9.8 The Confusion Begins: Irregular Verbs in the Preterite

Yes there is a lot of confusion, but not due to the use of the irregular verb forms but because of the lack of clarification when the learner needs to respond to a "you" type statement.  Except for maybe 2 or 3 times there is no indication as to what form of "you"  (you plural, you informal, you formal, vosotros/as )the learner needs to respond to.  It becomes very frustrating.

The same issue as above is in 9.10 where there is no indication to which "you" is being referred to.
Also, to me, Mauricio's use of ver and dar is very hard to distinguish between the "v" and the "d" in the preterite tense and therefore causes many erros as to which word he is referring to in the conjugated preterite tense when there is no context other then the subject and the conjugated verb.

It doesn't get any better. I just finished Level 3 lessons 15. It's just riddled with you's with no indications of which one of the 5 you's (tú, Usted, Ustedes, vosotros, or vosotros) they wanted you to respond with. I missed some test questions due to this. Just indicate which form of you to respond with.

Yes, I have the same problem. It is very frustrating. When I create my own flashcards I specify through Fem, P/S and I/F what type of response is expected to the question. It would be nice if this was consistently done during the course too.

¡Hola Spanish51, dabearden y JohnD141!

Thank you very much for your feedback! I've divided my answer up into headings, since two topics are covered in this thread.

1. DAR vs. VER Problem
We are currently undertaking a review of the Spanish courses, and part of that involves making changes so that verb forms being tested are provided in short sentences rather than on their own. This has a few benefits, including improving voice recognition capabilities and providing context to make it clear which verb is required for those verbs that sound alike (like dar and ver in the preterite). In the meantime, as our Spanish team works on these improvements, it might be useful to use headphones while practicing these forms, as that can help isolate the sounds better.

2. Indicating "You"

Recently, we added a notification feature to our courses so that things like different types of "you" and feminine versions would have notifications to distinguish them. These notifications appear in the upper right-hand corner of the phrases in the Rocket Reinforcement area on both the app and desktop, so that you know what kind of "you" is expected; mousing over them on the desktop or tapping them on the app should make an explanation appear as to what each notification is referring to.

The only area in which the notifications are unfortunately not visible at present is the FlashCard section; the different set-up of this section means that it has taken a bit more time to roll this feature out there, but our technical team is working on putting that in place.

Could you let me know if the FlashCard section is the area where you are having difficulties? If not, could you tell me which activity isn't showing the notifications, and what kind of browser or which app you are using? 

Thank you very much for your input and help.

Saludos,

Liss

Ad 2, if I remember correctly, this happens in the flashcards and in Know it!. In both sections you get the English text and have to guess which form of you is needed in Spanish. No problem of course in Write It! and Hear It! Say It!, because in these sections you get the Spanish sentence to reproduce.
I am currently in Level 1 module 3 and it happened through most of the previous modules. So I cannot say specifically which activity it was.
I am using the Chrome browser. The problem is not in the browser, because in my own flashcards the problem doesn´t happen. There I specify in the English sentence in parenthesis which form is expected in Spanish.

Regards
John

Correction: while working through module 3 in level 1 I found out that the section Know It is actually correct. I get the notification which form is requested.
But I found out that in the section Flashcard the same problem occurs for the difference between the male or female form of the word. 
Regards
John

¡Hola JohnD141!

Thank you very much for getting back to us with this feedback. 

Our team is working to get this information visible in the FlashCard activities and hope to have this in place soon.

Saludos,

Liss

Yes, it is in the Flashcard section--lack of specificity.  I am a new user.  I found it annoying, but rationalized it to myself that language can be ambiguous.  However, I am delighted you are addressing the issue.  Your future newcomers have enough on their plate.  They don't need the irritating ambiguity from the get-go.

In the flashcard section it seems to be resolved now. In the ¨know it¨ section the clarification is also added but in the wrong place. It shows in the answer while it should be in the question. So after completing the question I now can see if I needed to use the female, plural and/or formal response, but that is after the fact. If these clarifications are moved to the question-side then the confusion is gone.

¡Hola a todos!

Thank you very much for all of your feedback! 

Our technical team have been able to implement the notations in the FlashCard activities, and they have also been able to get around an issue in Know It! that was caused by the recent changes to the appearance of the Members' Area. Thus, you should now be able to see hints letting you know which "you" is expected and whether or not the feminine version of a word is required (if this can't be told from the rest of a sentence) in both the FlashCards and Know It!

Please do let us know if you experience any problems with this.

Saludos,

Liss