HelloTalk - Learn Languages

when i tell you i NEVER write reviews i mean in my entire decade of using the App Store i have never felt strongly enough about any app to even consider writing a review but this app is honestly better than any app out there for language learning and i have used them ALL (the money costing ones too). it’s literally a form of social media for people who want to learn languages! like, i don’t know about anyone else but that is my dream come true. you can set it to show you people in your general age range too which is awesome because you’re socializing and talking about things that are relevant to you while also becoming more and more fluent in a language. i swear I’ve had the app under 24 hours now and i’ve learned more words than i think i’ve learned in total from other apps. even the actual lessons are interesting because they’re immersive and teaching words that you are interested to learn using scenarios you will actually find yourself in. and that is coming from someone who just listened to 20 minutes tops of lessons in a language i’d been putting off learning for years! and i DESPISE studying! it seriously feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders especially now that i have something to do that isn’t frying my brain while i’m locked up in my house for quarantine. thank you so much to whoever thought up such a marvelous concept!

I thoroughly enjoyed this app the first month of use. If you have the time, you can theoretically spend all day chatting with people online, and the best part is—it’s free. If you’re an English speaker, the language market will likely be a lot bigger for you because more people want to learn English than English-speaking people want to learn your desired target language. Because of this, you will get tons of interaction on your posts and many more messages (sometimes too much). My only trouble with this app that I and many others discovered was that often users were blatantly “copied” and used to socialize with other people. Unfortunately this is very common with many social medias and HelloTalk is no different. Only, the difference with HelloTalk is that it felt like employees of the company itself were doing it in order to show more “native” speakers on the market and discourage inactivity of real users. Fortunately, I believe this problem might have been slightly resolved with Update 4.2.9, which lets you look up people by name. Theoretically, they could still steal your picture and simply change the name, but alas. Either way, at the end of the day what matters is that users have the ability to practice their language skills with someone who will listen to them, and this app does that. Personally, I would like the confidence that I’m speaking to a real person (and usually I probably am) but ultimately, I’m still able to practice my target language and feel like I’m helping people with theirs.

If you're looking to expose yourself to more native content or speakers in a language you're learning, this is a great place to start! But actually finding solid advice and explanations is much harder haha. I'm learning English > Japanese so my experiences may not be universal among the community, but the user-base as a whole could stand to be far more critical when giving feedback. People will let small mistakes slip through and give learners a pass despite the fact that what they are saying IS incorrect, probably to try and seem polite. And I've seen more than a few people giving straight up WRONG advice- mostly non-native English speakers explaining English to others, but theres been a few native speakers who explain things poorly or give incorrect feedback as well. I think the moments feature is really hindered by the inability to edit comments or corrections after you send them, and the way comments are ordered under posts can be really confusing. The fact that you can't reply to a comment, only tag them in your own under the same post, is mind boggling, especially because they're in reverse chronological order. There's also no way to "downvote" other peoples corrections in those instances where they're giving the wrong advice, which can lead to misunderstanding and misinformation. You basically just have to take all the advice you get from this app with a grain of salt.