Really enjoying this app!
I was worried that I wouldn’t know enough Spanish to make use of this app yet, but I’m pleasantly surprised at how fun and helpful the experience is!
Chatting with the AI is so impressive. I personally have a hard time coming up with conversation starters or how to direct a conversation to get ME talking vs the other person, but happily this app is great at asking me questions that get me excited to attempt to communicate back 😂
The processing time for the AI to respond isn’t a problem for me. It does take longer if I’m code switching a lot or my sentence structure doesn’t make sense when I’m forming ideas in Spanish, but honestly the thoughtful responses are worth the up to 5-8 seconds I’ve experienced so far. Maybe if I was speaking a lot of information at once it would take longer, but my communication abilities aren’t at that level yet.
I’m really having fun and value where the app is and I’m sure the progress it will continue to make. Muchas gracias!
Chatting with the AI is so impressive. I personally have a hard time coming up with conversation starters or how to direct a conversation to get ME talking vs the other person, but happily this app is great at asking me questions that get me excited to attempt to communicate back 😂
The processing time for the AI to respond isn’t a problem for me. It does take longer if I’m code switching a lot or my sentence structure doesn’t make sense when I’m forming ideas in Spanish, but honestly the thoughtful responses are worth the up to 5-8 seconds I’ve experienced so far. Maybe if I was speaking a lot of information at once it would take longer, but my communication abilities aren’t at that level yet.
I’m really having fun and value where the app is and I’m sure the progress it will continue to make. Muchas gracias!
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NO FREE FUNCTIONALITY
It’s not actually free. There is 0 free functionality. You login in and are prompted to pay with no bypass.
There is no free vs paid version. It’s simply pay for and access. Sad to see as I’m a fan of Xiaoma, the creator, but this seems like another AI-based subscription cash grab.
There is no free vs paid version. It’s simply pay for and access. Sad to see as I’m a fan of Xiaoma, the creator, but this seems like another AI-based subscription cash grab.
Difficult to Use
It's difficult to tell how much of my poor experience is due to the shortcomings of fundamental functions of the app and how much is due to UI design. It would first of all be helpful to explain to the new user how to use the app effectively. My Mandarin Chinese teacher first introduced themselves and asked what was going on, both in English. I responded in English, "Not much." The app misheard what I said, but still thought it was English, the words "by merch." The teacher then proceeded to rattle off several sentences in Mandarin Chinese that I did not understand, so I asked, "What does that mean?" It then loaded for several minutes with no response. A few obvious problems with this experience:
1. The app failed to understand two very common functional words of English (I speak native standard American English and I enunciate carefully. I also made sure to set my native language to US English, NOT UK English, which might otherwise explain misunderstanding "much" as "merch." I confirmed my settings were correct when I realized this possibility.)
2. The teacher responded to English words with a bunch of Mandarin Chinese. This would be fine if the teacher would explain what was just said when prompted, but this leads to the next problem.
3. The app, after additional experimentation, repeatedly loads the next response for several minutes with no clear indication it will resolve, and I can see no function to stop the loading process so I can try saying something again, or at least reset the conversation.
Is this perhaps a overloaded server issue, like a lot of people are trying to use the app at once, with the app having just been advertised hours ago? Or is the system just not great at processing audio language data? Not clear. But it is clear my experience was poor and it's not possible for me to tell if the app can be a useful language learning tool, since basic functions don't work as intended, or are not convenient, so I haven't been able to get more than 2 or 3 exchanges deep with the teacher.
In its current form, I do not recommend the app for language learning. It is not inexpensive to hire an online teacher for one-on-one language learning and you will likely be better off since you'll be hearing a real native speaker who gives immediate feedback when you make a mistake.
1. The app failed to understand two very common functional words of English (I speak native standard American English and I enunciate carefully. I also made sure to set my native language to US English, NOT UK English, which might otherwise explain misunderstanding "much" as "merch." I confirmed my settings were correct when I realized this possibility.)
2. The teacher responded to English words with a bunch of Mandarin Chinese. This would be fine if the teacher would explain what was just said when prompted, but this leads to the next problem.
3. The app, after additional experimentation, repeatedly loads the next response for several minutes with no clear indication it will resolve, and I can see no function to stop the loading process so I can try saying something again, or at least reset the conversation.
Is this perhaps a overloaded server issue, like a lot of people are trying to use the app at once, with the app having just been advertised hours ago? Or is the system just not great at processing audio language data? Not clear. But it is clear my experience was poor and it's not possible for me to tell if the app can be a useful language learning tool, since basic functions don't work as intended, or are not convenient, so I haven't been able to get more than 2 or 3 exchanges deep with the teacher.
In its current form, I do not recommend the app for language learning. It is not inexpensive to hire an online teacher for one-on-one language learning and you will likely be better off since you'll be hearing a real native speaker who gives immediate feedback when you make a mistake.
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Still in development stages
I downloaded this app just to try out and was immediately met with a paywall. After reluctantly signing up for a 7 day free trial, I was surprised by the quality of the voices in the app and the response quality as well. However, the biggest issue is that the time it takes the ‘teacher’ to respond varies dramatically. Sometimes, it responds in a matter of seconds, but other times, it doesn’t even respond after I wait a 10 full minutes and is still displaying a blank screen with a loading symbol. Moreover, I don’t think there is a way to quickly correct if the ‘teacher’ mishears you (such as a quick flag button) which would be useful sometimes. I love the concept of this app overall, but the execution in my experience is subpar and still needs some more work.
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