Clunky and incredibly frustrating UX
Value for Money is a foreign concept here—pun heavily intended. $300+ for yearly subscription. I burned through $1.99 in 2 minutes—absurd. The prompts are also clunky—I was in a bakery scenario with zero guidance and an assortment of “suggested responses” to a question I didn’t fully understand. The app promises immersion but doesn’t guide you through basic comprehension before thrusting you into “real world” scenarios with no context. I selected two random responses to speak aloud and suddenly I was out of gems—the currency in the app; $1.99 for 100 gems— complete waste of money and time. You aren’t even taught how to pronounce your responses—I was on beginner mandarin and my pinyin reading-> pronunciation pipeline is weak, so I had no idea if what I was saying was even right. It has no way to verify your work once you’ve garbled together some sounds. I feel like I paid to beta test an aimless chat bot.
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No learning mechanism
They drop you in these “stories” in which you must speak in the language you want to learn but you aren’t taught anything about reading the language and there is zero instruction on how to learn. For Japanese for example you MUST know how to leader all the characters and pronounce them. But now I have to go to learn all the Japanese letters before I can participate in the app….
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Great way to learn!
I’ve tried a few language apps, and this one has been one of my favorites. The stories make learning feel more natural and help me remember new words without it feeling like studying. The app is simple to use and keeps me motivated to practice every day.
