Abandoning Duolingo for Languatalk
I´ve built up a 700+-day streak on Duolingo. I also look up things I realize I don´t know on Google translate, and ask AIs to explain grammar and such, throughout the day. And sometimes practice spaced repetition on some random set of Spanish words. I´ve invested a lot of time and I cannot converse to save my life. I think it´s a common complaint about Duolingo, along with it´s infinite path to nowhere to make sure you keep paying. After all it is built by the same guy who brought you Capcha...
I can understand a bit, especially when I read but not really follow TV, and I can write passably but very slowly. I know a reasonable amount of words now, and it is actually pulling me back because I can´t pull them out of my hat to speak. I think if I had spent more time speaking with fewer words I would have been much better off.
Duolingo enabled their premium mode for 2 days for free, hoping to gain higher-paying customers. But instead they lost me. I am canceling it as soon as the year subscription runs out next month. And it was Lily´s fault.
It was Lily´s doing that I signed up for Duolingo, because I really love her voice. You have to hear it to appreciate it (the Spanish voice -- the English one is just nasal and annoying). My partner does not share my ´unhealthy obsession´ with Lily as she calls it.
But this time, the only new function enabled with this free trial was ¨Call Lily¨, where you get to converse with her for a couple of minutes on a subject she brings up (using a pretty bad AI which often pauses or talks over you). But the real problem was that I could not pull up words that I know that I know fast enough, resulting in much ¨hummana errm ahh crap" kind of sentences from me, and much eye rolling from Lily.
And so, I am dropping Duolingo and focusing on conversation. To that effect I signed up for Languatalk -- a conversation-centric AI tutor.
Languatalk offers a 7-day trial and I just spent 3 hours blabbing with it, and so far so good. I am very comfortable with it. To be honest I could probably prompt ChatGPT to offer similar tutorials and even conversation (I think), but it would take a bit of effort and since I am learning it´s helpful to have some structure and guidance from someone other than me. Also free ChatGPT has been ridiculously slow and limited lately, and this cheaper than paying for ChatGPT (or Duolingo´s premium version with a much worse AI)
While the ´lessons´ are on specific topics, once a conversation starts you can push the AI in the direction you want -- it will provide amazingly useful information about specific grammar or culture-related subjects, and you can ask questions in English or Spanish (or whatever language you are learning). It will continue to steer you back to the topic, but there is a lot of wiggle room to learn all kinds of related things, which is how I like to learn.
In addition you can click on anything and add it to your flashcards, get expanded context about usage and cultural norms, and see examples and alternate ways of saying the same -- that is outside the AI, just by clicking on things.
In the Spanish area there is a dozen or more AI personalities from different Latin American countries (Spain too).
It is also recommended by Qroo Paul, who provides some really good lessons on YouTube. I am sure it´s a sponsored recommendation, but I trusted him enough to try it, and it is everything he promised.
So I have high hopes. Maybe I will actually speak Spanish this year. But I will miss Lily.
Posted in: s/Language_Acquisition
Feb 04 · 3 months ago · 👍 Homer, bsj38381
5 Comments ↓
I'm personally using only Memrise to learn more languages, I'm also ditching Duolingo and Drops.
I'm currently in progress to deleting my save data for Duolingo, I'm still waiting for that second email to when It'll get deleted.
🗡️ The_Jackal · Feb 04 at 06:05:
@bsj38381 I quit using memrise as soon as they demolished community courses and got rid of the one I was using for Norwegian.
gotta learn like a baby, first listen a lot, then talk, and only when you can do that more or less well, optionally consider reading. Otherwise reading and especially translating gets in the way. It's like you store those word associations in a different kind of memory that's too slow for conversation. Then you also think in your native and try to translate, big mess. I'd love a course that treats you like a baby, like "here is a phrase you use to greet people", that's it, deal with it. Instead of "here is a phrase that translates to good day", and then go on to explain it actually literally is "kind day", but it's the same as english "good day" with caveats. Who cares!
@stack A ver qué tal te va con Languatalk. Espero que avances con más facilidad.
@The_Jackal That's a bummer, I mainly like using it because it doesn't have annoying things like the "three hearts" like duolingo has. I'll give Languatalk a try too.