Climb – Advanced Learning

Apple had this app as “app of the day”, and as someone who’s always looking to learn more and expand my vocabulary I was very excited to use this app. After reading Apple’s small article about the app I decided to install. At first it was going great; though I felt it was weird putting easy words into the “very hard” section of the last part of the quiz (for example, I had conjugate, which might just be my perception of the word). At the end of the assessment it said my vocabulary was at the level of a fluent speaker, gearing close to native beginner. Which was weird to me since I’ve lived in America all my life, and English is spoken by a majority of Americans, so I am a native speaker. Also that 6k words was labeled as “advanced” and 20k+ words was labeled as “native speaker”, which I suppose confused me since if you’re advanced in something you would know quite a lot about it. Moving on, after the assessment I was allowed to start this quiz. There was a small note that said I could start the quiz, but I’d need to subscribe to finish it. I thought it would’ve let me go at least, halfway through the quiz until I was stopped, or it would stop me once the five minute timer ran out, but no. After about five or so questions I was forced to subscribe if I wanted to complete the quiz, I declined and it led me back to the beginning screen with the word of the day widget and such. I suppose I was a bit confused. The article didn’t mention having to pay to actually use it. Sure, it had the “offers in-app purchases”, but I assumed it was for unlocking other features that helped with vocabulary that were, not to unlock the entire app as a whole. Frankly, I’m very disappointed, and I have already uninstalled the app from my phone. Don’t install this unless you can cough up the money to actually use it.

I have a decent vocabulary but the app assessed me as native/beginner. Are you kidding? Inadvertent was the word of the day. Really? The words are too easy and there doesn’t seem to be a way to adjust my level. I can’t tell the app that I already know words, can’t redo the assessment. Nothing! The games are strange. I don’t see how they help you with vocabulary. The hunt game for example. Just because I know big words doesn’t mean I can spot them as options on a grid of random and jumbled letters. I’m supposed to pull things like erudition out of the air? The gif game doesn’t change words. None of them were challenging: tiara, quicksand, etc.. these are words even young children know. And it keeps being the same set. I don’t see anything to indicate how words become “learned” and the subscription cost is high. Especially given the issues I’m having so far. The gifs associated with some words aren’t obvious in meaning. It’s frustrating to be marked wrong for a word I frequently use because I can’t tell if the gif matches. Zealous for example. The gif in question showed a drag queen performing. Could you say they were being zealous? Maybe? But I got it wrong. That gif doesn’t go with zealous.

As a student, I instantly clicked when I saw the ad because I always have vocabulary words to study in class. The ’word of the day’ feature is very excellent because you can discover new words each day, and I find it very exciting to learn more words. One thing I would recommend adding is to add more variety of definitions for words with multiple. Another thing I would suggest is to make GIFs non-mandatory. Because I personally like the GIFs- I am a sucker for visual learning. But some people don't prefer the GIFs in the reviews. And one of the features of this app I really like is the feature that allows you to find the definition of a word on the web by highlighting the word. An additional feature I advise adding is to cut back on the subscription feature, and add more free extensions to the app.