6 learning modes cover - in theory - all you need to know to truly get good at a new language. Reading, writing, listening, pronunciation, conversation and language understanding. Each exercise uses vocabulary and grammar that you're slightly insecure in, so you can make mistakes, understand why and get a bit better every day. The learning algorithm is based on the "forgetting curve" and "desirable difficulty" research from neuroscience.
On a motorbike trip through the Vietnamese mountains I stayed in small villages. Kids there have internet and phones - yet no one to teach them English.
Back in the cities almost everyone I talked to about learning a language told me some version of "I'm trying the apps, but it's not going great".
I started tutoring people in my native language, German, for 1.5 years and built neuralingo in multiple iterations, testing methods in the 1:1 sessions and including the most effective ones.
2 of our students have passed official B1 & B2 exams, 2 have passed job interviews in German and one is now working there in a medical job.
I'm not sure yet if neuralingo will work at scale, but I'm hoping more people will test it out and share what still needs fixing to achieve that.
First of all, congratulations on the launch!! This is a really impressive learning project. I’ve started using it and so far, the experience has been great!
One thing that genuinely stood out to me was the analysis after the assessments. I’ve tried quite a few language learning apps, and I can confidently say this is one of the best feedback systems I’ve seen, really insightful and helpful.
If I could suggest one improvement, it would be the textarea in the “Assessment with Lex” section. Since the input size is fixed, it becomes a bit difficult to review longer responses. I tend to write more detailed answers, and navigating through them isn’t the easiest after finishing.
I’m about to start the sessions next and will definitely share more feedback if anything else comes up. Congrats again on the launch 🚀
I know that ProductHunt launches are overwhelmingly AI-based now, but Neurolingo is, after signing up, doing the assessment, and even paying for a plan(!) a really good example of why "vibecoding" and LLMs in general are not suited to language learning (at least not at the moment).
It's why I canceled and uninstalled DuoLingo when they said they were an "AI-first" company.
This review/comment is kinda long, so the TL;DR here, from a paying user who intends to cancel is: DIY flash cards are a much better use of your time and money.
(As a note: all images below are screenshots of the app, in browser, doing something frustrating or confounding.)
The session was maddening. First, Lex insisted on things like accents for French, even though those are not native keys on an English keyboard. I was able to move past this with Lex, but it's a stupid oversight unless we're specifically working on an accents exercise.
Lex would ask me if I wanted to explore a specific pain point further, or continue the lesson. Any response ("continue" or "let's work more on article-noun gender agreement") would comply...and then immediately jump into an unrelated lesson and/or ask me to translate Je voudrais un café et un croissant. When I pointed it out, it said it had some system confusion.
In the post-lesson report card (mistake review), it marks responses to the user's confusion as ACTUAL MISTAKES, which is mind-bogglingly stupid.
Another "mistake" was rightly evaluated as a mistake in the post-lesson, but in the lesson was marked as "ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!" which is confusing, frustrating, and just...bad.
The constant move back to Je voudrais un café et un croissant created a confounding interruption of the flow of the lesson, ensuring that almost nothing would stick. Sincerely, before the lesson self-ended (which...why?!) it had asked me to translate Je voudrais un café et un croissant no fewer than half a dozen times, completely out of context, and without any relevance to the lesson. That is probably the only thing I remember confidently, other than the sycophantic insistence that I was "absolutely correct to be frustrated" and "translated that perfectly!" (when I had not).
The pre-start evaluation put me at A1, but the session for some reason was in A1, and the pre-start analysis had me at 10, but this hour long session is saying I'm now at 11, even though it's a full half-level below where I should've started?? Also: This is a minor gripe, but I didn't spend 108 minutes in this lesson (it was about 50, and then the lesson auto-ended without warning).
Who is this little bit of "sage wisdom" supposed to be for? Why are you shipping a language app with a formulaic fortune cookie saying?
The mistake overview is actually just worthless, because half of these just were not mistakes, and many of the others were me attempting to troubleshoot Lex's condescension (which was especially high contrast when Lex was just dead wrong, e.g. The root cause of your mistake is....) even if the mistake was something like noun gender, which is learned through rote memorization, and cannot be divined by looking at the word. For example, none of the "mistakes" listed as mistakes were actually mistakes. The evaluation is just hallucinating.
I gotta say that it is deeply agitating for this to be the outcome here. I could've made this in ChatGPT back when OpenAI launched the "custom GPTs" feature in like, 2023, and it would've been just as if not more effective. I have very little confidence that NeuroLingo is ready for prime time in any sense of the word "ready," and, aside from the reasonably attractive UI, I'm not confident in anything about NeuroLingo.
Importantly here, I'm not confident that Lex/the product even has a good enough internal understanding of language or how languages are learned to believe that the lesson I just spent an hour in was accurate on a language/lexicon/vernacular level.
In almost any scenario I can imagine, I would've been much better off using Google Translate to make personal flash cards, and just memorizing them–and I'm saying that with the understanding that Google Translate isn't particularly great.
I would say "good luck" but I honestly feel like this product might be actively deleterious to users' attempts to learn a language.
The pronunciation exercises are helpful because I can hear mistakes and correct them immediately.
Seeing this at a really good time as I am trying to polish up my Swedish! Seems like an awesome application, congrats on the launch! What languages do you support atm?
@oldcarnewradio@Neuralingo Language Learning Hi Julius! It's my first time to know AI product via makers' real story which's really cool and vivid. Here's my perspective from not professional but real language learner. 1. 🤩👍Good aesthetic taste which makes me have attention and intent to go deeper! THAT IS IMPORTANT FOR language learning App. You know what I mean. 2. Honestly I have left my Duolingo cuz I do not need a game app which only use one language explaining another. 😓What I need to learn is a vivid and like storytelling bridge between cultures not only languages. Neuraligo really delivers a new learning experience.👍 3. I wonder if you guys develop speak features it will be much more convenient.💬
Really clean UX on this. How are you handling rate limiting on the API side?
Most language apps make things too easy so you feel good but don't actually learn. How many languages does it currently support, and does the pronunciation mode work well for non-Latin script languages?
Good luck with your launch!
Learning a language properly through apps is really hard (I'm struggling to learn German with Duolingo actually), and I think your app can really solve this problem!
I'm curious to know more about the method you talk about in the website: did you do some deep research on neuroscience or are there neuoscientists in your team who helped you develop the app?
Julius Marx
