#falou

Using my phone more responsibly

For this one, I ended up deleting Instagram from my phone after having set a time limit on both the Insta app then on my phone after finding it in the Settings. I also got rid of Google (replaced with Ecosia, so I can plant trees with every search), Chat GPT, Reddit, Pinterest, and Facebook.

This allowed me to stop my doom scrolling without stopping cold-turkey and now I play around on my other apps that I've been neglecting: Cosmos, Falou, Kinnu, YouTube (trying to avoid the Shorts), and Tumblr. I've also been playing my games again like Sky: Children of the Light, Time Princess, and Palia and Legend of Zelda on my Switch.

It's been great trying to use my phone more broadly and being able to socialize and learn on more niche apps that don't have easy Dopamine access!

Using what single-use products I already have

Like I mentioned above, I have been using my Switch again to help curb boredom. I had it for years along with some of my favorite games. It's good to play games to avoid instant gratification and even more so if you have to solve puzzles or grind to advance.

I do have an Instax Mini that I bought used years ago and have grabbed a few boxes of film, but I'm waiting to use those till my upcoming trips~

I've also stocked up on some small spiral notebooks the last time I was on my university campus, adding to my little collection of notebooks and journals. I stopped worrying about "ruining" my pretty notebooks and just started using them for anything I could think of: Writing little notes of things I don't want to forget, budgeting, business plans, story ideas, trip planning, and language notes.

Learning new things

Using apps and sites like Kinnu, Falou, YouTube, and Khan Academy, I have been able to reset my brain from my overuse of Chat GPT. I find that Kinnu is a great place to start if you're wanting to learn things like philosophy, economics, history, life/professional skills, mental wellbeing, and way more in smaller and more digestible portions. It's great for weaning off of Instagram Reels or TikTok if you're wanting to get a lot in a short time.

Falou has been fun for my language learning. I have an upcoming trip to Japan next month, then a study abroad in Italy in January and I've been using Falou to learn useful phrases. It has you repeat phrases or responses which is nice for nailing pronunciation.

Starting/restarting hobbies that I've been wanting to do can also give you the dopamine you're looking for, especially when I manage to actually finish a project. I've got so much supplies from past purchases or from my mom's craft collection that I haven't needed to buy anything new. I picked up sketching! I'm not particularly good, but I'm the only one who will see my whole art book, so who cares?

Going out more

I will say, I did get the Disney Key annual pass. It was an impulse buy that my friend convinced me to get (she didn't need to try v hard tbh). But as I am a SoCal resident, I can pay monthly instead of all at once, so it feeeeels a little nicer. After going 6 times, it basically pays for itself, so I'm using girl math on this one. It gets me some outside time and it's fun to hang out with my friend in a fun place!

There's also nice malls near me where I can stroll around and manifest my future where I am rich and famous and can shop at places like those while sipping a lil boba.

My friend invited me to try out airsoft for the first time and I am so glad I went! I got shot hella times, sweat buckets, and was sore for days, but I did it and I was fairly good! I tossed myself out there since my brightly-colored self was a target anyway and I ended up getting a lot of people before they got me~

I was going to split this into a pros/cons list, but honestly, I couldn't think of any pros. So here are the issues I have with it, broken down.

1. The Entire Learning Method

It is solely speech-based and takes points off for missed tones and makes you redo it over and over until you get 100% accuracy on each sentence. At intermediate level, it is totally normal to miss 1-2 tones per sentence, and even more at beginner level. Also, sometimes it doesn't recognize tones well and will count off for the simplest words like 了，好， etc. and so it tells you to review the easiest words in the sentence, while ignoring the new vocab.

Basically this is each "course":

"Conversation" - a bot talks to you and you respond, mimicking what you hear with reading both characters & pinyin. You must achieve 100% accuracy on all of it to move on to the next sentence.

"Writing" - you listen and build the sentence fill-in-the-blank style (or from Chinese keyboard with typing). You must achieve 100% accuracy on each one before moving on to the next sentence.

"Challenge" - you must verbally say what you hear from memory and you have one try before losing hearts (you have plenty of hearts to finish, but you must achieve a perfect score to get gold). If you mess up, it gives you the pinyin, and if you mess up again it gives you the characters too.

For beginner sentences like "I like tea" this might be fine. But once you you get into the "intermediate" section, sometimes you would have to say 2-3 sentences without a break. Especially with the challenge section, this is a near-impossible task even in one's native language unless you have genius-level working memory and attention.

Also, you can click on the words in your dialogue to see definitions, however you can't do that with the other person's dialogue. So if the person you're talking to uses a new word and you can't tell what the pinyin is?? You're shit outta luck.

2. There is no true intermediate.

At the beginning, it asks you you're level. You can chose nothing, understanding basic sentences, understanding basic conversation, and being comfortable speaking. I chose "basic conversation" and it started me with HSK5 level vocab, with 4+ new words per sentence. This was obviously frustrating. I had to delete the app and re-download it to choose "understand sentences" but then it was HSK 1-2 and so simple like "what do you like to eat?"

I even went to the highest level right before "intermediate" started, and it was painfully easy. It literally jumps from "would you like brown shoes?" (hardest beginner level) to "you have to press the blue button on the screen in order to download the regulatory file into the database" (first intermediate level).

That's absolutely preposterous.

3. There is no way to review words from the lessons

They do have a vocab section, however it is simply flashcards with audio and they only teach you 4 words per section. Also, I could not find any HSK5 level words in the vocabulary section that corresponded with the level that I struggled with that was supposedly intermediate. The vocab sets seem completely separate from the lessons.

At the end of each lesson, it tells you which words you struggled the most with (which, again, might not be any new vocab at all and for me was often the easiest words like 好) but then... there is no way to review these words in the app? Especially if you're paying money, they should be able to make personalized flashcards for you with new words per level. Really, each level should have a set of vocab to learn before you go in trying to use them in conversation. But no, the only way to review the vocab is to do the lesson over again.

4. The goal isn't functionality, it's to perfectly mimic a bot

This is the main reason I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The goal is to sound exactly like the bot does. This means perfect tones, no tone reductions/neutral tones, and awkward sentences structures. Using this app will not make you fluent in any way that's functional, in my opinion. It might be an okay supplement to practice speaking if you are already familiar with pinyin and tones well enough that you can tell if the bot is wrong. Because sometimes pronunciation and tones were wrong.

Functionally, there is nothing wrong with missing 1-2 tones in a long sentence, especially for beginner/intermediate learners. Functionally, it is not realistic for most learners to build or produce sentences that have 4+ HSK5 level words in them without first breaking down those new words. Functionally, a conversation where you are pretending to be a retail worker or gas station employee isn't really relevant—most learners are not learning the language so they can go work at a Chinese gas station. There are way more functional conversations that could include vocab about cars and clothing.