraction should be showing non-easy, not that you have reviewed all of them at least once. So 44-X/44.

Hi Scott - A new version of the Android/iOS apps is in development and as part of that we are looking at the UI issue you describe, as well as a lot of other things! Once these changes are made on the mobile apps then the relevant changes will be made on the desktop version. 

Thanks and I look forward to the iOS changes!