I Tried HelloTalk
I’ve been studying Japanese for a while, and it can get boring when all you’re doing is taking in input and studying without a chance to output something or apply what you learned. During Thanksgiving Break, I stumbled across an app called HelloTalk, which apparently lets you talk with people native in your target language, and who are trying to learn your native language. I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to download, and I gave it a try.
Texts
At its core, HelloTalk is a messaging app with extra features. At first, all I did was reach out to a handful of people, say hi, and see who responds.
Most people said hi back, and when they did, I usually asked them a simple question or two to get to know them better.
At this point, a good majority of people would ignore the question or answer and not ask any questions in return. Only a few people would respond and ask questions back, and that would keep the conversation going a bit longer, often spanning several days. Here’s a small snippet of a conversation I had.
Speaking
HelloTalk also has voicerooms that you can join, which are basically just group calls. I found that joining these was often more fun than helpful, since my Japanese is subpar, and I’d resort to speaking in English when I didn’t know how to say something in Japanese. My advice would be to avoid these until you have a solid conversational foundation and can actually benefit from speaking beyond 「よろしくお願いします」 and 「お元気ですか」.
You can also call people through HelloTalk. I’ve done this a few times, and it’s actually quite fun! The people I’ve talked to are really supportive and kind, and even though we can barely communicate with each other, we were still able to share book recommendations and song recommendations, and talk about basic things.
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| I desperately need sleep. |
Review
HelloTalk is a useful app, but the value it has depends on what you make of it. If you want to talk to people in a language you’re learning, then of course it’s useful; that’s what the app is designed for. If all you know is 「この傘は赤いです」then the app doesn’t have much value, and studying until a higher level of fluency would be a better use of time.
Life Update!
These are just a few thoughts I’ve had. I recently searched up what “bedtime procrastination” is, and why does the description sound like it was tailored for me? There are literally days where I can go to sleep at 10pm, yet the actual time I fall asleep is around 12am. There are days where I tell myself “I should go to sleep” but not want to. It usually feels like I can function well on the sleep I’m getting, but I’ll find myself struggling to stay awake during AP Lit or AP Stats, or workshops and Prime Times when I was at HCSSiM. I need to sleep earlier.
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