u/PraktikaAI

Like, how high are your expectations? How well do you want to speak the language and when you DO decide you are fluent, do you stop practicing?

I heard someone say that and now it's stuck in my mind. Is this real?

What was the weirdest interview question you ever got, and bonus points if you had to answer in the target language you're learning.

Most people out there aren't even learning a new language. So pat yourself on the back and make the mistakes you need to.

Emily Blunt asking Donatella Versace to hold on (emphatically).

What's a phrase that would never be grammatically correct in your TL (i.e.: "street") but you loooooove using it. Go.

Don't lie.
They're literally the first thing that you want to learn in your TL. Or is that just me? So we keep this above board, just say whether you like learning them or not.

(Especially needed for watching the FIFA World Cup games, amiright???)

When you recognize a word, your brain just has to catch something it already knows. But when you want to say that same word, it has to dig it out of memory, make it fit it into a sentence, and coordinate your mouth to say it (in like .000001 seconds).

That's why someone can pretty easily understand podcasts at B2 level but still freeze completely when it's time to "tell me about yourself". All this means is that they've spent way more time getting stimulus in than training how it comes out.

So what should you do? SPEAK. Talk to yourself while you're cooking. Describe what you're doing (yes, like a crazy person). Answer questions before you feel "ready." Embrace all the future mistakes you'll make because you know what? You're actually speaking a SECOND (or 3rd, 4th, whatever) language. This is already a massive achievement.

That's also why Praktika came to be, to make you talk to someone (even if it's AI), so you build up that confidence.

Do you feel confident? Proud?

Since our good friend and power user u/midnight_ridr asked about shadowing, I wanted to bring this to the community and see if y'all are trying it out.

So what is it? In short, shadowing is when you take a short audio or video clip, maybe 60 to 90 seconds, and speak along with it at the same time instead of just listening. Same rhythm, same pauses, same filler sounds, like you're copying the exact shape and speed of what's being said.

If you're feeling edgy, try record yourself and listen to yourself after.

Is music better for this or have you tried podcasts or YouTube videos?

You should tell Skye/Tama you want to shadow them and ask them for a simple phrase you can repeat.

When you're speaking Korean, it can get intimidating real fast, right? We wanted to give you a few different options for keeping it super polite, or be more natural and chill if you want.

Example with “are you eating?”
(Fun fact: Koreans use "have you eaten" as a warm way of saying "I care about you", "How are you?" or even "I love you". So asking about food is a big deeeeeal.)

• Casual: 食べてる? (tabeteru?)
• Neutral: 食べてるの? (tabeteru no?)
• Polite: 食べていますか? (tabete imasu ka?)

That one word you want to practice/demystify/use/further understand. Share it with your fellow Praktikants.

We've been talking to users and honestly it kind of broke our hearts a little.

Most of you are treating Skye or Tama like a quiz. You wait for the question, you answer it, you move on. That's it. And honestly, I get it, because that's the template apps have trained you to work with. But there's an extra 70% of potential that could be helping you improve your TL.

A few things the users we talked to discovered weeks or months in:

• You can ALWAYS redirect the conversation, even mid-session. "I don't want to talk about this, let's talk about sport instead." Tama will go with it.
• You can ask them about themselves. Their life, their interests, what they think. They actually have answers (because we created whole personalities and back stories for them. Lots of effort, I know).
• You can say "I didn't understand that" or "can we go slower" and they'll adjust.
• If you blank completely, they'll walk you through it. You don't have to sit there stuck.
• You can speak in your own language if you get confused. They'll switch gears.

One user told us he started saying sorry when he got something wrong. He knows he doesn't need to. He does it anyway because it started feeling like a real conversation, and that's all we ever wanted.

Granted, some of this is on us, and we want to make sure you have all the tools to know exactly how to get the best out of the app. Stay tuned for more tutorials and tips.