Apps are the most patient teachers in the world
Apps can patiently correct your mistakes thousands of times without the slightest annoyance. If you study with a person, you will probably feel embarrassed after making about 5 mistakes, and the teacher will also feel tired. By the 10th time, it is unlikely that any teacher will be able to maintain a state of "non-aggression" with you.
When studying with a teacher, the amount of time is limited because the teacher also needs to rest; when studying with apps, you can turn to this dedicated teacher at any time, day or night, during the week or on weekends, on weekdays or holidays.
However... apps are not the best choice for learning conversational English
Although current technology is very advanced, it has not yet been able to "breathe life" into apps. According to Fast Language's observations, if we study with apps, we usually only study for 10 minutes and no more than 20 minutes; why? Because... talking to apps is boring!
Apps currently do not have emotions like humans. When communicating with Siri, Cortana or Alexa, they can quickly answer you right away. For example, if you ask where the capital of Vietnam is located, the virtual assistant will answer Hanoi; but they are not "being communicative", so that we "have something to talk about"; you answering to that point is the end of your task, and then you are silent until we ask again. In other words, this is almost just one-way interaction.
Meanwhile, if you study with a teacher, they can lead the story: oh, is it near where you live? Have you been there before? Do you like it? What's so special about it compared to other capitals? I also plan to go there at the end of this year, etc...
In addition, when talking about different topics, experienced teachers will express different emotions depending on the topic and the atmosphere of the conversation; sometimes excited, enthusiastic, appreciative, sometimes gentle, sharing, etc....
In contrast, when answering you, no matter what the topic is, from happy to sad, from political news to entertainment, sports, from weddings to funerals,... the virtual assistants only have one emotional color, all the same.
Lacking "human sense", so studying with apps is often less lively and not as interesting as studying with a teacher.
In conclusion, strategies for learning with apps
If we are allowed to share our own perspective, we believe that learning through apps will be most effective in the area of pronunciation learning; it should be noted that pronunciation is only one part of the language; skills such as writing, presentation, word choice, adjusting tone of voice, volume, communication combined with body language, etc... interacting with a teacher will bring much better results than practicing one-way communication on apps.
Regarding learning pronunciation through applications, Fast Language also has a small note for you; although both are artificial intelligence technology, assistant apps will process in the direction of understanding you as much as possible, meaning you only need to speak at an easy-to-hear level, without needing to pronounce each word clearly, the assistant apps will still understand and answer you; this is understandable because they are created to increase the user experience, especially in voice search, according to the motto of being as convenient and friendly as possible; on the contrary, with Elsa, this app is designed to recognize your smallest mistakes.
When studying with Elsa, if you pronounce it nearly ten times and still make a slight mistake here and a little mistake there, and can't pronounce it 100% correctly, don't be too stressed; in real communication, placed in a specific context, even if you make basic pronunciation or grammar mistakes, it is still usually understood.
Speaking too meticulously, pronouncing "forced" to be too accurate can sometimes have the opposite effect, sounding unnatural, tiring, this counterproductive effect is true for most cases, whether you speak Vietnamese or English.
Even in Vietnamese, do most of us speak accurately, listen carefully enough to accurately distinguish each question mark, tilde, the sound "ng", the sound "ngh"?
Therefore, when being caught by apps for voiced, voiceless sounds, the sounds 'r, th, s, z, dz', etc... try to practice more, but if you can't do it after five or six times, temporarily skip it and continue to the next lesson, don't overemphasize the problem, okay?
Fast Language hopes that the above sharing will be helpful for you in your foreign language learning journey, whether with apps or with teachers.
