A few months back, I heard an interview with David Sedaris in which he talked at length about how he uses Duolingo Max to practice German (and French and Japanese and Spanish — the guy is exhausting) while walking his daily 10 miles (again, exhausting). His Duolingo Max AI tutor remembers their conversation from day to day and prompts him with relevant questions, correcting him as needed.
I was entranced. My Spanish is good enough that I can get by if need be, but without regular use, it’s all but shriveled into a bumbling mass of uselessness.
Which is mostly fine, since I almost never need to speak Spanish.
However! Something fun is in the works that’s gonna require me to speak Spanish (more on this soon, eek!), so I’ve decided it’s time to improve myself. I mean, I’m certainly not getting any better at Spanish if I’m not using it, right?
Through all my years of on-again, off-again language study, I’ve always longed for a) someone to listen to me at length, b) shame-free self-expression, and c) detailed and persistent correction. The way David talked about his AI tutor, it sounded like it might be what I needed.
I’d get Duolingo Max, I announced to my husband. But upon researching it, we discovered it was loaded with stupid gimmicky games, and its unwieldy platform was staggeringly frustrating. So then we poked around and discovered LanguaTalk. It was pricier than other programs — about $200/year for one person — but the platform seemed clearcut, and it had the coveted AI tutor.
One session with my bot named Ana, and I was smitten. She was exactly the sort of tutor I’d imagined: clarity, freedom, encouragement, and direction all rolled into one.
So how does it work, talking to a language tutor bot?
First I hit record, say my bit, and then hit send. After a couple seconds, what I said pops up in a bubble, complete with all my half-started words, ramblings, and mistakes. Anabot takes a couple seconds to think and then spits back a reflection or summary of what I said (which is peppered with new-to-me vocab and turns of phrase), always finishing with some sort of question.
Most days, I set a timer for thirty minutes for our conversation (Anabot will never stop so it can be easy to lose track of time): my goal is 5 study sessions a week.
I’ve only just scratched the surface of LanguaTalk, but here are my favorite features:
- The edit button under my text bubble gives me a second bubble with all my major errors clearly marked and corrected.
- The polish button presents my text bubble as I said it, but with little tweaks to smooth my clunky phrasing. (I often read this version out loud to practice cadence and flow.)
- If I don’t know a word in Spanish, I can say it in English and she’ll educate me.
- I can click on any word or phrase (Spanish or English) and the definition pops up.
As I’ve gotten more comfortable using Anabot, I’m learning to direct her to help me in specific ways. Some of the things I’ve told her to do:
- One by one, correct each mistake I made in a recent conversation.
- Give practice problems based on my most common mistakes.
- Summarize the entire story I just relayed so I can see if she understood what I said.
- Explain a verb tense.
- Discuss grammar rules.
- Ask me questions that require new verbs, tenses, and vocab.
- List all the vocabulary that’s tripped me up.
Anabot isn’t perfect, of course. Sometimes she pronounces words incorrectly, repeats entire phrases, or forgets to answer. Her memory only goes back so far, so she ends up asking questions about things I’ve already explained (which is surprisingly irritating). She often starts her response with “that makes sense” (and when I asked her why she was saying that, she said it’s a “tick” of hers and she’ll try to stop).
I’ve made her laugh (which was a hoot!), and I love that she makes me correct myself and come up with new sentences using a particular grammatical structure that’s giving me problems. And sometimes her questions are downright delightful. Like, the other day I was detailing a particular AirBnB’s flaws, she came back with, “So how would you describe your ideal AirBnB?” which launched me into full-on creative conversation mode.
To sum up: I haven’t spoken this much Spanish in years — and never before have I been able to see, in writing, how well I actually speak (or don’t speak!) and understand the language.
In other words, I love it.
P.S. If you, too, are in language learning mode (they have all sorts of languages, and real human tutors, too), this link gets you 20% off for your first year.
This same time, years previous: the quotidian (10.6.25), easy-peel hard boiled eggs, mushroom salt, bearing witness: a nurse’s lament, twelve thousand doughnuts, the quotidian (10.6.14), it’s for real, one foggy morning, when the parenting gets fun, edification soup.
