Big news - exciting times - finally, finally we're moving on other languages

Hi Rich,
do you mean, you would reset my progress and I started again ? Of course I agree.
Or do I have to reset it myself ? If so, can you explain me what to do ?
And thank you for answering so quickly. I’m very embarrassed for causing so much trouble.

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@brigitte

We are very grateful to you for your help.it is aaallllways useful to know if something hasn’t worked the way we expected. Thank you.

We have half a theory that it is related to the change to the belt system - we are just trying to complete that theory if we can.

If it is related to this, this will almost never happen as we won’t be changing the belts - hardly ever.

Would it be OK if we had tomorrow morning to look at it before a reset? We would need to reset it at this end but I would check with you beforehand.

Thanks

Rich

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Subscription-wise I think I am in the same boat as Brigitte, at least the basic info is the same (0£ subscription, always showing expiry as one year in the future), but I didn’t really test a lot, as I knew you’re still working on a lot of issues. If it would help in discovering patterns, I could test more and report back if I run into similar issues.

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Hi @Hendrik

Well, I never say no to people who offer to test! :grin:

It feels to me like an unintended side effect of changes whilst the course was in progress - but of course because we don’t fully understand it yet we can’t rule out the subscription.

I’m happy to say that we have very few problems that we are dealing with at the moment - and those are now understood.

By way of a more general update - there has been a release to the App stores today with an update which solves the Android foreground services problem. (We all have to wait for them to approve it before it appears however.)

The spaced repetition’s over enthusiasm is being corrected and so we are down to this one which we are still trying figure out. :grin:

All testing is good testing but feel free to keep your powder dry @Hendrik if you prefer to join as reinforcements later on.

Rich :slightly_smiling_face:

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Well, I just fired up the app again with the French course, and the only way I can describe it is as “wonkiness ensued”…

  • Despite me having reached the yellow belt the last time (10 days ago), the first thing I got upon hitting play was the general “how this works”-introduction, which couldn’t be skipped.
  • Then the app wanted to teach me the word for “I”, which I skipped, and the next prompt was a rather longer sentence which I don’t recall, but directly afterwards I got the 100-billion-synapses interlude, which I could skip (and did)
  • That skip brought me what feels like light years ahead to a sentence such as “but I want you to speak French with me now”, followed by the very same 100-billion-synapses interlude as before… at that point I stopped to report back.

You’re welcome to reset my progress in the French course, just to see if that makes the skip button a little less overzealous (and gets me out of Groundhog Day with the synapses-interlude) :wink:

ETA: I also dipped into the Southern Welsh course, and overall it seemed to me that it could be faster (meaning that the pauses after the prompts are quite long, and the “solutions” are played really slowly, in my opinion)

And another edit… progress tracking seems to be confused across the board. I logged back into the Spanish course, and it introduced me gustaría as “I’d like”, incorporating that into sentences as “I’d like to speak Spanish with you now” and a few variations thereof. Then I got the “loading” circle, expecting something new and exciting, and then Aran “introduced” the Spanish word for “to speak” :thinking:

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Hmm. Interesting. Certainly on French and Spanish almost everything has changed since 10 days ago, so deciding what can be decided from that is going to be tough.

But I’ll give it some thought.

Thanks for the feedback.

Rich :slightly_smiling_face:

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Reflecting, it would probably be useful to ‘push through’ or to reset to be honest - either would probably do the trick.

I suppose a reset might give you a neater experience if you’d prefer that.

We have a lot of hours of testing in the bag by now with the App behaving as expected. Because of that I believe this will be because the whole world has changed since your last session.

Let me know what you’d prefer.

Thanks

Rich

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Resetting every course seems to be the best option, to see if everything is then behaving as it should.

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Hello

Just a quick update, I reached “on my own” → “seul” in the course. Apart from the issues that have been reported so far such as the repeating of the same set of sentences when the spacial repetition of all the other stuff should come in and the repeating of Aran’s pep talks (I never knew I’d hear so much about hemispherectomies :rofl:). The only real thing to report back on is that the sentences and their translation don’t always appear on screen. I don’t know if that’s deliberate to gradually stop people relying on seeing the written word but thought I’d mention it.

Other than that all seems to be working really well, when the spacial repetition issue is sorted I think it’ll be a fantastic tool for learning.

Dai

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That’s useful to know. I haven’t reached “seul” yet, but I’m doing more testing today, so I’ll see what happens when I get there.

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Hallo! Could we have a “show password” option for those of us logging in with email and password? My password is quite long, and it’s easy to get it lost if I can’t see it on screen!!

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Hi Rich, did you already check my account ? Or do I have to do anything before you can reset my progress ?

Hi @brigitte

I have been travelling a bit today (still am) but yes we looked at the account - it is possible that there is a reference in your progress that is no longer there. Which is causing it to fail to move on.

There was an action at the meeting that your record would be reset.

I will try to find out if that has happened.

Rich :slightly_smiling_face:

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Yes, we can look at this. :+1:

Rich :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi @daiwilliams

Will watch out for the missing text. :thinking: We are working on fixing the spaced repetition thing…and iinvestigating repeated encouragements.

Thanks for the feedback

Rich :slightly_smiling_face:.

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I’ve been waiting for level 3 South Welsh on Automagic but given that’s it’s taking a while I thought I’d just go back and do it on the normal app again, but now it’s saying this is premium content and I need to pay another £10 a month. I’m currently paying £12. Is this correct? Thanks

@dougmorgan6 you’re sure you’re logging in with the correct email address? Your account looks fine, so you shouldn’t have a problem. What if you try logging out, then logging in again making sure to type your email address and password so your device can’t pick up anything that has been saved from before.

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@brigitte don’t feel embarrassed! We’re enormously grateful to you and everyone else who is giving such detailed feedback, it’s incredibly helpful :heart:

@rich - can the encouragements be skipped? I know the first intro/encouragement can’t (which I think we need to change) - I think ‘skip’ during an encouragement should just go straight to the next phrase after the encouragement…

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@rich I’m still hanging in there for some of the new languages, but while we’re effectively doing user testing and snagging, I thought I’d give the new Spanish a whirl. Basically all working very well so far, but I do have a couple of observations:

  • I got asked to translate one key word without it previously being introduced at all - I think it was “hablar”, which is quite a biggie - but it may have been confused by my having downloaded it, deleted it, reinstalled it, and also having done a little bit of the online version, IDK.
  • prior to getting the yellow belt, the audio of Aran saying “now” sometimes sounds like “I - now” (as though “now” has been clipped out of a complete sentence, but slightly inaccurately). It’s just translated as “ahora”. I didn’t see what it said on screen, because I was washing up, but I assume it’s just meant to be “now”.
  • the female Spanish AI voice is so breathy that she sometimes seems to pronounce h where I’d expect it to be silent in Spanish. In particular, when she says the phrase “hablar contigo” – not so much, if at all, elsewhere (so far).

Otherwise, I should just note the fact that I feel that the two AI Spanish voices are variously trying to seduce me – the one all gravelly machismo, and the other sounding like Fenella Fielding in Carry on Screaming, only in Spanish. At least Aran doesn’t sound any more seductive than usual :rofl:

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@RichardBuck I wonder if it’s because of that whole thing where Spanish doesn’t always use the subject pronouns in neutral sentences. If the app is trying to build up something like “I now speak Spanish.”, that kind of sentence might easily start with “Ahora” without there necessarily being a “yo” involved anywhere, so the prompt for “I now” would still just be “ahora”.

I’m sure my speculation is probably wrong. I’m just thinking out loud, really.

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