When Duolingo launched Japanese for IOS but not yet for Android, I set off to secure for myself an affordable IOS gadget. Well, affordable by the standards of the unnecessarily overpriced brand that is evidently Duolingo’s favorite. I find it mildly amusing that Duolingo, who talk like they’re some kind of charity, still offers more free bonuses to the rich than to the poor. But I guess that’s the American way. And it’s not like I can’t afford it. I’m Norwegian, not Nicaraguan. I’m used to playing Real Life on the easiest level anyway, I just found it amusing given the way Duolingo promotes its brand.
Actually it took so long for me to procure an iPad, that in the meantime Japanese was already available on Android (as mentioned in my previous post). So instead I decided to try out another IOS-exclusive feature, the chat bot. These have been around for months on iPad and iPhone, but not on Android, which is one reason why I did not expect Japanese for Android to show up as early as it did. (The other reason was Tinycards, a more generic flashcard program by the same company, that is also IOS only.)
The chat bot was not available for Japanese. I am not sure whether this was because I am still a beginner (I would pretty much have said little more than “konnichiwa”) or whether the chat bot simply doesn’t exist for that language. (It probably doesn’t, since there is no chat for Swedish, which has been around since last year at least.) There was for French, though, where I have slid down to 46% while studying Swahili, and then came Japanese and pretty much made me forget French. But now thanks to the chat bot, I got to practice some French again.
As far as I could see, the chat is all in writing. The bot is not even reading out the text, as the app often does otherwise. And even “writing” may be too strong a word: You pick from a list of alternatives, pretty much all of which are reasonable options. You can string some of them together, like “Oui” and “merci”. If you start typing, the list of alternatives will try to adapt based on the first letters you type. I guess you can type out your answer in full if you prefer the extra exercise.
The bot takes the initiative and maintains it all the way through. There are no awkward pauses where you are supposed to think of something to say. All your lines are in response to something written by the bot. Your answers are graded immediately. Extremely simple answers, like “Salut” (hi) as a first greeting, may not give you any points at all. Basic answers give 1 point, while more complex ones give 2 points, at least if they make sense. By complex I mean something like a full simple sentence, at least at the level I am now. (Still 46%.)
The number of points you get count toward your daily goal. So far I have managed to get over 20 points in each conversation, which is enough to fill my daily goal. It definitely takes less time than doing two training sessions, and is probably easier too. But I still recommend it for learning purposes. The reason is that the normal exercises are very disjointed, with random sentences at best, often just matching individual words or phrases. In contrast, each chat focuses on a specific topic and continues in a logical progression of questions and answers, which is the closest thing to “natural” that Duolingo has produced so far. After Duolingo killed off the translation exercises, this is the only type of exercise where you get to see and use words in context, the way language is used outside of the game.
Because of this, I consider the chat bot a great addition and I recommend trying it out if you already have an iPad or iPhone. But it is not worth buying such a gadget just for this feature. It is not absolutely necessary, and it seems to only exist for certain languages.