An AMAZING App to Learn English!

Hello everyone! In this video I want  to talk to you about the importance of  

feedback in language learning.  

A lot of us when we learn a foreign language we  start with the grammar, then we move on to a more  

advanced vocabulary perhaps, we try to expand  it, to learn new phrases and that's awesome,  

but how many times have we felt unsure about  what to say? That's because language isn't just  

a set of rules. Language is like a habit that  needs constant practice and more importantly,  

it needs feedback from native speakers. That's  why people who live abroad learn languages  

faster and more efficiently because they're  constantly surrounded by it and they are exposed  

to the feedback of native speakers, they interact  with them and they learn from their own mistakes.  

The problem here is that not everyone has the  possibility of doing that, of traveling, of  

spending some time abroad, not everyone has  someone to practice with. I personally learned  

English, French, Spanish and German without much  interaction with native speakers and I did that  

thanks to the resources we can find  on the Internet. In particular,  

today I want to talk to you about an app  called HiNative. It's available on Apple,  

Android and they also have a browser version so  you can use it on your computer as well. It's  

really easy to sign up. You can do it with Google,  Apple, Facebook or you can just use your email  

and then you will be asked what your native  language is and what language you would like  

to learn and also what your level in that language  is. You can see that I chose advanced in my case.  

Once you've done that you're all set. The  app works kind of like a forum. You can ask  

questions to native speakers and you can answer  people's questions about your native language.  

This app supports 113 languages so it's not just  for English. In the home page you can see there  

are plenty of already asked questions that you  can answer in your native language and gain quick  

points that will help you make your questions more  visible to others. If you want to ask a question  

you can click on the letter Q and there are  different question templates like "How do you  

say this?" where you can attach for example a  picture of something and people will tell you  

what they would normally call that. Here you can  see that I asked about this object and someone  

responded saying that it's called a drying rack or  clothes drying rack. With "What does this mean?"  

you can ask about the meaning of a word. You  know, sometimes there are words that are a little  

ambiguous, let's say, and looking up their meaning  on a dictionary might not tell us everything we  

need to know because oftentimes people use words  in a completely different way. Whether they be  

slang expressions, idioms or simply words that  acquire new meanings over time and in given  

communities, so asking their meaning to a native  speaker can be really enlightening. This is very  

useful. This is called "What's the difference?".  Here you can ask about the difference between  

two or more things. For example I asked about the  difference between "give up" and "give in". They  

are two phrasal verbs and they are very similar  in meaning and they are often confused for this  

reason and they replied saying that "to give in"  is like to surrender or yield. "She was tired but  

decided to give in and went anyway". "To give up"  is to quit altogether. "He couldn't fix the car,  

so he decided to give up and call a mechanic". You  can also ask people to give you example sentences  

using a word, an expression that you really  don't know how to use in context. That's also  

very helpful because how many times has it  happened that we know the meaning of a word  

or a verb, an expression, whatever it is, but we  don't know how to actually use it in a sentence?  

And that can really help us understand it better.  There's also a section about pronunciation. Here  

you can ask about the pronunciation of a specific  word and people will send you a recording of how  

they would say that in their native language  and vice versa with this other template you  

can record yourself and ask people to give you  feedback. You can ask them if your pronunciation  

was correct. For example, I asked people to  show me how to pronounce the word "literature"  

because its pronunciation is very infamous among  English learners, especially when it comes to US  

English and this is the recording that someone  sent me: "literature". Of course, you can also  

ask a more general question about a country or  region so for example, I love Mexican culture,  

I could ask something about Día de Muertos, Cinco  de Mayo...so, you know, things about celebrations,  

culture, habits and so on. All of which we just  talked about is completely free, but, in addition  

to that, they also have some premium features  like this format which is really cool. It's called  

"Does this sound natural?" Basically, you can have  your sentence corrected here. So, for example,  

I asked about this sentence: "Can you take me  a picture?" where I made an intentional mistake  

because you can't say "take me" a picture. So,  they replied that it sounds a little bit unnatural  

and someone even said: I don't understand, are  you trying to get someone to take a picture of  

you? In that case, it's "Can you take a picture  of me?" or are you trying to say that you want to  

see a picture of something? In that case "Can you  send me a picture?" would work better. I actually  

meant to say the first one: Can you take a picture  of me? or "for me" as this other user suggested. I  

made this intentional mistake because it's a very  common mistake that a lot of Italian speakers make  

as well as Spanish speakers because it's a direct  translation of how it's said in these languages.  

"Foreign language diary" with this format you can  write a diary, you can keep a journal and have it  

corrected by a native speaker. So, if that's  something that you like, keeping a journal,  

this could really be helpful. By the way, writing  a diary, keeping a journal is a great way of  

practicing the language because by writing you're  gonna have to make some choices, you're gonna have  

to think about what you're saying and in that case  you actually have time to do so, unlike spoken  

language, so it's really good practice. These  two formats that I've just talked about "Does  

this sound natural?" and "Foreign language diary"  as I said, are only available to premium users,  

so make sure you upgrade the app to premium. You  can also get a free trial. I used HiNative all  

the time when I was learning the languages that I  speak and I still use it today because you never  

stop learning. I think it's a great resource for  all language learners out there, especially those  

who don't have someone to practice with. On  this app you can really learn a lot from native  

speakers and also something that I believe is  very important to mention is that there are no DMs  

on this app, no direct messages, that means that  people cannot use this app for dating for example,  

so it's really safe and you will not be  bothered with unwanted messages. All right,  

you guys, I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll  leave the links to download HiNative in the  

description box. Try it out and let me know  if you liked it. Thanks for watching, bye!

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