HiNative - Language Learning

I love this idea, and I think it's been very well thought out and implemented. I have a few suggestions for the developers though. I teach esl English - I have a passion for the language and for helping others. I actually found this app addictive, it felt really satisfying to help people express themselves well in English. But in the end I had to give it up, because with all my other duties, I couldn't justify the amount of time I was spending on it. Perhaps there could be some small monetary compensation for people who have proven themselves to be in the top, say, 0.1% of that particular language. That would improve the quality of the whole app, if people like that could be more motivated to spend time on it. Also, perhaps there could be a friendly "strike" system for those who are labeled "highly rated" , say, if they get 3 or 5 disagreements then an actual person could look through their answers and see if they still deserve that title.

The system of and concept behind this app are great. After graduating college and not being in Japanese classes anymore, it’s a great resource for checking in with native speakers without the need for a teacher. Compared to other apps like HelloTalk, which is more suited for socialization and meeting other language learners, this app is great for getting reliable feedback from actual native speakers. The “does this sound natural” feature is especially helpful because if it sounds natural, natives will vote it as natural very quickly. And it has a system where the more you help others, the more your reputation goes up, and the more likely it is that your questions will show up at the top and get more answers. In fact, I’ve never had any of my questions ignored before. Just be helpful to others and ask well-worded questions and someone will help you out. It’s really a great little community. The amount of free features in the app is great as well, and there are almost no ads. But even if I had to pay some fee, this app would still be worth it, because it helps me so much as a solo learner. It seems like the app is being improved a lot recently, so I think they have big plans ahead.

HiNative is a great way to learn about language and culture through our peers around the world. Even if you don't have any questions to ask others for an extended period of time, or you aren't even learning a language, this app can be a great way to learn about things you never would have know about otherwise. Not to mention you can meet interesting people through it as well. (I live in the U.S, and the other day I talked with someone in South Korea through HiNative which I thought that was pretty cool). There are two things I'm not crazy about with this app. One, is that you are unable to hear other people's vocal answers to questions that are not your own, unless you pay money for the app. (I mean, language is a spoken thing, c'mon). The second thing I don't necessarily like is that HiNative has an annoying habit of sending notifications at night while I'm trying to sleep. You can just turn off notifications for that, but then I don't get the occasional interesting question from the app. They just need a better idea of time zones for they're users I think.