I know utalk is one of the sponsors here but I’d like to get some unbiased opinions about it. I really like the amount of languages that they offer (Azerbaijani is one of them and it’s so hard to find materials for that language!) and I think it would be a good addition to the normal study books.
In the internet, however, I could hardly find any good review about it. Most people don’t like it. As I don’t want to waste any money, I’d like to know what you people think, if you’ve already used it. Do you recommend it?
I’ve seen those reviews too but when you look at most of the adverse comments, it becomes clear that many of the commenters are disappointed because they were expecting uTalk to be something it isn’t (and that none of the uTalkers have ever claimed it to be), i.e. it’s not a comprehensive language course.
However, as a way to get a feel for a new language or languages before deciding what to learn, pick up some useful words and phrases before going on holiday or quickly learn new vocabulary in specific areas of interest in addition to your main studies even at intermediate level, it looks like it could be very useful. So if those things are important to you and you don’t expect it to be a comprehensive course, I wouldn’t be put off by the less favourable reviews.
Their biggest selling point is probably the number of languages they cover and the effort they put into getting the audio clips to go with the words and phrases.
I think this is an excellent comment - however, do you (or does any other person) really feel compelled to spend €8.33-€11.99 per month (depending on the subscription) on something that does only help you a tiny bit in your language journey (as I tend to interpret your comment)?
If it really helps, no problem, then I’d even pay more (I have some apps that are also a bit expensive that I happily pay for as they really help). The thing is that I’ve already paid for apps in the past that I maybe used 2 or 3 days and never again – that’s what I want to avoid.
You can try it out yourself to know you would like it or not. If you got your ticket you just need to check out the sponsor offers.
“Try out our app for free by checking out our exclusive Polyglot Conference Global offer”
I certainly don’t mind paying for things that are useful and that people have put some hard work into, but you’re right, we do have to keep track to make sure we don’t continue paying subs for things we’re not using.
Now, I feel a bit bad saying this, given that I love their quizzes and really appreciate the effort they put into making them fun, but uTalk doesn’t really suit the ways I like to study, though I can envisage circumstances where I might use it temporarily in the future. However, I’ve played around with it after winning free credits in the quizzes and it looks to be very good at what it aims to do. In my earlier post, I was just trying to explain why those who do like to study that way shouldn’t necessarily be put off by some of the less complimentary reviews.
Maybe people who actually use uTalk regularly will comment here too but in any case, they’re offering a free trial to those at the conference, so people can assess whether it’s likely to be worth it to them before paying anything.
I love uTalk for various reasons but indeed it’s very different from other apps. It’s not meant to be a full fledged course but rather a useful feature for conversation practice. As I concentrate on 1-2 languages at a time, I keep my uCoins for the moment I reach B1 in a certain language and have minimized the number of errors I make in grammar and syntax as I speak. It’s especially great for covering Asian and African languages and many native speakers I tried on the app sound really amazing but I would also recommend to always have a close friend among native speakers to comment on the choice of words and phrases because there can be some important dialectal differences.
