I had just opened it and heard the intro and a couple of sentences when I downloaded the app a couple of weeks ago.
I tried it today and it started back from the intro…allez allez!
Then I clicked on skip a few times.
From time to time I checked which words and sentences were being presented.
Some combinations of words and translations are a bit odd (I know it’s because they’ve been extracted from a sentence in which they worked this way, and I spotted a few little mistakes (like “no, I” being pronounced “noee!”) . and you might all be checking these aspects of the course so I’m not going to focus on the content at all, just on the practical side of the app as an user.
If I carry on, at normal speed or skipping, it presents many new words and expressions.
But longer sentences seem all about being ok and speaking French.
Not sure if this is the same as @brigitte was saying?
I currently have the one year subscription that was offered if you registered to any Dysgu Cymraeg course. But my account is still the one from summer 2018, and it needed some tweak to start the new subscription and get the Automagic working.
p.s. Not an app-related issue but every time I hear Aran’s voice my brain goes on automatic translating to Welsh even though I learnt French in school and spoken it way more than Cymraeg)
I’ve been using the app and have quit a lot of trouble with the app “freezing” between sections. I’ll get it to work and then after a block section of introducing a new pattern and repeating some of the previous patterns, it’ll then freeze and not move onto the next “block”. It’s not a connection issue so not quite sure what’s happening. The only way I can usually get it back working again (although it doesn’t always work) is to try and close the app and re-open or log out and log back in or sometimes just close it down and leave it for a while and try again later. This has only really been happening for the last few days. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app but that doesn;t seem to have done much.
Essentially we are waiting for a new French course which is on its way but something else has taken priority.
From the App point of view we have encouragements which have been repeating - we’ve corrected that but it has not been released yet - should be this week….and a spaced repetition that gets stuck on some items which we have also fixed and we are starting to test.
A very few people - Brigitte and one other - seem to have had a problem connected to the previous upgrade of French. If you are still hearing Allez Allez you may have this issue.
Let me know - we can reset your progress.
What do you mean about the subscription - different versions and the tweak?
I think I have the latest version. I deleted and reinstalled the app a couple of days ago and noticed in the app store that it said that the app had been recently updated.
Subscription:
after registering to a Dysgu Cymraeg course I received a coupon for one year of free subscription to SSiW. I just remember that Ivan had to fix something for me to be able to activate it and linking it to my account (that I had since I started SSiW in summer 2018).
Just saying it in case there’s a difference between older vs newer accounts and/or “standard” subscription vs Dysgu Cymraeg “complimentary” subscription.
Oh I have the French course running in the background now and just heard it introduce “dire” pronounced like Italian!
I guess that might be part of next batch of corrections. As for resetting progress, if you say you expect to release a new version, no need to reset it now I can just wait and see what happens with next update.
For now I can go back and see how I do with good ol’ Welsh in the Automagic version that’s new to me!
This isn’t directly connected to the new app launch (where we think we’ve got a v7 of the approach which catches pretty much all the problems that you’ve helped us find, so we should be into publishing mode from next week onwards for new languages)…
But I thought you might be interested…
Tom (who is currently being our course creation magician) was up here for a couple of days this week, and we were playing around with some of the latest versions of AI - and we have what looks like a really strong candidate solution for weaving our old listening exercises into the app, and dramatically improving them.
I’m very, very excited about this - at the moment, we think we’re looking at a path through to very confident understanding of podcasts in the target language, which I think is the kind of practice that will help people get to C1 much more quickly. It also looks as though a side effect of what we were doing yesterday will also let us automate producing learning content for subject specific areas (like the health sector, for example) which I think is also going to be enormously valuable. It is genuinely extraordinary the kind of stuff that Tom can charm AIs into producing.
I think we’ll reach a point where we can let people choose from a range of subject areas and fine-tune the learning content as a result - and from what I saw yesterday, it’s conceptually possible that we’d be able to let people request new topic areas, and be able to provide the content automatically, but that isn’t going to happen overnight. We should make some progress with subject specific stuff in general before the end of next year, though
Glad to hear about the listening exercises!
I remember I was initially totally baffled by those chipmunk sounds, but I have been totally won over and now regularly recommend language learners to listen at faster-than-usual speed so as to understand pretty much everyone they might come into contact with, as well as using their time more efficiently to do so!
Will we need to reinstall or will it update automatically? I assume this has already been noted but has the thing with the prepositions being chunked with the following verb instead of the preceding one been looked at? In the old courses they were always with the preceding verb which makes more sense. The way it is at the moment it’s generating sentences like je veux d’apprendre and j’aimerais à le chercher which I think are incorrect. My french is very rusty so I could be wrong here in which case ignore me! I remember always learning the verb with the following preposition like commencer à because they always go together.
Btw, what variety of Spanish is in the new app? I don’t know much but I know there’s some vocabulary differences between different Spanish-speaking countries, and also some pronounce the c like an English s, others pronounce it like an English th.
I realise going to the trouble of maintaining North and South Welsh is unusual and not likely to be repeated with Castilian, Mexican, other dialects of Spanish, but it might be helpful at least to know what country’s idiosyncrasies you will be picking up? Does the app tell you? (I know I could find out if I just start Spanish in the app, but I just don’t want to “start learning” before I’m actually ready to commit time to it.)
Personally I’m more likely to visit Spain than Colombia, so Castilian would be most useful to me… but I’m aware that you’ve got to think about the global market, and there’s nothing really wrong with sounding like an Argentinian when visiting Spain. Argentinian tourists do it all the time!
To me, the new voices sound more Castilian than South American, but not overly so.
With the vocab, we tend to go for the most general words, those that will be understood in any Spanish-speaking country. You’ll always get local variation, but you’ll pick that up if you spend any time in a Spanish-speaking area.
@sophie-reardon-smith should be no need to reinstall (afaik!) - and yes, we’ve got a neat solution for prepositions, we’re requiring it to use and present them only in a full word sandwich, which seems to have been a strong solution
@verity-davey as Deborah says, plus also I think in due course we will indeed give the option of choosing by country, but that’s a reasonably significant extra bit of legwork that we would rather do when we’ve got slightly stronger resources…
Actually, that’s a difference you’ll find even within Spain. Half of Andalusia does one, half the other: the former Spanish PM, Felipe González, came from the part with an ‘s’, and Spanish media respectfully pronounced his name the same way he did; the BBC, as well-educated foreigners, were ‘th’ all the way down
