Falou - Fast language learning
reviews and complaints

This app is just what I’ve been looking for! It breaks everything down for you and really emphasizes the use of practice and pronunciation, which is often left out in other apps. You can never learn a language without speaking it so I love the microphone feature and the pronunciation indicator. I was watching a video by a man who learned 20 languages fluently AFTER the age of 21 and he explained that learning a language isn’t like learning math. You don’t use flash cards and memorization. To learn a language efficiently, you have to learn the same way a baby learns a language, which is through constant listening and conversational practice. I’m currently practicing Spanish, but I am Cambodian and wish the Khmer language was included in this app. There are so many languages that never get included in apps like this, but hopefully soon more languages will be included. I also wish you could choose between different dialects of the languages. I am learning Spanish on the app, but I would like to learn Dominican Spanish pronunciations instead of Spain Spanish so I wish there were separate categories for that. Otherwise, this app is groundbreaking and really has cracked the code!

This is my second review and I’ve been looking at most of the reviews it’s an amazing app and sorry for mentioning Duolingo a lot of the other one but I have been trying to learn Portuguese because most of my family speaks it I’ve been really wanting to learn I’m just nine and they have amazing courses for me to go I said I was nine it’s not gonna be that many hard work and there’s one word I just can’t say it’s meat but in Portuguese it’s a little hard and they keep showing me and showing me because they’re realizing that I can’t say it correctly so they even did a little course and it helped me so much on saying that word this app is amazing it is underrated but the only problem is which a lot of people are occurring is that the voice track thing isn’t working that well I said most of the words perfectly or like I heard it I thought it was that until I just kept saying the same word in the same word and it said wrong and also it’s not a bug but I recommend that maybe when you get it wrong it would make kind of sound not just have it at the bottom so you can know even if you’re wearing headphones and out paying attention you just repeat it not just wait for the little thing to turn it to an X or the checkmark

I’m learning Spanish and this a great app for learning new vocabulary and simple things. Sometimes they bombard you with long sentences that are near impossible to complete. Which I feel needs to NOT be in there. Maybe break the sentences up then later put them together for the longer sentence.
Recently an update came where they added a listening and speaking session that is EXTREMELY irritating, especially when you’ve already completed folders, they’re now not done. It’s so boring so say “hola”… “buenos”……”días”…. And if anything it discourages me from using the app. There’s no skip option on one of them so you HAVE to do it. It’s a good app sometimes, but I feel like the creators don’t know what they’re doing and are focusing on the wrong areas.

Good focuses are ACTUALLY FIXING THE APP. When I’m doing the speech parts (yes including all the easy ones that are pointless) won’t hear a word and say the entire sentence is wrong. When saying “buenos” literally a one worded part, said I got it wrong, so you have to shout your words and basically say it the wrong way so the app thinks you’re correct. But instead the developers like to focus on random bitmoji aspects and things that just ruin the app in the end.

It’s a good app for certain tools, but definitely frustrating and confusing at times.

Falou is alright. It's a good app when you first download it and you can easily navigate the app. The words feature is great because it's really the main way I learn as I see them as flash cards. The main page I didn't like too much because they start you off with speaking. I personally like to learn vocabulary first and then get into inputting it into sentences and then using it in conversation. I don't like the fact that I had to start by speaking because they don't tell you what the words mean, you have to click on each individual words to find the definition. Also, some of the words that they have in spanish is not the main spanish word you use, it will teach you words that have the same meaning but if you were to say that word to someone you don't know (informal), they'd think you're uneducated and they'd look at you like you're an idiot. I do like the fact that you are able to hear your conversation at the end though. It's definitely way too expensive to have to pay 47.99 per semester, not per year, per semester. That's outrageous. The fact that the free trial is only 3 days long is also a drag. This app has potential but it needs to clean up a lot of things. This could be the next duolingo with a few fixes. As of now though, I recommend duolingo to anyone looking to learn a new language and use falou to make sure you stay fluent in the language you're trying to learn or have already learned.

Maybe I judged this app too hastily before. I’m coming back to update my review and to say it’s actually pretty good. The reason I gave a premature review earlier is that the app prompted me to leave a review when I was only about 30 minutes into it. In my opinion, a person should have more experience with an app before leaving a review.

So I switched my target language to Español and I’ve been happier with learning it. The conversations make more sense now. And the other benefits of this app are still true from what I mentioned before: that the native speakers sound very good, the app gives you plenty of chances to practice, and I love that it teaches both conversations and vocabulary words. Now that I’m learning Spanish I was able to see that there really is a lot of material to learn so I finally decided to subscribe.

Also, the Spanish learning course has a lot more instructional videos, and as they say it is good to really take your time in learning it. When you start a new unit and it dives in to teaching you a new conversation, you can take your time and press each word of the sentences you are asked to repeat. When you do this, it sounds out the word for you and even highlights the letters you are hearing. If you do this several times, your pronunciation really will improve. I took high school Spanish for years and I already sound much better than I ever did then. Thanks for making such an incredible app, Faloü!

I actually liked this app a lot at first but when I started using it, they constantly bombarded me with “special offers” that will expire TODAY and I need to subscribe NOW to get a GREAT deal! When you continue to say no, they say “we will give you an even more special offer that you must decide NOW or else it will be gone forever!” (Happened a total of 4 times I think within 10 minutes of using the app) Honestly it’s way too much and it pressures the user to pay before they really get a chance to try the app out first. (It’s a clear sign that they may be having hard time getting people to subscribe to the app, and they probably are desperate but that’s just my opinion.) They make claims that it’s the only app you need to be fluent in a language which is untrue, especially since they don’t teach grammar I believe, just phrases. I personally am an intermediate level in Korean and some of the words and grammar they used were incorrect. For example, using casual language with a “store worker” is an absolute no-no and it’s very disrespectful. They were teaching it this way and it’s concerning that they aren’t even teaching the right things, and people who are new to the language wouldn’t even know. This app has such great potential and I love the way it’s set up but the constant pressuring and the inaccurate teachings really put me off. Be careful when reading some reviews, they encourage users to leave a positive 5 star review, so I’m not sure if all of them are genuine.

I'm an intermediate Japanese learner (N3 level) and trying out Falou to practice speaking. Falou's focus on speaking has been so fun and refreshing comparing to the rest of the language apps out there.

However, I found so many grammar and spelling mistakes in the first few lessons and I had to stop using for the fear of being misguided. A few simple examples, こんばんは was spelled as こんばんわ which is not accurate; ありがとう somehow showed up in its Kanji form 有難う which is technically not wrong but very unnatural (Kanji is not commonly used for ありがとう); ○○�'ください was missing the �' particle, which is fine colloquially but inaccurate grammar-wise and could mislead beginners... and many more.

Speech recognition was also very rigid. Seems like this is how it works: the system transcribes the speech to text then compares with the original text to come up with a rating. This is not a problem for alphabetical languages, but a huge problem for Japanese. Lots of Japanese words can be presented in either Kanji form or Kana form. The app only accepts one form, e.g. if the original text was 有難う but I typed ありがとう (which is more common anyway), the app would consider my answer wrong. So frustrating.

I think a lot of polishing is needed to make the Japanese course more authentic and accurate. Right now the content feels like machine-generated and very unnatural. Please give more love to the Asian language courses and consider teaching the cultural context. I'd be excited to see where Falou is going if these problems are improved.

I was expecting to get through the free trial and pay for a year because I really enjoy how the app is designed and think it covers essential vocabulary very well, as well as emphasizing speaking above all else. My issue comes in on speech recognition. I’ve been studying a language for over 2 years and have been talking with some native speakers pretty much that whole time but still feel lacking in some particular terminology, so I opted for that language in Falou and selected the most advanced level and, sure enough, it got right into comprehension of very quick, native speaking that I might encounter in real life. Now, I was blazing through the lesson until certain words popped up that just wouldn’t be counted as correct no matter how many times I said them, how fast or slow I said them, etc. In this case it was numbers in the thousands (6000, 24000, etc). I even started to doubt my own speaking so I sent it to a native speaker to double check I was saying it right and she says it the exact same way, but Falou could not bring itself to understand what I was saying. Since this learning section was about finance, it was full of these numbers. It got so frustrating I cancelled the trial and uninstalled because I practically can’t progress anymore. You may not encounter this issue at all, most people haven’t and Falou works wonders for them, but just go in with the reservation that some words might not be counted correct due to quirks. They will probably fix it and I can change my review if/when they do and maybe try Falou again.

I’m conflicted writing this review because first and foremost I love this app. I think it’s one of the best language learning apps I’ve ever come across. For me it’s better than Duolingo in terms of content, tho that being said, it is not for you if you’re looking for a free learning app.

The inordinate amount of adds you will be blasted with to upgrade is almost ridiculous. I want to say it makes sense because of all the time it seems went into the app but I can’t give it five stars if the free version is lackluster.

With the free version you get a single lesson a day, alright fine I’ll deal with it I’m poor, but if every ‘chapter’ has five lessons so it will take you a workweek just to finish a chapter. Each lesson is just learning the same conversation different ways so compared to other apps like Duolingo or lingodeer you get less daily but I feel like Duolingo is good for learning the written basics while this is better for pronunciation and speaking basics. I showed it to my mom who has horrrrrrible French pronunciation even though she’s been taking it on and off since she was a child and I could hear her getting better with the individual word practice.

I might upgrade soon but every time I get an ad to upgrade it makes me feel petty so I ignore them and don’t lol… but I like that once you upgrade you get access to the rest of the languages (I’m currently doing Spanish).

All in all if you have money to spend and/or are willing to do one lesson a day I say go for it, I love it. If not, another app might be a better option.

Deleted the app for a few months because the app is hard to navigate, restored it and all the lessons are there but the ads won’t stop popping up. They are genuinely irritating to watch before you buy, so being forced to watch them (you can’t pause, or leave the ad, you have to force quit the app) after purchasing is even worse.
Every time you get through a lesson one pops up “Oh! You didn’t buy :( That’s too bad! ;’(( Now you missed your chance for this ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY!”

Some other things that have been really frustrating:
-there is no profile button. you cannot find what membership you have in app (and make sure it’s attached to the email you’re signed in with, you have to go to the app store. you can only “login” to the app after downloading it initially. it does not give you the choice to restore purchase before and there is nowhere to logout, you have to delete the app and redownload.
-the lack of subtitles makes the recorded conversations very inaccessible, especially for beginners and people who have auditory processing disorders, dyslexia, etc.
-help button leads to faq but no way to contact anyone from support.
-pressures you to buy within MINUTES of opening the app. this is a red flag for me because it doesn’t give you much time to make sure it’s worth spending 30/40 dollars on for a subscription. the reviews here were good so i bought it on sale a while ago, but i would not recommend it in the state the app is currently in.

Honestly, disappointed. Would not have spent 30 dollars on a sub if I would have known the app was going to be like this.

Wanted to try out this app since I love trying language programs. Literally could only do like 5 lessons before I had to quit.

On the good side, the UI is very nice and clean. The vocab cards and lessons are similar to Duolingo to me. It’s definitely not meant to be used as your only source and should be used to either practice you’re listening or if you just need to learn common phrases for travel. It won’t explain in details the rules of the language though. That said this could be a good listening practice source if it wasn’t for the goddam ads. This is some of the most aggressive ads I’ve ever seen. For starts, $150 for premium every year is a lot for what you get.

Secondly, I did 3 lessons before it told me to get premium. Not only did it not let me move on til I selected pay, when I cancelled the payment, they played a video telling me to hit pay button, like? I had to close out of the app to keep going without paying a ridiculous amount of money for something I’ve used for less than 5 min. Only to then get ANOTHER video giving me a 80% discount that I had 30 min to claim. They shove premium down your throat so much it ruins the app. Every time I’d finish one lesson I’d get a whole unskipable video about why I should get premium and then have the option to accept the offer. Needless to say I quit the app before my 30 min timer was even up.

TLDR; App has promise as a way to help build up your listening or to learn phrases specifically for traveling, but not if you really want to learn the language. The ridiculous premium ads getting shoved down your throat every minute ruins any potential the app has though.

The good: First, the app is visually pleasing and user friendly. The lesson leads you from simply repeating your line in the conversation to, in the end, speaking your line from memory. The best part is that you can replay the conversation and hear yourself speaking! Sure, you can just record yourself on your phone and play it back, but it’s encouraging to hear yourself having a “conversation” and really does provide a confidence boost! I also once got a friendly prompt to try to speak a little faster. I assume there are other helpful prompts (but don’t know for sure because keep reading…) At one point, it also had me select a character and made an “ad” from my recordings so that was all ME speaking in it! That was fun lol.

The not so great: The voice recognition is not perfect. A couple times it marked me correct before I even said the last word. But it’s also not horrible either and all the recordings I listened to were fine. The ads to get you to upgrade to premium are constant but I didn’t find them annoying. They’re fun, upbeat, and maybe some are a little cheesy but I didn’t think they were too obnoxious.

The bad: There is no ‘free version’. It’s a ‘free trial’ only. I completed three lessons/units and now I’m blocked from doing anything more unless I upgrade. Of course there’s a great offer for a discounted price, and it’s not that I think it’s too expensive, it’s that I’ve been unexpectedly out of work for three weeks and simply cannot justify spending money on this right now. I was hoping it was a free version with the premium version removing ads, adding a few extra features, etc. But, nope. Very disappointing.

This app doesn’t just teach you new words, it actually gives you the context in which you would use them by having all the language lessons take place in conversations. It’s not tedious like Duolingo, where you can spend so much time just trying to keep your language tree gold and studying vocabulary. It’s more complete than babel, which I found expensive and left gaps in my understanding of the language as a beginner. This app is priced for about $150 a year, but I was so happy they gave me a decent discount so I could afford my first year! I’m serious about learning French as well, and I personally find the subscription a good incentive to make the most of this language learning tool. This is the most straight forward conversation based language learning app I’ve tried yet

Edit: So I’ve been on the app for about 2 days now and I would like to report a bug. It seems that in the French course the microphone is not working. It will glitch out and stop picking up sound sometimes. I will have to skip the word or phrase so that I can continue with the lesson, but sometimes that doesn’t fix it and I will have to turn my phone off and on.

I also don’t know if this is a bug, or due to my pronunciation, but sometimes I will get stuck on a word and no matter how I say it, it will not progress. I appreciate the high bar for pronunciation but it makes it difficult when it gets to the point where I don’t know the difference between the way I’ve been saying it vs what the app wants. I would love to see a pronunciation guide so that I know what I am doing wrong. Some kind of tool that could correct me would be great. Though it may just be a matter of adjusting the sensitivity on the microphone given that there are other issues with the microphone function.

See original review below for what happened, but I’m coming here to update it because they were quick to refund us the money for all charges, help us cancel the subscription, and then offered us a code for a free subscription if we wanted it. The issue was partially because the payment goes through Apple so they are limited on what they can do, you have to request a refund from Apple separately. We really like the program and we are glad they held up their end and took care of the issue. I would absolutely recommend this app now because the program has been awesome, and I know that even if something goes wrong they will do what they can to make it right!

Original issue: I really hope that this is just an error on their end and that they are quick to fix it, if they do, I may come back to change this, but I want to warn anyone about to download this app. They charged us THREE TIMES, for THREE different amounts for ONE yearly subscription. I selected a yearly subscription for $150 when I started the free trial, but after talking with my husband we decided to cancel it and save the money and maybe come back and try it later. However, when I went to cancel they gave me an offer to have the subscription for 1/3 of the price, $45, which we talked about and decided to take. We kept using the app for a couple of days and it randomly offered us another deal for $30, saying that it would refund us the $45 and charge us $30 instead. I am bummed because I was excited to use the program and felt like I was learning a lot, but they have now permanently lost my trust and unless they seriously and quickly make it up to me I will not subscribe again and I would warn anyone else looking for a language program to stay away from this one. It’s not worth the headache.

I bought the year long membership to try to improve my French skills.

I was very adamant on doing a little each day and keeping a streak. Every time I change timezones, the app appears to be glitched and automatically ends your steak. I have had this happen to me 5 times already. It really ruins self confidence… I have reported the issue repeatedly with no response in return.

Another issue is that the app’s translations don’t always match up with they teach you. There are a couple sentences in french that can definitely be revised to more appropriately match between the english and french translations. I get there are some sentences that don’t translate directly, but there are definitely some that can be better matched.

Final issue I had with the app is that the voice recognition really struggles with some words. I have had native French speakers try a lesson and it still cannot recognize some words. There are of course some technical limitations, but it really makes some sections much harder than others. For example, the word-for-word section often just has you repeating the same sentence but appending a word each time. If there’s one word that falou cannot recognize, you run into the same issue over and over again. It also seems like they can do a much better job organizing phrases together versus just making the speaking portion longer and longer. The word-for-word section normally takes much, much longer than any other section and once finished, it doesn’t even count towards a streak.

This will probably be my time ever using the app, it’s just too frustrating to face all of these issues. The idea to prioritize speaking and listening comprehension is great, just missing the execution. It doesn’t seem like much work is going into the app over the past year besides slowly adding some new learning content.

Max

I am revisiting my review after further use and I stand by my 1-star rating. In summary, I found this app not to be valuable for learning or synthesizing a new language. The added frustration of the poor speech recognition solidifies my decision to not recommend this app.

I bought this app to learn Chinese. I have never spoken Chinese before and didn’t know a word. This app excited me because it’s fun to be able to “carry on a conversation” in a language you just started to learn. However, I found it not to be very useful for actually learning a language. It’s based on repeating specific, select phrases, which I find limiting because I did not learn how to really use or adapt the language for conversation. Furthermore, the speech recognition is buggy and frustrating and, unlike other apps, you do not get to hear what it “thinks you said” when you mispronounce, so it’s harder to correct. Frequently it seems to not hear me at all.

I wondered if this is just because I am terrible at Chinese, so I also tried out French, in which I’m near fluent, and Danish, which I don’t know at all but uses characters I can read easily. I will admit the speech recognition seemed to be better for both of these (for the half dozen lessons I tried), but there was some questionable French translation/vocabulary and of course still the issue of not really learning the language so much as just repeating set phrases. Also, for these languages, I notice a lot of emphasis on spelling, which doesn’t seem like a high priority when learning a completely new language (at least it’s not for me).

If you have no budget for language learning, I would stick with Duolingo. If you have a lot to spend, I really think Rosetta Stone is the best you can get. If you have a little to spend, I would probably suggest Mondly. Good luck and happy learning!

Falou team: keep working! I have your app for a year and I will not give up on you, so I will revise my review if I feel it’s warranted.

I got this to work on my Japanese. I’d started learning the language with audio lessons elsewhere before, but was looking for something to help me to balance things out with reading and writing as well. I had hoped this would be it, and I’m very disappointed.

First, it doesn’t actually do anything to teach you Japanese characters… it just expects you to know them (and know how to type them!), for words that are brand new to you. This approach might work for languages that use the Latin alphabet, but for learning kanji it just doesn’t cut it. Not only that, but it expects you to be able to type in fluent Japanese – hiragana, katakana, *andkanji – right off the bat. Use the wrong characters (say, type everything in hiragana only), and it tells you you’re wrong with no explanation. Given my limited knowledge I was able to fumble my way through it by typing romaji on my iPhone keyboard and using autocomplete to fill in the correct characters, but did I actually learn anything? Not in the least.

Second, the examples are weirdly specific, and if you’re not right on track with them at all times you’re wrong. For example, I hope you remember that you were “from Brazil” three lessons ago, because if your answer to “where are you from?” is anything *butBrazil later on, you’re wrong. On the one hand, I get this rigidness, I’m sure it would be hard to program anything else, but it sure makes for a bit of frustration when you don’t know the “right” answer to a very general question not because you’re getting the language wrong but simply because you don’t remember what the app expects.

Finally, their system of nagging you to subscribe is ridiculous and off-putting. The way that it slowly lowers the price is sketchy at best – here’s a hint, if you decide to try it anyway (maybe it works better for other languages!), DO NOT pay “full price.” Fortunately I’d looked at the list of in-app purchases and seen what the real lowest price was and waited for it. Still, as unhappy as I am with the app, I’d like my $30 back. I definitely won’t be letting it renew.

I really like the concept of the speaking lessons and being put in everyday situations and learning appropriate phrases and responses. I do think that if you want to truly learn a language, this should be used as a supplement alongside other resources, vocabulary/grammar references, native material, etc. You should also absolutely study the sentences, extract the relevant grammar from them so that you study grammar in context and in bite-sized pieces, and memorize the sentences using SRS, repetition, or some other memory technique to make them more automatic. I do not believe there is any one resource that can get you fluent, but this is definitely a non-conventional method that makes sense to me. It is a good way to get comprehensible input and practice it!

Now there is lots of room for improvement. The things that stood out to me are as follows:

1. Firstly, the slower, learner-like speed of the audio. For beginner and intermediate, it’s fine, but as you get towards upper intermediate to advanced, the audio appears to keep the same speed. This, in my opinion is not good. As you get more advanced, the audio speed should be gradually increased to native-level speed.

2. The listening section needs transcripts. It is proven that the best way to improve listening is through listening to things that are slightly above your level, and having a transcript available. I could not find any transcripts in this section and the speed, again, does not appear to change much as you go from easy to hard listening exercises...

3. The speech-to-text is pretty iffy at times. This might be a technological limitation problem and I am sure it will improve over time as Falou works on it and as the world itself and the AI and machine learning community discover new ways to improve natural language processing algorithms and training.

4. From using the app for about an hour, I did not notice too many deliberate memory techniques employed in the app for the purpose of efficiently memorizing the phrases in the speaking exercises. Because of this, a user of the app should do their due diligence and find ways to deliberately memorize the important phrases they see themselves using, using something like SRS, repetition, memory places, whatever works best for them, as the app doesn’t really seem to help you with that.

Overall, the concept is great and I can see myself using it for beginning a language alongside other materials and an ease-in to intermediate and advanced levels, but again, because the audio does not increase in speed over time, using primarily this resource won’t allow you to understand native content because they speak much faster, so ALWAYS supplement this with native-intended resources and use this for a nice way to practice speaking when you don’t have someone immediately in front of you.

You have to be extremely patient. They have native speakers say words for you but depending on the language. You need more than a native speaker speaking to correctly say a word. You’ll be asking yourself “how should this letter really be pronounced as well as these letter combinations?” This is not taught, you only learn as you continue, they will give you very hard words to pronounce with very little assistance, In about 5 minutes into the app.

I need to be taught something before I start trying to speak a language I know nothing about. There is no breakdown of sentences, you have to assume that words mean certain things. Actually it does say what they mean when you click on a certain word, but(!) they don’t explain why words mean something different when put into a sentence. I believe this is key information when learning a new language. Sadly this app does not help at all in this way. I am going sentence after sentence getting frustrated because half the time the voice recognition is not understanding me when I am saying a word 10 plus times. And I am clicking on the word to hear the native speaker each and every single time.

I paid money to use this and I am beyond frustrated every single time I do a “speaking” or “challenge” lesson. The writing is a joke but I understand they needed something to break up the monotony of getting back that error message each time you fail to pronounce a sentence in the other two lessons.

Now mind you, maybe you are thinking “this guy just doesn’t now how to pronounce words in a new language” but I love learning new languages and I love trying out apps like this one, duolingo, memerise, drops, Babbel, busuu, Mango etc..

I’m not just trying out a new language, I love this stuff! That is why I’m writing this review, how on earth does this app have so many good reviews?!

They use the same sentences for every single language. And as the lessons go on all they do is use old lessons but change which speaker you are in the lesson. So again you are saying all these words that aren’t explain you just have to keep saying them over and over. And get use to that stupid message coming up “You are saying this wrong.” Also something frustrating is certain words are ALWAYS failing to be recognized. Example being in Russian “�'ы” the way you say it is Vea. But it is constantly not recognized. Also cheeseburger in a Spanish lesson I did.

Yes, I have tried Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian and Korean on this app. Obviously I will have a harder time with Russian and Korean but there are still parts of Spanish that make me want to break my phone half because of the voice recognition.

I don’t recommend this app. If you are constantly throwing sentences at people, help us out. Grammar is VERY important in generating sentences in a new language because sentence structure is different depending on the language. I understand wanting to have conversations in a new language but tell me what the sentences actually mean. I know that in most languages when you see a sentence it isn’t as simple as “say this and you will be right every time” there are a lot of rules and word combinations change those rules constantly.

I will give this five stars so more people see my review.

I was tricked into a subscription that I did not want. They advertise the subscription as if I would be paying one cent a day but instead they took 40 at $48 out of my account immediately and I’m not happy about that that’s not what I wanted and that’s not what I expected so I want my money refunded and I don’t care if you cancel the subscription I want my money refunded.

At first when I download the app it look really good to me. I wanted to learn Chinese and this app seem the perfect job to do that.

It does ask for premium to unlock all courses but recently it let me move on without paying, which is very helpful not having to pay 90 dollars for all the courses

The microphone issues is unbearable I am on lesson 7 every time I say that word right it says I am incorrect I tried changing the speed, and tone how I would say the word. I don't know if its too difficult or just the microphone problem . I would give this app a 5 star but due to the microphone issue I give it a 3 stars Hopefully Falou can fixed this problem.

P.S I would also like it for it to a slower sound to understand the meaning of the work. I do know Falou does provide a slower version of the word but it would be nice if it can break down each word.

Desired Outcome

I'd really appreciate if they can do a microphone check just to make sure it is working properly. Like I said before, I really enjoy using this app but I really think that can make some changes to the microphone as far as making sure that we are saying the work correctly.

Overall this app could be great. I keep getting extremely frustrated when it has me repeated the same work or phrases time and time again and says I’m doing it wrong. I can change my tone, speed, and expression but it won’t recognize it as correct. This app has yet to accept my s’il-vous-plait no matter how many times I try it. Another issue I have is that I will say the word and it won’t recognize that I said anything. It just keeps the mic open even though I’ve said the phrase multiple times.

I selected what I thought May be my level when I first downloaded the app. And was intrigued so bought the subscription. But the level I selected is too difficult, more advanced than where I am in my progress.

Therefore, I don’t know if this is useful or a good app - because I feel stuck. And the website support says that they do not support resetting the language level.

This is a not a bug, but rather a neglected feature. Please talk to your product people and have this prioritized in the roadmap.

At first I wrote a good review saying how you didn’t have to pay and how amazing the app is... and I also thought that the only reason they will ask you to pay is if you want premium.. if you are the kind of person that don’t like paying for a stupid language app.. don’t download this one cause at first you all happy thinking you having these classes for free.. but next thing you know.. “only premium are allowed” highly recommend before, but if you are one that like having language classes free. (Do not recommend)

Hey there reader, these are my concerns about this app. Firstly, I really dislike how the premium offer keeps popping up on my screen if I do not subscribe to it. I also dislike how I can only do the first lesson and not any of the other lessons if I do not subscribe to the premium offer. Lastly, I dislike how some of the lessons only focus on very little things, so I can’t really learn a new language with this app. So in conclusion, I don’t think the app is very beneficial for others to get. Yours truly, this gal.

But I can’t because I somehow can’t get past the first lesson. When I try to speak into the mic, Falou doesn’t catch it. I double checked if my mic works (which it does) and double checked the settings on the app and on my phone and it all looks good. I even turned my phone on/off and uninstall/reinstalled the app too.

Sad….I couldn’t even use the 3-day free trial because the app just wasn’t working properly for me. This is why I rate it a 2 because I love the idea and wanted so desperately to work, but sorely disappointed

Voice recognition needs a serious update sometimes it will recognize a word just for it to disappear before I finish a sentence. It's still not recognizing a few words in some sentences. For example the sentence : Oye ,a donde te gusteria ir hot. Sometime it doesn’t recognize donde and recently it hasn’t been hearing hoy. I know that I am saying it correctly because Falou isn’t the only resource that I use to learn Spanish. I also have Spanish speaking friends and family.. Please fix it voice recognition,it has took many bugs.

I’m updating my review. This app is out for money. They offer 90 dollars to buy the course but after a few lessons they offer half off. I feel bad for anyone who bought it full price. This app teaches you languages but is very annoying because it will count words you were not close on as correct and word to spoke correctly as wrong. I have had multiple people that speak Spanish tell me I’m saying “mirame” correctly but I keeps saying its wrong. I even recorded the speaker and played it back to see if it would take it as correct and it didn’t. If I could take back my purchase I would.

The listening section of the app lacks the intentionality and expertise that is placed in the lessons. Each listening exercise is basically garble. As a person learning a language having the translation to my native language following the foreign language is essential and is a basic tenet of learning called scaffolding. At this point the app is at best half baked but when it’s finished then they might have something that rivals Pimsleur or even Rosetta Stone. (Summary) Add translations after listening exercises and keep refining your voice recognition for your speaking exercises.
Sincerely, Annual Subscriber.

I wasn’t even sure I liked it and had 5 minutes with this app before it started selling me hard out the gate. Pressuring me every step. It ruined my initial experience. I wanted to like it but I needed to experience it. Same for my friend, she felt the same.

***UPDATE AFTER COMPANY RESPONSE***
In reply to the company saying those videos were instructional: You are lying to me and everyone that sees this. You know very well that the commercials were pressuring me into paying money. The commercials literally ask you to sign up for premium every step of they way begging for money before you figure out if it’s useful or enjoyable.

That is not instructional.

This app looked very interesting to me. I really love the concept of speech recognition to help with pronunciation. However, the words it is teaching for eastern languages like Japanese and Korean are incorrect. First It’s teaching very casual, non formal words which will make you sound very rude and does not account for cultural differences. For example, the word they are teaching as just “hello” in Korean (여보세요) technically means hello, but you only use it on the phone not on the streets. If you were to use it to someone you just met, they would think it extremely strange. I think this app has a great idea but needs to put in a bit more research and effort into some of their material.

Yesterday I got the app and it actually helped but there’s something really annoying even if I say a word right it thinks that I say it wrong and makes me do it again and again and again so many times it’s really annoying making me really want to delete the app I don’t know if I will I probably will tho bc that is really annoying

Edit: I reinstalled it and tapped on Spanish
(my main language even tho I talk completely fine in it)
To see if the same thing happened and yes it did say I did it wrong when I speak Spanish well and said it right

Ive been so desperate to try to learn Japanese and you just do this to me I hate this app I literally have been trying to learn Japanese for over a year

Program constantly has trouble picking up audio, regardless of device or wifi. Also having no experience with the Russian language or experience with the Cyrillic alphabet made it extremely difficult learning basic phrases that were introduced that had several sounds in single word. Some sort of basic intro to the alphabet or simpler words might help as I struggled to respond back when a few of the phrases given to me to say were long and without being able to read I struggled to memorize what to say to the app when prompted. Compiling that with the program unable to recognize I said certain words (no matter how I said them!) made this feel like an app with good intentions that needs more follow through. Perhaps this is better for other languages.

I am learning Korean on here and the text that it wants me to say is completely different from what the audio says. And when it doesn’t show the text and I have to listen to the audio, it wants me to say what the text says even though it’s different and I can’t see it. This is an error, please fix it. Also why do I have to wait so many hours for my next lesson? Duolingo is better in my opinion, you can play as much as you want to and it rarely has errors. Also, in Korean you need to speak formally when talking to a stranger; but on this app when it tells you you are talking to someone you just met, it wants you to use informal language. This is not right, this shouldn’t be what is being taught to people who know nothing about the language or culture.

I’ll start by saying, I really like and vibe with the learning approaches within this app, they fit my brain style so well and I feel like I could actually learn. This app has the potential to be one of the best on here! Unfortunately, this app is also very obnoxious. The forced animoji videos come across very fake, forced, and made me immediately want to delete the app. They give off the feeling of a cheap app that doesn’t value its users, and I just feel like it’s a really obnoxious and poor way to try and seek money from users. Apps cost money, and devs need to be able to make something off of them, so I totally get it! This is just not the way. The videos were too much and I don’t think I can continue to use the app because of it. If they remove them entirely, I’d love to redownload!

OK so when I first downloaded the app I was like oh my God yay but then I started getting lower and lower and learning more and then It asked for a premium I was like dude I’m a little kid how am I supposed to pay some of you might be thinking just ask your parents well I don’t want to ask them for money especially at that price anyway I kept looking and it was all premium so I looked for different apps and I found Duolingo it’s so amazing you don’t have to pay for anything I learned so much the only thing I have to pay for is premium and it’s really low and it only removes ads and gives you a little bit a premium but it’s not for premium most of the stuff on there is free there’s only a few things that you need premium for and that’s it I’ve been using it since and I know so much I totally recommend Duolingo thanks for reading bye.

So when I just opened the app it was pretty nice, it did have a few errors where it didn’t capture my mistake but that’s really common for a app. After some lessons I noticed there were a lot premium offers so I declined. Then it kept giving me pop up adds Again, so I declined again but that only made it worse. So after I was done with the each lesson there would l o n g adds for 14 minutes Straight talking about how I should get premium, since there adds had no skip button I had no option but to watch it. I was still not interested into buying it. I keep declining the offers but they just keep popping up. Then they made it cheaper which was okay but I still wasn’t going to get it. So finally after the 14 Minutes was up I got to finish my lessons without getting adds and I finally started to get better but then of COURSE you have to have premium to stay on the app for 6 hours! really you have limited time to stay on a app and watch really long adds just to stay on the app?

Hello, first, I wanted to give this no stars but I had to give one. On to the matter at hand. When the developers say “we care about your opinion and will use this to further better our app” they are just pacifying you to make you want to keep using the app while you wait for a change that will not happen. Also, they say that you can “still use this app for free” they are saying a half truth. You can use it for free, for 30 minutes! This kind of fraud and lying to customers proves that these people are not to be trusted. They will not change a thing about this app that needs to be changed, only small glitches that don’t lose them money to fix. Also, part of why I deleted this app is because of the marketing. They give you a “great deal just for you” and try to say that time will run out. Time may run out but then they will give you a “better first year offer and it starts over and the personal offer they made is actually given to everyone, These people are lying to y’all and are trying make you feel like you have to buy stuff. Newsflash: you don’t!