Who is Talk to Tala?

Hi, I'm Dan.

I'm a software engineer and entrepreneur working on small projects that I would want to use myself. I've been slowly learning Spanish for the last couple years, mostly using tools like Duolingo that rely on repetition and memorization.

While the gamification of these apps was great at getting me to use them frequently, I found I wasn't actually improving much. I think this is for two main reasons:

• I wasn't practicing thinking. These apps assume that frequent use is the same as learning, but I found I could get through most lessons without even thinking about what the words mean. Even worse, since I never had to decide what to say, I was really just practicing translating text, not making conversation.
• I wasn't practicing speaking. Though Duolingo and other apps do give me speaking exercises, they usually just make me repeat after a recording. When I've tried to speak to someone in person, I've found my brain hasn't been trained to speak without a prompter, and I freeze up completely.

It's with these goals in mind that I started Talk to Tala. I wanted a tool that would force me to think and speak, no matter how uncomfortable that might make me. Enter TALA (from the Swedish for TALK). Tala is designed to get you thinking and speaking in your target language as quickly as possible, with none of the embarrassment that comes from making mistakes in front of a human tutor. With a suite of tools for customization, Tala facilitates conversation for beginners and experts alike, helping you learn faster than ever.

Since Talk to Tala is a passion project for me, I'm also its biggest user. I'm constantly tweaking the model and adding new features to make it more useful for me, and I hope you find it useful too. Let me know what you think at support@talktotala.com.

Thanks for reading!

- Dan Waters