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ChatGPT-Powered Language Learning Chatbot

Hi all! My name is Alex and I am excited to share the project I have been working on: https://LanguageMate.io I am aiming to turn LanguageMate into the world’s best language learning chatbot to enable you to have anxiety-free conversations with a chatbot in your target language and The benefit to you is that you now have the daily opportunity, wherever you are, to practise speaking, writing, reading, and listening in your target language. And practising your target language frequently is crucial to progress and grow your active vocabulary It is completely free to make an initial account! That account will allow you to start your first conversations to practise one of the 19 languages on offer The website currently guides you through different common real-world scenarios so you learn relevant vocabulary. It also provides a hint of progress at this early stage as to not overwhelm new users I would be interested to hear your feedback as I have been busy recently speaking to other users who have been suggesting great ideas for enhancements! Technically, I use ChatGPT’s new API to provide the other side of the conversations and some other requests to Davinci and Curie for other areas such as translations, improvements, etc I have also added some gamification elements so far to the website. I aim to be careful with this to not make it spammy but other language apps, namely Duolingo, have used these elements successfully to encourage users back to keep them progressing I look forward to hearing your thoughts

troydavis 4y ago
I tried to check it out, but it wanted me to create an account just to try it. I had basically the same reaction as I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35012760#35012890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35012760#35012890 (top comment). As long as your product is decent (and even more if your product is good or great!), this conversion funnel: discover product -> try product -> sign up … will generally be more successful than this funnel (which is what it has now): discover product -> sign up -> try product In a sense, it seems like you realized that and wrote the button text accordingly ("Get started," "Try now for free"). It's just that the buttons don't actually let me get started or try it, they go to a sign up form. At a minimum, let visitors try it without an account. In your case, this funnel might be even stronger: discover product -> try product -> let user save & return to conversation by signing up The distinction is subtle, but important. Done this way, you're not asking someone to create an account just because. Rather, you're giving them a clear benefit that an account makes possible: they can save and return to the conversation they just conducted as an anonymous visitor. You might even be able to make the offer more compelling, like offering to email one sentence a day continuing on the conversation/scenario they started. Good luck!
- aindiedeveloper 4y ago
  Thank you for taking the time out of your day to send this! I really like the idea and is something I guess I just hadn't thought of yet. But you are right, I get a lot of traffic but naturally not everyone signs up for an account which is a waste really Whereas the product can sell itself and convince people to sign up for an account as they start enjoying and using it I will try and implement something like this today/this week and am excited. Thank you and hopefully if you made an account you can follow the journey! ;)
- aindiedeveloper 4y ago
  I implemented this yesterday using Firebase's anonymous authentication. Thank you for the tip!
  - troydavis 4y ago
    Nicely done! You're very welcome. I just tried it and it worked great. In case it helps - I'm not sure that I would have noticed the "Continue as guest" button if I hadn't been coming from a thread where we just discussed it. Because of the button's placement and style, I would have assumed it was a third account type and skimmed past it. The app worked well! I did encounter one small issue. I picked Spanish for the language, no scenario, and it dropped me into the chat. I opened with: > ¡hola! ¿cuál es tu desayuno favorito? It responded by thanking me for answering its question (even though my line above was the first line in the transcript - it didn't ask a question) and asked me again what language I was learning (even though the Spanish flag is showing): > ¡Hola! Me alegra que hayas respondido mi pregunta. ¿Qué idioma estás aprendiendo? For grins, I tried asking it to use simpler language ("¿Puedes usar idioma basica?"). That worked. Otherwise the only thing I noticed is that the volume/speaker icon under the robot avatar didn't seem to do anything. Not a big deal though, the text chat was good enough to experiment. In case it gives you an idea - one thing that has worked for some SaaS apps is to embed the app right in the home page. I don't know whether it would work for your case, where a visitor needs to choose a language. Maybe that could be an engaging chat opening, though - an English prompt of "What language are you learning?" and then it continues from there in whatever language they chose. This may not be worth the effort, but maybe it'll inspire an idea :) Finally, now that this is usable by the public, you might want to re-submit it as a "Show HN": https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/show . It'll get more visibility. Basically, on the HN submit form, fill out all 3 fields: a title like "Show HN: Learn a language by chatting with ChatGPT" , your link, and the comment you pasted as the body. Good luck!

troydavis 4y ago

I tried to check it out, but it wanted me to create an account just to try it. I had basically the same reaction as I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35012760#35012890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35012760#35012890 (top comment). As long as your product is decent (and even more if your product is good or great!), this conversion funnel: discover product -> try product -> sign up … will generally be more successful than this funnel (which is what it has now): discover product -> sign up -> try product In a sense, it seems like you realized that and wrote the button text accordingly ("Get started," "Try now for free"). It's just that the buttons don't actually let me get started or try it, they go to a sign up form. At a minimum, let visitors try it without an account. In your case, this funnel might be even stronger: discover product -> try product -> let user save & return to conversation by signing up The distinction is subtle, but important. Done this way, you're not asking someone to create an account just because. Rather, you're giving them a clear benefit that an account makes possible: they can save and return to the conversation they just conducted as an anonymous visitor. You might even be able to make the offer more compelling, like offering to email one sentence a day continuing on the conversation/scenario they started. Good luck!

aindiedeveloper 4y ago
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to send this! I really like the idea and is something I guess I just hadn't thought of yet. But you are right, I get a lot of traffic but naturally not everyone signs up for an account which is a waste really Whereas the product can sell itself and convince people to sign up for an account as they start enjoying and using it I will try and implement something like this today/this week and am excited. Thank you and hopefully if you made an account you can follow the journey! ;)
aindiedeveloper 4y ago
I implemented this yesterday using Firebase's anonymous authentication. Thank you for the tip!
- troydavis 4y ago
  Nicely done! You're very welcome. I just tried it and it worked great. In case it helps - I'm not sure that I would have noticed the "Continue as guest" button if I hadn't been coming from a thread where we just discussed it. Because of the button's placement and style, I would have assumed it was a third account type and skimmed past it. The app worked well! I did encounter one small issue. I picked Spanish for the language, no scenario, and it dropped me into the chat. I opened with: > ¡hola! ¿cuál es tu desayuno favorito? It responded by thanking me for answering its question (even though my line above was the first line in the transcript - it didn't ask a question) and asked me again what language I was learning (even though the Spanish flag is showing): > ¡Hola! Me alegra que hayas respondido mi pregunta. ¿Qué idioma estás aprendiendo? For grins, I tried asking it to use simpler language ("¿Puedes usar idioma basica?"). That worked. Otherwise the only thing I noticed is that the volume/speaker icon under the robot avatar didn't seem to do anything. Not a big deal though, the text chat was good enough to experiment. In case it gives you an idea - one thing that has worked for some SaaS apps is to embed the app right in the home page. I don't know whether it would work for your case, where a visitor needs to choose a language. Maybe that could be an engaging chat opening, though - an English prompt of "What language are you learning?" and then it continues from there in whatever language they chose. This may not be worth the effort, but maybe it'll inspire an idea :) Finally, now that this is usable by the public, you might want to re-submit it as a "Show HN": https://news.ycombinator.com/show https://news.ycombinator.com/show . It'll get more visibility. Basically, on the HN submit form, fill out all 3 fields: a title like "Show HN: Learn a language by chatting with ChatGPT" , your link, and the comment you pasted as the body. Good luck!