I made it my NYR this year to learn a second language and while I picked Russian at first I switched to Spanish for a few different reasons. I’ve been using Duolingo for about 6 months now but have gotten to the point (I’m around A2 if not very early B1 fluency) where I just don’t find it very helpful on its own anymore and the new stuff I learn just doesn’t stick to my mind as good anymore.

I’d like to start incorporating other resources into my learning (which was the plan from the start) but have no idea where to start. I’ve incorporated note writing as well as flashcards into my learning as of a couple months ago, as well as trying to hold basic Spanish conversations with other people, but this is only really effective for perfecting what I’ve already studied.

To anyone who learned Spanish or really any language, do you know of any other resources for learning the language?

Gracias.

  • amemorablename
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    29 days ago

    Np, hope it helps (and feel free to let me know how it goes, I’m curious to know if it works for anyone else). And yeah, I remember trying CharacterAI briefly in the past for language learning myself; main difference I find with this type of setup, is 1) The corrections are “on the side”, not organically part of the conversation itself, so you have the main conversation which the AI is focused on and then you have suggestions/corrections you get if you say something its evaluation thinks has incorrectness for that language. 2) Both apps have forms of conversation where they can be more unguided in terms of what you talk about and have “roleplay” type of scenarios that are a little more structured for practicing specific kinds of things. For example, I was just doing a little talking with a “roleplay” on Tutor Lily called “explaining symptoms to a doctor.”

    So if I compare it to trying to learn through just any LLM, point 1 seems to be the most significant difference. Since technically you could already get an LLM to roleplay most things, albeit with more effort than with these apps’ scenarios. But getting corrections on the side while talking to an LLM seems to be a more specific engineering/design thing that goes beyond LLMs alone. I might try to ask the creators and see if I can get an answer, but I’m unclear still on whether these apps are powering the corrections purely through an LLM itself or some other kind of AI evaluation with it.

    • JennieOP
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      29 days ago

      Yeah, this sounds a lot better. Am excited to give it a go. Funnily enough I have also recently started practicing medical terms/speaking to a doctor in Spanish lol.