Category: Apps

Snarky Marketing vs. Real Data: Duolingo Really Works!

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It’s become almost trendy to knock Duolingo in the last couple of years. In fact, positioning a new language learning product as the “anti-Duolingo” has become a fairly standard marketing tactic.

And while there are always reasons to debate a language learning method – no one approach is perfect in every way for every person – it’s good to know the difference between a social media pile-on and legitimate criticism.

A new paper has provided some more objective balance on that.

Published in Language Learning & Technology, a study by Smith, Jiang, and Peters (2024) took a rigorous look at how effective the app actually is for independent learners. Instead of just relying on anecdotal feelings, they measured outcomes across a comprehensive range of linguistic abilities. We’re talking both receptive skills (reading and listening) and productive skills (writing and speaking), alongside vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

They tracked 48 independent learners tackling the Spanish course over a three-month period. The findings? After putting in an average of about 27 hours of study, participants showed significant improvement across all ability measures. A small sample, for sure, but 27 hours is remarkably low for meaningful gains – less than 15 minutes a day. For an app coming under flak for meaningless gamification, that is an excellent piece of defence.

When gamification earns its keep

Working in educational software development myself, I know how tricky it is to balance engaging user interfaces with genuine pedagogical value. It’s one thing to build a platform that people want to log into every day, but it’s another entirely to prove that it’s actually teaching them something substantive. This paper validates that the gamified approach, when engaged with consistently, really does translate into measurable linguistic gains. The researchers specifically noted that session completion, accuracy rate, and an overall positive user experience were directly linked to this observed growth.

This challenges one of the most common criticisms you hear: that apps like this only teach you how to pass their specific tests, or only build passive recognition. The fact that productive abilities like speaking and writing improved significantly is a huge win, as these are notoriously difficult to scaffold outside of a classroom or immersion environment.

Of course, this isn’t to say any app is a magic bullet. Twenty-seven hours of app time won’t instantly make you fluent enough to debate current affairs over a coffee. I’m a Duolingo user, and get frustration and satisfaction from it in, sometimes, equal amounts. It never hurts to spread your screen time over other language learning apps, either.

But as a tool for building a solid foundation and keeping learners consistently engaged with the target language, this fresh evidence is robust. It turns out that beneath the relentless notifications and leaderboard leagues, there is a some sound pedagogy at work.

The next time a social media ad pops up claiming they’ve “fixed everything the green owl gets wrong”, it might be worth taking it with a pinch of salt. Any tool that gets people to consistently show up, put the hours in, and tangibly improve is something worth celebrating!

Image showing lots of document icons for a post on building a Zotero and Obsidian workflow

Zotero and Obsidian : A Workflow to Research Anything

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If much of your study is electronic – e-books, PDF papers, worksheets and the like – you’ll face the same struggle I have: digital overwhelm. A clear workflow for dealing with mounds of virtual material is essential if you’re not to get lost.

I feel like I’ve tried them all, too. I’ve gone through the gamut of e-readers: GoodReader, PDF Expert, even trusty old Apple Preview (which has great annotation features). All very decent in their own way. On the file system side of things, though, it’s another story. I’ve cobbled together some sort of ‘folders on the Cloud’ system over the years, but it’s seriously creaky. I break my own rules half the time!

Bearing that in mind, I was chuffed to bits to chance upon a whole new system recently – one that’s passed me by completely. It seems to be a particularly big hit across North American universities. It also has a large, active community online, sharing performance tweaks. And best of all – it uses completely free software.

Zotero and Obsidian

Zotero is a publications manager that you simply drag your e-material into. The app retrieves bibliographical information, renames files sensibly and stores a copy online for working cross-device. Even better, it’s capable of generating full bibliographies, so is a file store, reader and referencing tool all in one.

Obsidian is the note-taking side of this – a sleek, markdown-driven text editor that is beautifully minimalistic. It excels in creating hyperlinked notes, allowing you to build your own Wiki-style knowledge bank. But it dovetails beautifully into Zotero thanks to community plugins that allow you to import your PDF annotations directly into bibliographically pigeon-holed notes.

After resisting the temptation to kick myself for not spotting it sooner, I did a deep-dive into Zotero + Obsidian workflow how-tos, and it’s an academic revelation. A couple of community content creators are real stand-outs here – so much so that it’s best I let them do the talking rather than waffle any more. I’m learning this as I go along, and these are great places to start.

Workflow Training

Here’s where I started, more by chance YouTube search than anything else. Girl in Blue Music namechecks a lot of the other big Z+O content creators here, so it’s a good jumping point for newcomers.

From there, it’s worth exploring morganeua‘s vast selection of content, including numerous how-to videos and worked examples.

Once you’ve worked through those, you can graduate to full geek mode! Bryan Jenks pushes the system well beyond anything else I’ve seen, and likewise has a huge back catalogue of training vids. He layers styling and advanced templating onto the base, making for a slick, colour-coded, optimally managed research system.

I feel very late indeed to this workflow party. But if you are too, join the club – and let me know if you’ve found this useful too!

A finch flying above a beautiful landscape

Finch : Tiny Bird, Big Habits [Review]

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When I first saw a Finch ad on Instagram, I confess, I rolled my eyes. Yet another quirky productivity app wrapped up as a kid’s game and pitched to grown‑ups, I thought. Isn’t Insta awash with them lately? But curiosity won the day, and I’m honestly quite glad it did.

As you’ve probably guessed, Finch turns your self‑care and habit building into a gentle, gamified ritual – with a little birdie companion. It might seem a touch infantile, but don’t be fooled: its foundation rests on solid habit‑science, and yes, adults do love things that are fluffy and cute (well, I do anyway).

Finch is generous too – its free version offers custom goals, journaling, mood tracking and more, without forcing you to pay to access the essentials. I haven’t paid a penny to use it yet, but the range of function on the free tier has been more than enough to keep me using it.

Why It Works

  • It starts small. When you first set it up, the suggested goals are self-care easy wins – drink more water, get outside at least once day – things to get you used to the app environment. Want to journal, stretch, or simply “get out of bed”? Go ahead and make it count.
  • Flexible goal‑setting for grown‑ups. Once you’ve got used to the interface, you can go to town setting your own goals – even on the free tier. I’ve added language learning daily tactics, university reading goals and all sorts – I almost feel guilty that I’m doing all this without a subscription!
  • Gentle gamification. As you check off goals, your bird gains energy, goes on charming adventures, and earns “Rainbow Stones” for adorning its nest. It’s rewarding without being punishing. And of course, also streak-building is part of the ecosystem, your Finch never dies if you miss a day (God forbid).
  • Supportive, not prescriptive. Other users highlight how the app strikes the right tone: compassionate rather than preachy. Some users with ADHD, anxiety or depression say its warmth makes self‑care feel doable.
  • Friend‑based encouragement. You can buddy up with a friend on a single goal (or more) without exposing your progress to a social feed. It’s discreet, pressure‑free support. For a laugh, I added a pal on the “drink more water” goal. We laugh about it, but it’s actually not a bad habit to develop, is it?

Final Verdict

Finch is a cosy, surprisingly effective habit app wrapped in feathers and whimsy. It’s kind to energy-drained minds, flexible enough for real lives, and – despite coming at me via the dreaded Insta ads – far more than a passing gimmick.

If you’ve ever felt wary of habit tools that feel too serious or demanding, Finch might just surprise you. And if nothing else, the little bird and its gentle cheer-on can make daily tasks feel a bit more doable – and dare I say it, sweet.

Finch is available as a free download on all the usual platforms –
find out more at their website here!

A robot reading a script. The text-to-speech voices at ElevenLabs certainly sound intelligent as well as natural!

ElevenLabs : 5-Star Tool for Language Work and Study

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know how impressed I’ve been at ElevenLabs, the text-to-speech creator that stunned the industry when its super-realistic voices were unleashed on the world. Since then, it’s made itself irreplaceable in both my work and study, and it bears spreading the word again: ElevenLabs is a blow-your-socks-off kind of tool for creating spoken audio content.

Professional Projects

In my work developing language learning materials for schools, arranging quality narration used to involve coordinating with agencies and studios — a process that was both time-consuming and costly. We’ve had issues with errors, too, which cost a project time with re-recordings. And that’s not to mention the hassle keeping sections up-to-date. Removing ‘stereo’ from an old vocab section (who has those now?) would usually trigger a complete re-record.

With ElevenLabs, I can now produce new sections promptly, utilising its impressive array of voices across multiple languages. The authenticity and clarity of these voices are fantastic – I really can’t understate it – and it’s made maintaining the biggest language learning site for schools so much easier.

Supporting Individual Learning

As a language learner, ElevenLabs is more than worth its salt, too. It’s particularly good for assembling short listening passages – about a minute long – to practise ‘conversation islands’—a well-regarded polyglot technique for achieving conversational fluency.

Beyond language learning, the tool can be a great support to other academic projects. I’ve created concise narrations of complex topics, converting excerpts from scholarly papers into audio format. Listening to these clips in spare moments (or even in the background while washing up) has helped cement some key concepts, and prime my mind for conventional close study.

Flexible and Affordable Plans

ElevenLabs offers a range of pricing options to suit different needs:

• Free Plan: Ideal for those starting out, this plan provides 10,000 characters per month, roughly equating to 10 minutes of audio.

• Starter Plan: At £5 per month, you receive 30,000 characters (about 30 minutes of audio), along with features like voice cloning and commercial use rights.

• Creator Plan: For £22 per month, this plan offers 100,000 characters (around 100 minutes of audio), plus professional voice cloning and higher-quality outputs.

For messing around, that free plan is not too stingy at all – you can really get a feel for the tool from it. Personally, I’ve not needed to move beyond the starter plan yet, which is pretty much a bargain at around a fiver a month.

Introducing ElevenReader

And there’s more! Complementing the TTS service, ElevenLabs has introduced ElevenReader, a free tool that narrates PDFs, ePubs, articles, and newsletters in realistic AI voices. Available on both iOS and Android platforms, the app doesn’t even consume credits from your ElevenLabs subscription plan.

Seriously, I can’t even believe this is still free – go and try it!

Final Thoughts

ElevenLabs has truly transformed the way I create and consume spoken content. It truly is my star tool from the current crop of AI-powered utilities.

The ElevenLabs free tier is enough for most casual users to have a dabble – go and try it today!

A robot playwright - now even more up-to-date with SearchGPT.

Topical Dialogues with SearchGPT

As if recent voice improvements weren’t enough of a treat, OpenAI has just introduced another killer feature to ChatGPT, one that can likewise beef up your custom language learning resources. SearchGPT enhances the LLM’s ability to access and incorporate bang up-to-date information from the web.

It’s a development that is particularly beneficial for language learners seeking to create study materials that reflect current events and colloquial language use. With few exceptions until now, LLMs like ChatGPT have had a ‘data cutoff’, thanks to mass text training having an end-point (albeit a relatively recent one). Some LLMs, like Microsoft’s Copilot, have introduced search capabilities, but their ability to retrieve truly current data could be hit and miss.

With SearchGPT, OpenAI appear to have cracked search accuracy a level to rival AI search tool Perplexity – right in the ChatGPT app. And it’s as simple as highlighting the little world icon that you might already have noticed under the prompt field.

The new SearchGPT icon in the ChatGPT prompt bar.

The new SearchGPT icon in the ChatGPT prompt bar.

Infusing Prompts with SearchGPT

Switching this on alongside tried-and-tested language learning prompt techniques yields some fun – and pedagogically useful – results. For instance, you can prompt ChatGPT to generate dialogues or reading passages based on the latest news from your target language country/ies. Take this example:

A language learning dialogue on current affairs in German, beefed up by OpenAI's SearchGPT

A language learning dialogue on current affairs in German, beefed up by OpenAI’s SearchGPT

SearchGPT enables content that mirrors real-life discussion with contemporary vocabulary and expressions (already something it was great at). But it also incorporates accurate, up-to-the-minute, and even cross-referenced information. That’s a big up for transparency.

Unsure where that info came from? Just click the in-text links!

Enhancing Speaking Practice with Authentic Contexts

Beyond reading, these AI-generated dialogues serve as excellent scripts for speaking practice. Learners can role-play conversations, solo or group-wise, to improve pronunciation, intonation, and conversational flow. This method bridges the gap between passive understanding and active usage, a crucial step in achieving fluency.

Incorporating SearchGPT into your language learning content creation toolbox reconnects your fluency journey with the real, evolving world. Have you used it yet? 

Greek text on a packet of crisps

Language Lessons from Packaging (And A Little Help from ChatGPT)

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If you love scouring the multilingual packaging of household products from discounter stores (a niche hobby, I must admit, even for us linguists), then  there’s a fun way to automate it with LLMs like ChatGPT.

Take the back of this packet of crisps. To many, a useless piece of rubbish. To me (and some of you, I hope!), a treasure of language in use.

Greek text on a packet of crisps - food and household item packaging can be a great source of language in use.

Greek text on a packet of crisps

Normally, I’d idly read through these, looking up any unfamiliar words in a dictionary. But, using an LLM app with an image facility like ChatGPT, you can automate that process. What’s more, you can request all sorts of additional info like dictionary forms, related words, and so on.

From Packaging to Vocab List

Take a snap of your packaging, and try this prompt for starters:

Create a vocabulary list from the key content words on the packaging label. For each word, list:
– its dictionary form
– a new, original sentence illustrating the word in use
– common related words

The results should be an instantly useful vocab list with added content for learning:

Vocabulary list from food packaging by ChatGPT

Vocabulary list compiled by ChatGPT from a food packaging label

I added a note-taking stage to round it off. It always helps me to write down what I’m learning, adding a kinaesthetic element to the visual (and aural, if you’ve had ChatGPT speak its notes out loud). Excuse the scrawl… (As long as your notes are readable by you, they’re just fine!)

Handwritten vocabulary notes derives from crisp packet packaging

Notes on a crisp packet…

It’s a fun workflow that really underscores the fact that there are free language lessons all around us.

Especially in the humblest, and often least glamorous, of places.

ChatGPT takes conversation to the next level with Advanced Voice Mode

ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode is Finally Here (For Most of Us!)

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Finally – and it has taken SO much longer to get it this side of the Pond – Advanced Voice Mode has popped up in my ChatGPT. And it’s a bit of a mind-blower to say the least.

Multilingually speaking, it’s a huge step up for the platform. For a start, its non-English accents are hugely improved – no longer French or German with an American twang. Furthermore, user language detection seems more reliable, too. Open it up, initiate a conversation in your target language, and it’s ready to go without further fiddling.

But it’s the flexibility and emotiveness of those voices which is the real game-changer. There’s real humanity in those voices, now, reminiscent of Hume’s emotionally aware AI voices. As well as emotion, there’s variation in timbre and speed. What that means for learners is that it’s now possible to get it to mimic slow, deliberate speech when you ask that language learning staple “can you repeat that more slowly, please?”. It makes for a much more adaptive digital conversation partner.

Likewise – and rather incredibly – it’s possible to simulate a whole range of regional accents. I asked for Austrian German, and believe me, it is UNCANNILY good. Granted, it did occasionally verge on parody, but as a general impression, it’s shocking how close it gets. It’s a great way to prepare for speaking your target language with real people, who use real, regionally marked speech.

Advanced Voice Mode, together with its recently added ability to remember details from past conversations (previously achievable only via a hack), is turning ChatGPT into a much cannier language learning assistant. It was certainly worth the wait. And for linguaphiles, it’ll be fascinating to see how it continues to develop as an intelligent conversationalist from here.

Mapping out conversational probabilities - it's much easier with flowcharts.

Vocabulary Flowcharts : Preparing for Probabilities with ChatGPT

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The challenge in preparing for a speaking task in the wild is that you’re dealing with multiple permutations. You ask your carefully prepared question, and you get any one of a number of likely responses back. That, in turn, informs your next question or reply, and another one-of-many comebacks follows.

It’s probability roulette.

What if you could map all of these conversational pathways out, though? Flowcharts have long been the logician’s tool of choice for visualising processes that involve forking choices. Combined with generative AI’s penchant for assembling real-world language, we have a recipe for much more dynamic language prep resources than a traditional vocab list.

And, thanks to a ready-made flowchart plugin for ChatGPT – courtesy of the charting folks at Whimsical.com – it’s really easy to knock one together.

Vocabulary Flowcharts in Minutes

In your ChatGPT account, you’ll need to locate the Whimsical GPT. Then, it’s just a case of detailing the conversational scenario you want to map out. Here’s an example for ‘opening a bank account in Germany’:

Create a flowchart detailing different conversational choices and paths in German for the scenario “Opening a bank account as a non-resident of Germany planning to work there for six months.” Include pathways for any problems that might occur in the process. Ensure all the text reflects formal, conversational German.

The result should be a fairly detailed ‘probability map’ of conversational turns:

A 'vocabulary flowchart' in German, created by the Whimsical.com GPT on ChatGPT.

A ‘vocabulary flowchart’ in German, created by the Whimsical.com GPT on ChatGPT.

Vocabulary flowcharts are another tool in your AI arsenal for speaking prep. Have you given them a whirl yet? Tell us about your own prep in the comments!

Lots of colourful neon shortcuts on a screen.

Apple Shortcuts for Smart Study Hacks

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I’ve been optimising my iPad for study recently, trying to make it a portable, one-stop shop for reading and prep on-the-move. It’s no doubt another flex of my childhood awe for Inspector Gadget’s niece Penny, and her computer-in-a-book that could do everything.

Anyway, it’s led me to discover lots of features I half knew about, but had ignored for the duration of my Apple fanboydom. And one of the biggest revelations of rediscovery has been the Apple Shortcuts app.

In a nutshell, Shortcuts allows you to bundle all sorts of custom process chains into a single, iconisable action. For example, a shortcut could retrieve something, do something with the result, then present it in a certain way. People use them for all sorts of admin tasks – collecting stock prices and collating them in a spreadsheet with a single click, for instance.

The cool thing is that many third-party apps have extensions that you can link into shortcuts. ChatGPT, for example, which I find invaluable as a quick summary or explanatory tool, can be part of an action chain. And you can trigger chains not just with clicks, but from documents, via the share link.

Shortcuts for Smart Study : Brief Description

Using the app, I put together a quick shortcut I called “Brief Description”. It sends the current PDF (from a browser window, or from the Files app), to ChatGPT, prompting it for a one-paragraph summary.

A screenshot from Apple Shortcuts of a 'Brief Explanation' action using ChatGPT.

A screenshot from Apple Shortcuts of a ‘Brief Explanation’ action using ChatGPT.

As you can see, one of the best things about it is how you assemble a shortcut in more or less natural language, as you select items via an intuitive click-and-build interface. There are also plenty of resources for getting started and pushing the boundaries of it (like this very clued-up YouTube channel!).

The result of my shortcut offers a great way to get a paper summary, whatever the language:

Screenshot of an Apple Shortcuts link in the share menu.

Screenshot of an Apple Shortcuts link in the share menu.

When working through a bunch of resources, it’s great to ascertain in a click or two whether it might be a worthwhile full read, making this a brilliant time-saver. It’s even more powerful when combined with ChatGPT’s new(ish) memory features – my account ‘knows’ what I’ve been working on from recent chats, so is even better able to judge what’s useful.

For sure, I’ll be exploring more of this over the coming weeks, as it’s clear I’ve barely scratched the surface of how useful it could be yet. Have you used Apple Shortcuts to create smart study hacks? Let us know in the comments!

ElevenLabs Reader is the TTS robot you need!

ElevenLabs Reader : Enjoy it while it’s free!

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I’ve raved before about the fantastic text-to-speech facility at ElevenLabs. Voices so realistic they pretty much pass for human, that work across languages, and can even clone your own.

Well, there’s a little-feted app that the ElevenLabs team are behind that is a similar show-stopper in its category. It’s simply called Reader, and is a free text-to-speech narration app for Android and iOS. 

Like the company’s web-based TTS service, it has the same range of emotive, expressive, ultra-realistic voices. It can also cope well narrating many languages, which are autodetected. Best of all for me is that it links with your device’s documents, so I can quickly import the papers I’m reading. Listening AND reading has made a massive difference to my comprehension and recall – multimodal is definitely the way forward for me!

You do get the odd strange artefact in the readout, but the product is still in Beta (likely the reason it’s currently completely free), and glitches are rare. What I’m also missing in it is the ability to tweak imported texts in-app, as you can do with Speechify. This would allow some cleaning of the file pre-narration (I lost count of the number of times I had to skip the page footer DOI link, which it hilariously mis-narrated many times). You can, of course, simply export and clean the files as text before importing, which gets round that.

In any case, they’re worth putting up with while the app is still free and in Beta. Even as it is, you have features here that you’d pay a small fortune for in other apps (ahem, Speechify). Definitely worth a punt if you’re looking for TTS support in your reading! Find download links for Android and iOS here.