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Slowly Review for learning a foreign language

January 12, 2022 by Jamie 1 Comment

Slowly is a free mobile app that isn’t primarily meant to be used to learn languages, nor is it one of the most common ways to practice writing in a foreign language. That doesn’t mean that this Slowly app review doesn’t belong here! I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t share this potential method of learning a language with you.

Back before the days of smartphones, instant messaging, and emails, we used snail mail. It would take days (or even weeks, depending on how far away your mail was going) for a letter to arrive, and tons of people miss this method of communication for a variety of reasons.

What does this have to do with learning languages? As it turns out, a lot! In this Slowly app review, I’ll touch on the reasons why it shouldn’t go ignored as a language learning resource, and, as always, what kind of language learners can benefit from it!

Slowly: app walkthrough

When you get your first look at Slowly, there’s no mention of language learning. Like I said, it’s not really meant as a language learning app. That’s not to say that it’s not a great way to get in practice, though!

Slowly is explained as a way to meet pen friends from your smartphone. And it’s free! Which real-life snail mail is not.

After downloading, you’ll plug in a TINY bit of information, but really not much. Fortunately, Slowly is pretty respectful of common sense internet rules, and just requests that you set up an avatar and nickname.

I got a little frustrated when it was telling me my nickname contained characters that were not allowed when really it was just too long, but whatever, I guess.

You can pick out a few subjects that you’d like to talk about (up to 30), pick out up to 5 subjects that you don’t want to talk about, and then pick languages! You also tell Slowly your proficiency in this language, which then shows up on your profile for other Slowly users to see.

Even just here you can see that this app has some potential for foreign language practice! Realistically, all any language learner needs is a person to talk to who speaks the language, and Slowly definitely offers us access to this!

Then Slowly will let you know a couple of important nuggets of info, and you’ll get started finding pen friends.

That first image is the thing that makes Slowly so great for language learners like me!

The awesome part of snail mail is that it takes a while. It’s not instant. A lot of people love the nostalgia of that, which is fair. Personally, I don’t appreciate it for that particular reason.

If you’re like me, you get overwhelmed by too many instant messages (using something like Tandem or HelloTalk), especially if they’re not in your native language and it takes you more effort to read and respond. That overwhelm is a major turnoff and becomes a serious obstacle to getting in more writing practice.

With Slowly, it takes an entire day to send/receive messages. I like how this gives me a chance to breathe. It’s significantly less stressful for me. I don’t have to feel rushed to understand any messages, nor to express myself in the language, which can be really difficult sometimes.

Anyways, Slowly offers you two ways to meet new pen friends: auto-match or manual. I don’t personally like auto-match, but here are the options you can choose from in your new auto-match pen friends.

If that’s not your thing, you can filter through potential pen friends and reach out to the ones that sound (read?) like someone you’d want to talk to. And, of course, everything is pretty anonymous – there’s no real picture, no real name, nada!

You can see which languages these potential pen friends can communicate in as well as which country they’re from, which I love.

The most important stats are when they were last online and their “sent:received” ratio. There’s no limit to how many people you send mail to or how often you send mail, it’ll just take a minute to get there (and get back to you when they respond).

For example, mail that I send to/receive from Spain takes 20 hours to get to its destination. Mail that’s going to/coming from different countries in South America takes just 8 hours.

Nonetheless, send a message to anyone you want! The only requirement set by the app is that your message is at least 100 characters, which makes sense. Imagine receiving an actual piece of mail and it just said “hey”. That’s something that only works in the atmosphere of instant messaging; otherwise, you’d just be wasting your actual money.

Pro tip: I didn’t receive any letters from people I didn’t initiate the conversation with until I wrote a bio. Once I did that, I started getting letters!

A couple of things to note about how all this works.

You’ll always know what letters are coming from who, and when they’ll get to you. Basically, you’ll be able to see everything except for the message itself.
Once you work up a history of talking back and forth with someone, you’ll always be able to see all of your messages together, which is fun!
Because of the nature of this app, conversations have to be…simpler. This isn’t a chat where you can easily reference every little statement – it’s more like you got a letter from someone responding to your letter, but since you don’t have the letter you sent, it can be hard to remember what you’re talking about.
If you’re “friends” with someone, you can share other types of media. It doesn’t really have much to do with the actual “pen pal” part of it all. Basically, if you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve actually built a relationship with a pen friend, it’s another way for you two to connect!
Many people like to collect stamps, just like with normal snail mail. You can collect stamps by having pen friends from a variety of different countries, or you can go ahead and buy them with real money (though it’s totally unnecessary, and goes to support the app).

And, really, that’s it! The Slowly app is a pretty simple concept for connecting with those who speak your foreign language natively, without a lot of the pressure of face-to-face conversations or instant messaging.

It’s not a language learning app, and that might matter

I’ve mentioned that Slowly isn’t built specifically for language learners – it’s more of an “accidental” option for language learners who would really benefit from it.

However, because it’s not particularly meant for language learning…it’s not perfect. For example, in comparing Slowly to HelloTalk, there is quite a bit of deficit.

I mean, HelloTalk supports text, audio, video chats, real-time corrections…there’s a lot of options. And Slowly just doesn’t have any of those features. It’s just like writing physical letters to a pen pal, except it’s digital.

The fact that Slowly is simple is one of the reasons why it’s so great but definitely has its pros and cons. Other features would make Slowly more desirable for language learners, but, at the same time, the lack of features is part of the charm. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword.

But there are three main reasons why Slowly could be more beneficial to you as a language learner (as it is for me):

Like I’ve said, the pressure is gone. HelloTalk stresses me out. Instant messaging is great for real quick conversations, but I get overwhelmed when it takes me a minute to figure out how to write a message in a foreign language, just to have to do it all over again a few minutes later.
Slowly allows you to operate in more than one language for free! HelloTalk makes you pay for more than one language (it’s only a few bucks a month, but it’s more than free!). With Slowly, talk to as many people as you like in as many languages as you like. No worries!
Total anonymity. If you’re feminine-presenting or have a feminine name, you know what it’s like to hop on a texting app and get bombarded with texts from men. That issue is solved with Slowly!

Slowly app review: who it’s for

With this Slowly app review, understand that it doesn’t have a lot of the tools that HelloTalk or other resources have, but I don’t think language learners should necessarily turn their cheeks to the practice or the friendships that are possible either.

For one, if you really value the nostalgia of snail mail, Slowly is a fun app to use no matter if you’re trying to work your foreign language skills or if you’re just interested in connecting with other English speakers.

For two, Slowly is a nice option to slow down (and I just realized that’s why it’s named Slowly!) your communication and take away the instant-ness of modern-day conversations.

Slowly is like the Speechling of speaking practice for the introverts of language learning; let’s take away the pressure of live conversations while still working on our foreign language skills!

Regardless of whether you feel comfortable using Slowly in the language you’re learning or not, Slowly is a really fun way to connect with strangers that you would’ve never connected with before, while also keeping your identity protected for internet safety reasons.

Mimic Method Review: the BEST for pronunciation

January 12, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

The Mimic Method, developed by Idahosa Ness, is a language learning resource that (at least I think) is way underrated in the online language learning world. It’s totally unlike any other resource, and fills such a huge need that I’m incredibly surprised I don’t see more people talking about it!

Struggling to correctly pronounce the words you’re learning? Can’t understand the words you’re hearing, even if they’re at your level? The Mimic Method’s got you covered.

In this Mimic Method review, let’s talk about what makes The Mimic Method so unique and so important for language learners, how to use it appropriately, and how best to build off of it.

What is The Mimic Method?

In a nutshell, The Mimic Method teaches language learners, from a phonetic point of view, how the sounds of different foreign languages are similar and/or different from the sounds of English.

How does this help us understand the language we’re learning? I’ll get to that in a sec. At this time, The Mimic Method supports:

Chinese (Mandarin)
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese

Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese (European)
Russian
Spanish
“Facial Fluency”

With that last option, you can apply this method to any language you desire!

You’ll do this by learning how to hear, see, and feel the sounds of the language you’re learning. Let’s go through one of these masterclasses to see how this works.

Masterclass walkthrough

I’ve been studying Spanish for so long and most of the sounds are so similar, that the sounds were never too difficult. French, though? Well, not only do I have a lot less experience with it, but the sounds of French are so unique! So French is what I’ll use for this Mimic Method review.

Here’s the screen you get when you first go to the French masterclass.

It ain’t pretty (well, none of it is, to be totally honest), but it’s real simple and real, real effective.

The first lecture, the course introduction, is the same across all languages. Here Idahosa explains everything you need to know about his course so you can set your mindset and expectations from the get-go.

I want to point out that he specifically states that the course takes 2-4 weeks, depending on the individual. That isn’t to say there’s necessarily 2-4 weeks’ worth of content, ’cause there isn’t. You can get through everything in an afternoon.

The Mimic Method requires a lot of independent work – basically, it’ll teach you how to do the thing, but it’s up to you to do the thing for yourself.

Once you get past the initial lecture teaching you what to expect, the ideology behind it, and Idahosa’s background, let’s get to the sounds of French!

These webinars (which are just recordings of live webinars Idahosa has done in the past) are based on visualizations like this one. For vowels, he plots the points of the “elemental sounds” in a language, and compares them to the elemental sounds of English, so you can practice creating the same sounds that native speakers make.

First, he plots where the English sounds that we’re familiar with are, so we can get awareness of what our mouths are doing, how they’re creating different sounds. Then he shows us how these foreign sounds relate to the ones we know – all you gotta do is shift your mouth over a bit!

Some of them are easier, some are more difficult. He makes the sounds himself, physically shows you how the movements change with tongue position, lip roundedness, and nasality (which likely change depending on the language), and is honestly really, really clear.

These webinars are incredibly informative and straight to the point. There’s not a whole lot of fluff involved outside of that first lecture. Idahosa even makes it crystal clear that because you’re learning to make new sounds, you’re forming new muscles. Expect your mouth to get sore!

After the webinars, you get homework!

This homework is a PDF file that you can print if it helps you out, or you can just take a look on your computer. It’s full of questions and exercises that are really helpful not because they repeat the same content all over again, but because they utilize the information you just learned.

In the above image you see the concepts you’re supposed to understand for everything to make sense. When you scroll down, you get exercises to practice awareness of the movements you just learned in a fun way.

Like, you’re not just making French words, you’re making fun English words and paying attention to the movements of your mouth.

If you need some review, you can always either go back to the webinar or go under “assets” and scroll through the presentation itself. It’s all right there for ya!

Once you conquer awareness of the sounds, you practice drilling the sounds. Just like the homework, these drills are entirely self-paced.

Come back and practice these drills whenever it works for you so you can make authentic French sounds without even thinking about it.

These are separated into the categories taught in the initial webinar, so it’s pretty easy to walk yourself through them and not have to actually figure anything out.

These drills are uploaded on Soundcloud, and are very, very clear!

These word lists are…well…lists of words! They’re mostly simple French words that use the sound you’re supposed to be drilling.

My ONE complaint here is I wish that the list of words was written out here: not only am I a visual learner so making these sounds without seeing them feels like I’m shooting in the dark, but it’s freakin’ French! Sounds and letters don’t always correlate!

It is worth noting that you can find the words written out under the “Drills” section (which we’ll take a look at), but this is an inconvenience to me.

The rest of the lectures follow this formula, as well:

explaining these elemental sounds and how to make them by comparing them to your native sounds,
practicing and understanding the concepts of this approach and the sounds you’re learning,
drills, drills, drills!

Once you’ve gone through these lectures and understand all the sounds, you’ll spend most of your time in the Drills section.

As you can see, The Mimic Method takes you all the way down to the very basic phonetic sounds of the language.

Click on any of the sounds you want to practice, and you’ll get a very simple, but also very detailed, review of them. These pages drill on every aspect of the sounds that are discussed in the webinars, so they’re basically like the best notes you could ever make!

https://crashedculture.com/spanish-speaking-practice/

Looking for another way to drill these sounds? Worry not, friend, ’cause the Mimic Method has a few more tricks!

The first trick, the Checklist, lists out all the elemental sounds (still organized by the same categories), so you can check off which sounds you’re struggling with. This can help you narrow down what drills you actually need to be doing!

Next up is the 500 Frequency Words List, which gives you the 500 most commonly used words in the language, with

the elemental sounds that make up the words, separated by syllable
links to every word’s Forvo page, so you have yet another audio sample of correct pronunciation

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, we have the IPA Flash Deck. The IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet, is the core of all the sounds and the system that The Mimic Method is based on. And no, it’s not a beer (not in this context, at least).

This flash deck is actually a simple Anki deck with audio recordings supplied for each symbol, so you can learn what all of these symbols actually mean and make all this that much more intuitive!

Once you conquer all of that (see why he says 2-4 weeks? It’s a lot), we have one last lecture: From Sounds to Syllables. Here we find out how to take these elemental sounds that we know and love, build off of them, and create words and phrases.

Not only do we learn the concept of effectively building off these sounds, but we also learn how to actually do it. First, we practice with the resources supplied, then we can do it with literally any audio sample we want.

What’s next?

In this Mimic Method review, we get a lot of resources. I love how language learners get the opportunity to approach this from whichever method works for them. It’s pretty one-size-fits-all!

I do want to talk about the next steps of this, how to build off of them. In that final lecture, we learn all about how to use transcription to continue to train our ears to recognize these elemental sounds, and we get a recommendation on how to do that.

While I’m in no way saying that way doesn’t work, I also have more options!

For example, both Yabla (specifically, the Scribe tool) and LyricsTraining are also helpful resources that have you transcribe audio and build off of the skills you’re learning here.

The other side of the coin, actually pronouncing the words correctly, can be practiced using Speechling! Speechling is not so much conversation practice (though it can absolutely be used to promote fluency) as much as it is pronunciation practice.

Mimic Method review: who it’s for

If this Mimic Method review teaches you anything, I hope it’s that the Mimic Method is for…pretty much anybody! But specifically, the Mimic Method is perfect for language learners who want to improve their pronunciation (one of the most difficult skills).

It’s not pretty, and it requires a lot of motivation (so if you’re the kind of person who struggles to stick to things without strong guidance, I’d recommend one of the resources mentioned above), but that doesn’t detract from the quality of information.

Oh yeah – and it’s completely free! Click here to see The Mimic Method for yourself.

Tandem Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Tandem is one of the fairly popular names in the language learning world for connecting language learners with native speakers of that language. Right from your phone, you can strike up a conversation with somebody who speaks a foreign language, get in practice, and make a friend!

In this Tandem review, let’s dive into what goes into this experience: the pros, the cons, and if Tandem is right for you and your language learning journey.

Oh yeah – we’ll go into Tandem Pro too, and see if it’s something that you can benefit from, or if you’re good to go with the free app.

Tandem languages

Because of the way Tandem works (meaning Tandem itself doesn’t really create content, it’s all the content [messages] that users create), there isn’t really a limit to languages! As long as you can find somebody on the app that is willing to talk to you in that language, you’re set.

Which is why on the website, Tandem lists its languages as:

English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian

Spanish
Japanese
Chinese
Korean
Other

In other words, open up the app and give it a shot, you never know!

Tandem app review: getting started

When you first download the Tandem app, you’ll get some pretty basic starting, qualifying questions. Unlike qualifying questions with other apps that want to know your level in the language you’re learning (’cause, spoiler alert, you should have the vocab/grammar down to participate in basic conversation), Tandem’s questions figure out who you are and where you’re looking to go.

Pretty basic stuff, right?

When choosing which languages you’re practicing, you can choose as many languages as you like at any level. And Tandem offers almost any language under the sun – basically, if there’s someone on the app who speaks your language, you’re set!

Once that’s done, you’ll get some more qualifying questions to help pair you up with a conversation partner that you’ll actually enjoy talking to.

Again, pretty basic, reasonable stuff.

I wouldn’t sweat these questions too much; I’m not sure they really show up anywhere major, and even if they do, nobody really pays attention to them. In my experience, you’ll get a GIANT influx of messages once you get going anyways! And, to be honest, I’m not sure anyone really ever sees your answers. Maybe it’s just an internal thing?

Oh yeah, and that last screenshot? I’m not sure if Tandem is trying to push Tandem Pro here or if there’s actually a “waiting line”, but my account was approved within like 20 minutes or so. Use your real name and a real photo of you (yup, that’s required!) and you shouldn’t have any problems.

Nonetheless, you do get this offer:

If you really love using Tandem you could find a lot of value in Tandem Pro. It’s very reasonably priced and gets you a lot more access to more practice as well as partners that you may have more chemistry with.

At the very least, I think the unlimited translation would absolutely be worth it. Find a friend or two that’ll help you build up your vocabulary and it’ll be an awesome learning tool!

After all that setup, it’s time to get in some practice!

Tandem review: finding a partner

The first place you’ll go is the Community tab. Here’s you’ll find a long list of potential conversation partners to help you practice the language you want to learn.

Everybody’s got a picture, their real name, and a “bio”, which seems to be their answer to the “what are your goals” question that we answered before. Sometimes it’ll be a complete sentence, and at the same time I’ve literally seen just “environmental” as a bio, so….grain of salt?

Here you see a couple of things. Most importantly, obviously, there are a few potential candidates for getting in some language practice.

Since I told Tandem that I’m a native English speaker and am learning Spanish, they’re recommending the opposite back: native Spanish speakers learning English.

Above that, you can see “featured learners” which…I’m not entirely sure what that means. Maybe really active texters?

And above that, you can search for members who are geographically near you. That’s only relevant if you’re a paid member and value in-person language exchanges.

BUT this option does provide great opportunities for language learners who are interested in local language learners but want to test the waters a bit and see if you actually enjoy talking to language learners nearby.

If you’re not finding anybody who you have any interest in talking to, hit the “settings” button in the upper-right hand corner to get this screen.

My favorite part of this is where you can select your gender and your age range. Especially considering you have to use your real name and your real photo, I get totally inundated by messages from dudes (like the guy who asked if my dad is an artist [cue massive eye roll]), so that’s incredibly helpful!

I found one person that I wanted to talk to and initiated a conversation with her. Then BAM!

So. Many. Texts. So. Many. Notifications.

I wonder if I was put into that list of “featured” texters?

I mean, it’s great for finding new conversation partners! The sky’s the limit!

It can also be incredibly overwhelming, which is why I’ve left most of these messages unread. Honestly, I just couldn’t keep up!

Oh yeah, peep that last one. What, you thought I was lying?! You think women don’t drown in messages from random men just because they’re women? Think again, mate!

Now, when you’re in a conversation, what options do you have available to you? Well….like all of them. Tandem is primarily a texting app, but you can easily enough also use it to video chat, send audio messages, images, GIFS…you name it, you got it!

Plus, one thing that’s really helpful if you want to be precise, is easy corrections within conversations.

It may be worth mentioning that Tandem doesn’t supply you with any special keyboards or anything, so you’ll need to make sure that your phone’s native keyboard supports the letters (accents and all!) that your target language uses.

Personally, I just use Google’s keyboard, and that gives me access to all the accents I need to text in Spanish, French…and pretty much every accent that I could possibly need for letters in the Latin alphabet.

Honestly, the few conversations I did have before I got overwhelmed (which I already knew was going to happen based on my HelloTalk review) were really enjoyable! It just…texting is really quick, you know? It’s meant to be instant, rapid-fire. Which is hard when you’re doing it in another language!

That includes not only reading and figuring out someone else’s messages in another language but also taking the time and energy to communicate in the language yourself. It’s really hard work.

Most of the conversations I had were mostly (if not all) in Spanish. Most of them also didn’t really volunteer corrections, but that’s an easy enough thing to just ask a person about.

Dani, on the right, was the first one to correct my texts, so I did the same back. It’s really nice, but it also requires a lot of mental energy, when you’re already using so much mental energy to translate these texts!

That mixed with all the messages I was getting from random Spanish speakers…it can be a lot for some people. And one thing we want to avoid with language learning is getting too overwhelmed/expecting too much from ourselves.

Tandem tutors

Lastly, we have one more section of the Tandem app: the “Tutors” section.

This is a kind of interesting model, to be honest. I mean obviously, anybody using this app would have at least some interest in a paid tutor, I guess I just wasn’t expecting it?

Nonetheless, Tandem handpicks tutors for you that they think are interesting to talk to. You pick a tutor, pick a time, and select how long you want your lesson to be: 20, 40, 60, or 90 minutes long (which is a really long lesson!)

This is just one example of one of the tutors you can try out. I mean, there are plenty of ways to learn to speak a language, but if you haven’t found one that you like just yet, maybe you’ll want to give this section of Tandem a go!

Who the Tandem app is for

After doing this Tandem app review, I love it! I think this is a great resource for language learners: the app is attractive and smooth, there are a ton of potential conversation partners (at least for Spanish, I can’t say for less popular languages), and it’s really easy to get thrown into some conversational practice.

But, like I said, I knew going in that it wouldn’t be for me. While the concept is great, Tandem is not for language learners who easily get overwhelmed by a lot of conversations/attention (i.e. introverts). If you have the social energy to keep it up, Tandem is great!

Tandem is primarily best for writing (or texting) practice, but the sky’s really the limit. Considering you can send audio clips or even have a video chat with anybody, that takes care of your speaking practice, as well. That’ll get you your reading and listening practice along with it!

It’s also worth reiterating that Tandem is not for absolute beginners – you should at least be able to carry on a basic conversation, or you’ll be totally lost. Otherwise, though, Tandem is a great way to get in all four of the major language learning skills!

uTalk review: tons of vocab in tons of languages

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

uTalk is a vocab app that brings languages to us that can be hard to find elsewhere; so whether you’re learning something common like Spanish or not-so-common like Cebuano, uTalk pretty much as you covered.

With 140+ languages, there are plenty of options to choose from. But that’s not all you should be thinking about when it comes to your language learning strategy! In this uTalk review, let’s discuss the pros and cons of using this app to learn a language.

uTalk review: languages

One of the best reasons to use uTalk to learn a language is that there are so many languages available that you can’t find anywhere else. uTalk currently supports 140+ different languages to learn, with new languages being added all the time.

You can use uTalk to learn:

Afrikaans
Albanian
Amharic
Arabic (Egyptian)
Arabic (Gulf)
Arabic (Lebanese)
Arabic (Modern Standard)
Arabic (Moroccan)
Armenian (Eastern)
Assamese
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Burmese
Cantonese
Catalan
Cebuano
Chibemba
Chichewa
Chinese (Hakka)
Chinese (Mandarin)
Corsican
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Dzongkha
English (American)
English (Australian)
English (British)
English (Canadian)
English (Cockney)
English (Indian)
English (Scottish)
Esperanto
Estonian
Fijian
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
Flemish
French
French (Canadian)

Galician
Georgian
German (Swiss)
Greek
Greek (Ancient)
Greenlandic
Gujarati
Haitian Creole
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Ilocano
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kachchi
Kannada
Kazakh
Khmer
Kinyarwanda
Korean
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Kurdish (Sorani)
Kyrgyz
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Malayalam
Maltese
Manx
Maori
Marathi
Mongolian
Neapolitan
Nepali
Norwegian
Oriya
Oromo
Papiamentu

Pashto
Persian (Dari)
Persian (Farsi)
Persian (Tajiki)
Pidgin (Nigerian)
Polish
Portuguese
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Punjabi (Indian)
Punjabi (Pakistani)
Romanian
Russian
Saami (Southern)
Samoan
Sardinian
Scots
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Shona
Sicilian
Sindhi
Sinhala
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Spanish (Spanish)
Spanish (Argentinian)
Spanish (Latin American)
Swahili
Swedish
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Tibetan
Tigrinya
Tok Pisin

Suffice to say…it’s a lot (151, to be precise). So many different languages, including different accents! Now let’s talk about what uTalk does with them.

uTalk walkthrough

When you first open up the uTalk app, you’ll be shown this screen, featuring every single one of those 140+ languages, with your most recent language at the top.

As you can see, it’s pretty straightforward! No fancy tutorials or overwhelm, really. This can be nice for those who don’t need the complicated AI features or techy chatbots; uTalk keeps it simple.

Select your language
Select your category
Go!

Each category of phrases is provided with the following exercises.

Phrase practice

Your first exercise introduces these phrases to you. There are quite a bit of them, honestly, so you may want to take a few tries to get through them.

https://vimeo.com/1045387465/7d524a7bbc?ts=0&share=copy

And if this is too difficult for you, go back to the prior “first words” lessons.

Study each of these phrases by listening to the audio, understanding the phrase (try to depend just on the image to figure it out! It may be difficult, but I promise it’ll be worth it), and repeating it until you get the pronunciation down.

This is the last time you’ll see the English translations – for the rest of these quizzes, you’ll be identifying each vocab word by either its picture or its audio.

And it’s self-correcting, as well, so you can decide if your understanding is “good enough”. Like I said, no AI or speech recognition to complicate things!

Easy game

If you’re not sure if you studied the first exercise well enough, the next exercise will immediately tell you. Easy game takes your knowledge of the phrases a step further and gives you some multiple choice selections of the audio clips and imagery.

https://vimeo.com/1045390342/14c6123301?ts=0&share=copy

In this way, uTalk is very similar to Rosetta Stone: teaching you the language by letting your brain “figure it out”. As I said, this is more difficult in the short term, but much more effective in the long-term. If you’ve ever struggled with getting stuck translating in your head when you’re trying to communicate, this approach will circumvent that entire step.

And don’t worry: even if you don’t understand every single word at this point, that is totally normal. This sort of game trains your brain to differentiate between different inflections, vocab words, etc., not necessarily to have “correct” grammar or vocabulary.

Speaking game

In this activity…well, you can see for yourself how I tricked myself by trying to trick uTalk! Basically, it’s time for you to prove if you’re pronouncing the phrases correctly enough to understand yourself compared to the native audio.

This can technically be helpful for pronunciation (though I recommend Speechling more for that), but I’d say this would be more helpful for retaining the vocabulary into your memory.

Easy game
Speaking game
Hard game
Memory game
Recall game

Hard Game

The Hard Game is where you start testing to see how effectively you’re learning, and whether or not you need to study more. This is active use of your memory.

You get a number of images and an audio track. Your job is to select the image that belongs to that audio track. No more text, no more translations. Now it’s up to you to know which words mean what.

Once you get to this point, you should have a decent idea of if you need more practice or not. By now you’ll be tested on whether or not you kind of have a hang on this or not.

Memory Game

Memory Game takes it a step further by cutting your time shorter. With the Hard Game, you get plenty of time to process and think, and then make your choice.

With Memory Game, you’re flashed with images for a couple of seconds, and they’re instantly covered back up. Then audio plays, and you have to select which image (remembering which image is where) goes with the audio clip you’re hearing.

This is where uTalk gets intense! You only get to see these images for like 3 seconds before they’re covered up. When you tap on one card, only that one card flips back over, so there’s no getting around it!

Recall Game

Last but not least we have Recall Game! In this final exercise, you’ll be tested on this vocab with every skill you’ve been practicing: you get the English word/phrase and the image, and your job is to record yourself saying the correct foreign phrase.

Just like with the Speaking Game, there’s no attempt at speech recognition – you’re trusted to know for yourself whether or not you’ve got it. Once you make your recording and the English is translated, you have the option to:

replay your own recorded audio
play uTalk’s native audio
report that you got it wrong
report that you got it right

I love that it’s totally up to you to say how well you did on your own speaking portion, and whether or not you got the phrase right. Self-reporting is where it’s at!

uTalk review: prices

uTalk’s payment model is super interesting! uTalk gives you the option to earn more time, earn more information. Or, to make things simpler, you can just pay to play.

Click here for uTalk’s updated pricing.

For one, uCoins gives you the option not only to work your way through (earning uCoins as you play uTalk’s games) but also to only pay for a little at a time.

If 60+ different topics spanning 140+ different languages is too much for you (’cause that is definitely a lot), just pay for the topics that are actually beneficial to you.

uTalk review: who it’s for

I do genuinely love uTalk, both because it’s an excellent way to learn a new language, but also because of their ethics, and their commitment to making endangered and less common languages more accessible.

As for actually using uTalk to learn a language, this uTalk review proves that it’s a great app for those who are looking for a quick route to effective use and understanding of the language in very specific situations, without the hullabaloo of fancy add-ons or confusing features.

uTalk is simple, direct, and effective.

If that’s your way to learn languages, similar alternatives to uTalk include Rosetta Stone and Speechling; both are just as simple and focus on speaking, but Rosetta Stone is more modern while Speechling isn’t as effective for teaching the language as it is promoting your pronunciation.

Alternatively, if you need heavier gamification to keep you interested and engaged long-term, I might recommend something like Polygloss or Speakly.

Suffice to say, uTalk is a great option for language learners looking for resources to support lesser-known languages that aren’t available elsewhere. Click here to get 20% off uTalk!

Conjuguemos Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

Conjuguemos is a study tool used to learn verbs, vocab, and grammar in a handful of languages. The vision behind it is a way to make learning these things fun for the classroom – it’s not a fancy app, but that also means it’s totally free to use (for individual students, at least).

So amongst all the other resources and apps out there for language learners, who is Conjuguemos for? What does it do right, and what does it need to work on? In this Conjuguemos review, I’ll discuss just that!

Conjuguemos languages

As always, let’s start this Conjuguemos review with the languages available themselves. Conjuguemos supports a handful of very popular foreign languages, including:

French
German
Italian
Korean

Latin
Portuguese
Spanish

However, not all these languages are totally complete – it looks like the more popular languages (Spanish) have significantly more material than less popular languages (Latin).

It’s kind of like Duolingo in that it’s totally free, but…you get what you get, ya know?

As an experienced Spanish language learner and considering Spanish is the most evolved language on Conjuguemos, let’s buckle up and focus there!

Conjuguemos review: verbs

Once you select a language, all the materials available in said language are shown to you in a pretty well-organized way. And, I gotta say, if this is supplemental to the tools you’re already using, there’s nothing better!

As an independent language learner who’s full up on vocab and really just needs to brush up on the past tense and subjunctive sometimes, I stick to the first section.

Under this section, all your options for studying these verbs are laid out for you by subcategory. You can practice all of your Spanish conjugations, or you can narrow it down by something as vague as Indicative/Subjunctive/Imperative moods, or as specific as stem-changing Preterite tense verbs.

You can chew up all these grammatical differences any way you choose, whichever way works for you and your grammatical weaknesses.

My past tense isn’t nearly as good as it should be, so I’m gonna go with the Preterite tense, regular verbs only.

Don’t know this tense at all, or very little? That drop-down menu on the right links you to all the learning materials you could ever need: conjugation charts, worksheets, flashcards, everything.

While you can get that information in so many different places online, it’s handy to have links right here to review before testing yourself. I won’t go too in-depth, though, ’cause that’s not where Conjuguemos shines!

Let’s start with Graded Practice.

This bit is simple but effective! For 5 minutes (or however long you set your timer for – I’ve found 5 minutes to be plenty to both get my practice in and also not exhaust myself) you conjugate your verbs.

If you need a hint, click “Show Hints” on the bottom right. If you just want to guess (like I do), try your best and you’ll be corrected and won’t be moved on until you get it right, correct accents and all! Conjuguemos also keeps track of what you struggle with and will show you those terms a couple more times.

Not quite an SRS algorithm, but more like common-sense practice!

Plus, if you have an account, you can opt to record your results and keep track of your improvements over time.

Next up, we have flashcards!

On the front you get the English verb – on the back you get the translation and all the conjugations you need.

Personally not my favorite method (I like translating on the fly MUCH more than this rote memorization), but I do appreciate the self-reporting, like Anki and Rocket Languages also do very well.

Last but not least (in this section), we have games!

If you’re not using Conjuguemos under a teacher (I’ll talk about what that means in a bit) you, unfortunately, can’t play those first 3 multiplayer games, but you still have plenty of options!

They’re all very simple and fun – here are some shots from Frog Game, Crossword, Wordsearch, and Memory:

Yeah, I know, not the fanciest looking. I mean if you’re into the whole 80s/90s video game vibe (I’m not sure that was intentional, but it’s the impression I get) the aesthetics are great!

But we’re talking about learning languages, so aesthetics aren’t necessarily the priority anyways.

Suffice to say, Conjuguemos offers a ton of methods for us to learn and practice our verbs. And that’s just the one section! Let’s move on to vocabulary.

Conjuguemos review: vocabulary

Conjuguemos takes an interesting approach to vocab. Because it’s primarily meant to supplement formal classes, we get two options: vocab by textbook and vocab by theme.

Under “vocab by textbook”, Conjuguemos has a list of what I’m assuming are popular Spanish textbooks in a variety of levels. If you’re using one of these textbooks, Conjuguemos has vocab separated by textbook and chapter, so you (or your teacher) can use it to help you through!

Selecting any of these individual chapters within these textbooks will send you to that same activity page with Graded Practice, Flashcards, and Games options.

The idea is that your teacher uses Conjuguemos to keep track of how you’re doing in these chapters, as well as provide you with a more entertaining way to do homework! Not bad at all!

Or, if you’re not using Conjuguemos for a class, you can also just sort vocabulary by theme and learn them that way. It appears to be the same words that you’ll study in any textbook (food, clothing, colors, etc.).

Spanish grammar

Next, let’s take a look at the Conjuguemos approach to grammar! While yes, verb conjugations are a part of grammar, Conjuguemos gives them their own independent sections, and rightly so.

Under grammar, we get concepts like Gustar, Por vs Para, and more. Each of these concepts sends you to a Graded Practice, which is basically a digital worksheet to use to practice your use of said concepts.

And just like in all the other sections, accents matter! If you don’t use accents, you will be marked as wrong. It’s tough, but it’s true.

Listening activities

Finally, we have some listening activities. These don’t really seem to relate to any subject in particular but are great for working on listening comprehension in a couple of ways.

All the listening activities are organized into Themes, Grammar, and Cultural Topics. They’re also in a variety of different accents, which is noted right on the activity page.

These videos are great snippets of real Spanish-speakers talking at native speed, though with easy vocab that relates to their themes.

For example, this exercise is a boy named Dani being “interviewed” about basic information: where he’s from, how old he is, etc.

It’s not the slow, crystal clear speech that you’d expect from beginner audio, so be prepared to not understand a lot of it. This is some serious comprehension practice!

From here you have two options to test yourself: the comprehension quiz and the listening quiz. Here’s the comprehension quiz, answering the same basic questions that Dani is answering.

For more of a challenge, the listening quiz gives you the transcript and asks how many words you want to fill in for yourself. Obviously, the more words you remove, the more difficult the challenge.

This’ll take some time and some serious thinking! This is a great way to practice listening comprehension, especially considering not only the number of different accents available but they’re also labeled as such so you can easily broaden the number of accents you can understand.

In other words, this is hella supplemental study content!

Conjuguemos review: pricing

The pricing plans here are interesting and are clearly different from most other resources in that it’s built specifically as supplemental content for more formal classes.

Independent language learners don’t pay a dime! This pricing is more for teachers and educational institutions who can use Conjuguemos to help communicate their students’ individual needs.

And independent language learners also aren’t missing out on a whole lot! The only glaringly obvious thing you’ll be missing if you’re joining without a teacher is that you can’t play the multiplayer games, since those are based on playing against other classmates.

Otherwise, teachers or institutions who opt for a paid plan for their students can use Conjuguemos for a very reasonable price.

Who should use Conjuguemos?

I love using Conjuguemos for one-off grammar practice as shown in this Conjuguemos review. Just five minutes here and there remembering my past tenses or other various grammar concepts gives me a little instant gratification.

I love the Graded Practice, that it’s just a simple but effective way to practice grammar rules in context. That bit’s my favorite.

Unfortunately, while Conjuguemos technically supports a handful of languages, many of them (namely Latin and Korean), this Conjuguemos review shows that they just don’t have enough content (yet) to make it worthwhile. If you’re learning any of the other languages, though, and need some basic grammar practice, Conjuguemos is gold!

Especially if you’re taking a formal course using a textbook that’s supported, this is an amazing supplemental resource! Or, if you’re a teacher looking for easy, convenient help for your students, see what Conjuguemos can do for you!

OkyDoky Review: very fun way to get useful vocab

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Note: this review is currently being updated. Some information may be outdated.

OkyDoky (formerly Hey! Lingo) is a new resource for foreign language vocab that offers language learners a ton of languages. What it lacks in history it makes up for in diversity (both in languages and in the ways you can learn the vocab in them).

In this OkyDoky review, I’ll explain all the ways in which you can learn all this vocab, and what kind of language learner OkyDoky is best for.

OkyDoky languages

OkyDoky is for learners of 38 different languages, including:

Albanian
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Chinese (Mandarin)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Estonian
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese

Korean
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese

Bonus! Just like Mondly, OkyDoky is great for language laddering: any language you can learn with OkyDoky can used to be learned any of their other languages as well.

Using OkyDoky

Once you create an account, you’ll immediately be walked through a tutorial of the app so that you’re aware of both how to use it, and what options are available to you to learn a language.

https://vimeo.com/1044386409/527c5bd612?ts=0&share=copy

At first glance, this seems like a completely reasonable way to approach learning a language, as long as you already have some beginner knowledge behind you. This tutorial assumes you know beginner vocabulary and verbs, which is worth noting.

Also worth noting? Just from this first glance, all I see is AI. I’m hoping that it’s just the tutorial and the cover art that is AI, and the rest is human made (let’s not take a lesson from Duolingo, please!).

Your path to 3000+ words (which leaves you a solid-sized vocabulary to practice actually speaking)
Courses (start with frequently used words & end speaking long sentences)
Vocabulary (learn useful words related to a single theme)

You can choose to learn vocabulary with either of these two paths, whichever one is more useful or interesting to you. For example, if you want to be conversationally fluent as quickly as possible, you’d go by way of courses; if you want to be able to talk about specific things, you’d go by vocabulary.

This right here is already a pretty good indication of the flexibility language learners can get from OkyDoky! This not only offers us a specific road map to achieve a specific goal, but it also includes several ways to get there.

And, no matter which path you choose, you can pick up whichever course you like, whenever you like. This allows us the flexibility to be spontaneous and creative in what we’re learning, while still working towards the same long-term goal of 300 words.

OkyDoky review: flashcard types

I’m a big fan of resources that allow us to switch up how we’re consuming our flashcards. There’s Anki, which has several different options that we can mix and match however we please. There’s uTalk which takes us through a predictable pattern to build our skills in multiple ways. How does OkyDoky do it?

Here’s what I got when I selected a French course. There’s a lot here, so let’s dissect it.

How many cards in the course, depending on if you’re a plus member or not (more on that later)
Different tabs to go through as you make your way through these cards: “Study”, “Review”, “Difficult”, and “Pinned” cards. These are great tools for keeping track of the terms that are more difficult for you
“Timer Speed”, which you can use to speed things up or slow them down if your comprehension is higher/lower than average. You can also turn this off if it’s putting too much pressure on you
Card types

Card types is the biggun’ here! We’ve got “Translate”, “Listen”, “Build”, “Switch”, and “Blank” (I told you, OkyDoky is all about options and flexibility!).

Here’s what some of the different card types looked like when I just selected “all”.

There’s a couple of things I really liked about how this session went. First of all, even though I left myself open to all the card types, it started easier and slowly got a little harder (i.e. “Build”).

Second, if you like all the fun little sound effects and graphics of Duolingo, you’ll love OkyDoky. With the little clicking sounds and the “success” sound effect, plus a big giant reward star that pops up every time you get 5 or 10 in a row right…OkyDoky’s got the gamification thing down pat. This will absolutely keep you interested in language learning.

Oh, and for the sake of building your comprehension, the term is repeated multiple times, whether it’s a “Listen” card or not.

If you get it wrong? No worries, it’ll show you the answer for you to review, and make a note of it to test you on again later.

And that’s pretty much it for the cards themselves! While you’re not going to get any grammar lessons or explanations, this can make for an excellent way to pick up grammar in context. Simple, yet very fun and effective.

Looking for more information? Scroll down to see a list of all the flashcards you’ve been working on.

Seriously, OkyDoky’s graphics are on point! The whole website gives off a great fun/easy-going/perky feel.

You can see a visual representation of how well you know each phrase, the translation (and transliteration for languages with non-Latin alphabets), two different audio recordings of said phrase, a little emoji describing the phrase, and a link to a forum to discuss (again, much like Duolingo).

Because OkyDoky is still so new, there’s not much in terms of discussion. However, just like Kwiziq was when they first expanded to Spanish, you’ll get a response pretty quickly.

Fair warning: if you head on over to the Discussions sections, you’ll find a lot of users correcting OkyDoky’s content and complaining that there shouldn’t be so many errors.

They make a fair point, but I can’t say how their content is created, and they consistently heed the advice and make the corrections. So, you know, take that bit as you will. A brand new website isn’t going to have all the kinks fixed just yet.

OkyDoky’s chat courses

Recently, OkyDoky has released 80+ new language courses in a new feature called chats! To access them, make sure you have the most recent version of the app (or just use the website on desktop) and click on the brown speech bubble courses.

With these chats, OkyDoky switches it up a little bit and goes from kind of random phrases to phrases that you’ll use in an actual conversation. You don’t have all the options of the other courses, but it is a good option for connecting the information you’re taking in into some more realistic “conversational” practice (you’re not actively having the conversations, i.e. speaking, but you’re still creating those connections between random words/phrases and getting used to real-life chats).

It’s pretty simple: you’re given a phrase, a few fill-in-the-blank options, and a timer. Your job is to make it make sense.

As you can see, your correct answers are in green speech bubbles, and incorrect ones are in red. In the end, you get your stats, which let you know how you did in that particular session.

And, per the rest of the app/website, you can replay the chat just with the phrases that you struggled with to really dive deep into the more difficult stuff. So it’s a challenge because you’re essentially throwing yourself into the conversation, but it’s not a challenge because you’re still not actually speaking.

OkyDoky’s other tools

Besides the main show, the flashcards, OkyDoky has a few other tricks to help us stay motivated, consistent, and interested in our language learning.

First we have the Leaderboard. As OkyDoky continues to improve I can see this as a really helpful motivation tool to keep us learning!

At the moment there are two versions of the site-wide Leaderboard: one by language, and one for all OkyDoky users put together. It’s pretty easy to rank at the moment because there aren’t that many users, but I hope once enough language learners join you’ll be able to compete just against those in a particular course.

I would love to see this develop into something along the lines of Duolingo’s leagues, where you’re pit against a certain amount of members every week. But, as of right now, they’re working with what they’ve got (i.e. not too many members).

Another option, if you have friends who are also using OkyDoky, is groups! Create a group and give your 4-digit group code to anybody you like in order to compete with your friends (a much easier and personal competition than everyone learning a certain language).

You can create a group with as many languages as you like, and edit which languages are counted at any time.

Next up we have daily goals! Go into your account page and see some simple statistics for your study habits.

Unfortunately, these aren’t really front-and-center – it took me a minute of exploring the website to find this. However, I do really like the calendar view. Some may want some more in-depth stats (especially for paid members), but at the moment this section is pretty simple.

Besides the fact that I really need to focus on one course at a time, you can see the percentage of the words I’ve learned, when I’ve studied, and how long I’ve studied for (excellent fodder for PolyLogger!).

Underneath, you also have the option to set a daily study goal and set a daily reminder, either via email or via the mobile app.

OkyDoky prices

Even for a paid language resource, OkyDoky keeps it pretty accessible. They don’t block out entire courses but instead give you a little bit of everything. Just in the French course I reviewed for this post, it included 38 free words and 329 extra for paid users.

So what does it take to get those extra words? Well, not much!

OkyDoky is very accessible. I recommend getting that membership now; like I said, it’s a pretty new resource, so these prices may very well increase over time.

And keep in mind, OkyDoky currently covers the most often-used vocab of 26 different languages, and we get access to every single one of them with an account. The sky’s the limit folks!

Who should use OkyDoky

That’s the end of this OkyDoky review. Do I like it? Yes. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Because it’s still in its beginning stages, there are a lot of errors that need fixing. While it’s easy enough to report errors and get them fixed, this does mean we need to take these flashcards with a grain of salt sometimes.

OkyDoky really shines in its use of gamification, giving us those little endorphin rushes whenever we click around the site. It also mixes up the flashcards really well and gives us the power to choose what kind of learning we want to be doing.

And, of course, I love the visualization of the OkyDoky goal. With that specific goal in mind, language learners who are looking to bulk up on phrases in a variety of different languages in a fun way are gonna love this!

It’s a lot like Duolingo, but strictly for vocab and phrases. Like I said, you’re also not going to get any explanations behind grammar rules or anything like that, so if you can’t figure out these phrases via context, you’ll need to go somewhere else for backup.