Verbling (YC S11) Links Up Language Learners With Native Speakers Through Video
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I wish the verbling guys lots of luck with their new venture!
It seems like this kind of system has a couple of markets. I think the reason a lot of Spanish speakers are using it, is because they may already have book learned the basics of English, but lack the day to day interaction. So that's one segment. It seems like this site is a sweet spot for them.
But another segment probably not as well served would be people who are completely new to a language. Most language partners won't have the skill to introduce someone who has no background in it. So I think the uptake for these kinds of language learners would be low.
One thing that would be really awesome is to consider integrating some kind of learning curriculum. But the trick is if you had to supply curriculum for every language, that won't scale well at all. Instead, consider the barefoot language learning school of thought:
http://www.amazon.com/Language-Acquisition-Made-Practical-Le...
This book is out of print, but it's an amazing guide to learning any language without a textbook provided you have a language partner.
Graphical dictionaries for language learners would also be super helpful:
Also, for more advance learners who are already able to carry out basic conversations, topic suggestions would be super helpful to keep the chat flowing. You can only talk about your family for so long...
I looked to sign up but none of my languages are supported yet, otherwise looks promising.
"how do you motivate strangers to actually teach each other languages while keeping their attention span long enough, say, 5 minutes." - In my experience, you do not actively teach each other the language, more just chat in the different languages and correct and explain the mistakes your partner makes in your native language. Thus, boredom after 5 minutes is not a problem, provided you get along, especially with all the different cultural differences to talk about.
The speakers on sharedtalk also vary with the time of day, so it helps if your timezone is similar to that of the countries which speak the language you wish to learn.
A feature of this site is the ability to instantly connect with a partner. However, there needs to be a way to switch partners instantly. For example, I was speaking to someone who had video and microphone problems and the only way I could switch was to navigate back to the homepage and start again. I also didn't find the automatic matching, in its current form, an advantage over personal selection. For example, I only wanted to speak with girls around my age. Allowing the user to set criteria for partners (e.g. age, gender, region) would be useful, along with the ability to switch as desired.
The second key feature of this site, compared to alternatives, is the use of video. However, I didn't find any benefits, e.g. in terms of usefulness for language learning or fun, from the use of video over just voice/text communication. Staring at the head of a stranger for the duration of the chat didn't add anything. Need to add some feature or features that make the use of video an advantage and relevant for language learning (this would also encourage people who want to engage in video chat to simply switch to skype once introduced).
I didn't find the suggested topics feature very useful, as it isn't hard to come up with such topics on your own and simply going through suggested topics one by one with partner led to a conversation that felt awkward and jilted. An alternative idea: add some interactive role play puzzles that the users must solve by speaking the foreign language with the user. For example, you could shows a street map with a route shown to one user, and the same map with only the initial position to the other. The latter user must then ask the other user for directions to determine the correct route . Or a restaurant role play where one user is the waiter the other the customer, and the latter is told the dishes they must order, which they must communicate correctly to the waiter. This would lead to more realistic, two-way, conversations, be a lot more fun and be genuinely useful in generating conversation between two strangers.
At the moment, it doesn't offer anything compelling over sharedtalk.com in terms of finding language exchange partners, nor does it offer any of the learning material for which I find Bussu useful. On the plus side, I did find the site easy to sign up for and use, and the call quality was good (call quality on sharedtalk is generally very poor, which is why, even in voice chat there, people almost always suggest moving to skype - hence sharedtalk acts more as an introductions agency).
We've found, both in talking to language teachers and in our own experience, that video helps communication and comprehension. However, it's definitely the case that for both privacy and bandwidth reasons, sometimes it's a liability. We don't require a webcam so for now you can just disconnect it if you're uncomfortable with it, but we're planning to add an option to intentionally omit the webcam feed in the future.
Thanks for the idea on topics; we've got a lot of ideas in that space, but we wanted to launch as soon as we had a viable product.
Glad you liked the call quality, it's central to many of the features we're hoping to introduce in the future. There's lots more coming. This is just the first step. :)
Check out his talk from TEDxCMU: http://tedxcmu.com/videos/luis-von-ahn
One potential problem you will face is that the time spent on each language needs to be balanced. I don't want to spend all my time teaching English, and then have the person hangup on me.
The real competition for this new site in my opinon, is therefore not any of these exchange sites, but Skype since the call quality is so much better than any flash based solution can achieve. They need to offer something special in order to retain long term users and not just be a site used to introduce language learners.
Rosetta Stone does something like this already - in addition to learning the language you can engage in peer-to-peer or peer-to-teacher live instruction through the software. It matches you based on language level, etc. The cool part about the peer-to-peer interaction is that it's with someone equally dedicated to learning the language, since they also bought the software and engaged in a bunch of lessons. Of course, Rosetta charges for this service.
What does Verbling offer that Rosetta doesn't - is it easier/faster/cheaper/etc?
I didn't know about sharedtalk.com. Looks like it's made by Rosetta Stone. The sign up form is like a mortgage application. Why does a language learning site need to know my gender, birthdate and address?
I didn't realise Bussu showed ads since I use Adblock but I agree that the ad they are showing you would be annoying.
I have not done any publicity so far. The target is different than Verbling. The main idea is to find people around your location and meet in-person.
Witmeet is still under development as I'm the only developer, you know, the pain of finding co-founders.
All the best for the Verbling Team!
It should be either "I speak Spanish" or "Yo hablo español" surely?