The new Drops Units and home experience launched July 6, 2023 for all learners. If you have questions about this change, read on for answers!
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We sometimes hear from learners that they're not sure whether they’re using Drops the “best” way. We teach thousands of useful words and phrases in 45+ languages, but our topics have outgrown our category structure. As a result, it can prove difficult to find relevant content that matches your individual language learning goals.
At Drops, we’re always looking for ways to make language learning easy—so the goal of this project was to organize our content in a way that would optimize all of our useful vocabulary while giving learners the tools they need to shape their own language learning journey.
Now we’re excited to introduce this structural change to the browsing experience: Drops Units! When exploring these revamped lessons, you should feel confident that each step you take in Drops will truly help you reach your language goals.
Let's walk you through what’s changed, explain the process behind the changes, and answer some FAQs! (And don’t worry: you haven't lost any of your hard-earned vocabulary progress! For more technical questions, check out our FAQ).
Our lesson structure has gotten a makeover! Here are four of the highlights:
In our previous structure, each of our former categories were bursting at the seams with topics, making it easy for the most relevant topics to get lost in the mix. We know not every topic is interesting to everyone, so we broke these categories down into short, achievable Units by grouping the most related topics. Each unit is focused on a particular sub-category or scenario, like "Dressing for the Weather" or "Getaway Basics."
These units live within each of the categories (found in Explore). This way you can focus on the most important vocabulary for your language learning needs, and not get bogged down by scenarios that aren't as relevant to you.
Not only did we update the order of the topics, but each topic received a makeover as well. When restructuring these lessons, we essentially took all of the terms from their original lessons and grouped them into new topics. This means topics are expanded to include all of the useful vocabulary in one place. For example, before we had one topic for visiting a restaurant called "Eat & Drink." In this restructuring, we pulled all of the relevant words and phrases into a new unit called "Restaurant Talk" with multiple topics for reading a menu, ordering a meal, and paying the bill.
Although the units are designed to put all of the vocabulary in one place, you can still choose to learn the topics à la carte—opting to learn the phrases for paying the bill and skipping the menu vocabulary if you wish!
While restructuring the topics, we also took a good look at the topic titles. Some of our old topics had vague titles like "More Vegetables," "More Numbers," "More Toilet," or "Even More Toilet" 😅. As you can imagine, this made it difficult for learners to quickly discern that was in the topics, and decide whether it was a good match for them.
When refocusing the scenario of each topic, we made sure the titles are clear as possible. For example, instead of "More Numbers," we titled each topic with exactly which numbers you'll learn—so if you mastered 1–10 already, you can dive right into the larger numbers with ease. (And instead of blindly making your way through our "Toilet," "More Toilet," "Even More Toilet" topics, you'll find a clearer units focused on vocabulary for navigating a public restroom versus your bathroom at home. We got you covered!)
Each topic also comes with a short description that will provide more information about the skill or type of vocabulary you'll learn.
Lastly, this new structure will help you learn more about the culture behind the language you’re learning. In addition to our full categories of useful universal vocabulary, learners of Japanese and Korean can access unique categories with units focused on various elements of Japanese or Korean culture. The above examples from our Japanese course test your knowledge of the cultural concepts beyond the vocabulary. We look forward to expanding these in other languages as well, so keep an eye out for updates!
This new content structure and home discovery experience will be automatically available for all learners on July 6th. If you have more technical questions about your progress and how to access the lessons, see our FAQ here. If you're wondering where to get started, check out the customized suggestions in the new home experience.
We're thrilled to bring this improvement to the discovery experience to Drops and we think you'll love it too. Whether you're a beginner or an advanced learner, Drops offers thousands of words to explore, so you can learn at your own pace and tailor the experience to your liking. So what are you waiting for? Download Drops now and start playing today!
Chelsea Roden (she/they) is the Head of Learning Content at Drops where they develop and curate courses in 48+ languages. Previously she worked in educational publishing and taught language courses. They’re currently based in Germany.
