I've been trying to learn my wife's language on and off for the last 10+ years. It's a small and less popular language. For instance, it's not featured in Duolingo. I can have simple conversations, especially in familiar classroom settings where the vocabulary and grammar are predictable. But I still stumble or freeze when someone asks me an unexpected question or when I struggle to find the words. This isn't a success story. It's an honest look at what I've tried, what worked, what didn't, and what I learned about language learning along the way.
I started the way most people do: with a textbook and good intentions. Old-fashioned self-study books taught me some vocabulary, grammar and reading. Accompanying audio helped me somewhat with listening practice.
I would sit at my desk, work through exercises, and hope I was doing it right. I had no idea if my pronunciation was close or if the sentences I constructed made sense. Self-study requires massive self-motivation and observational skills. I could ask my wife and friends sometimes, but not all the time and not whenever in doubt about something.
When language apps became popular, I jumped in. I tried Mondly and similar platforms with bite-sized lessons you click through at your own pace. The convenience was incredible. I could practice vocabulary during my commute, before bed, or while waiting in line. The gamification kept me engaged for a while. Progress felt tangible when you could see streaks and completed lessons.
After the initial excitement wore off, I realized I wasn't learning much grammar or actual listening or speaking. I could recognize words, but I couldn't form coherent sentences. And eventually, the progress felt glacially slow and not building toward actual meaningful conversations. The apps were great for vocabulary drilling. But vocabulary alone didn't make me conversational.
More recently, I tried apps with AI conversational practice like Jumpspeak. The promise was appealing: practice speaking without the pressure of talking to a real person in real time. I could practice on my own schedule. No embarrassment about mispronouncing words. The AI would generate responses, keeping the conversation going even when I stumbled.
Most of the apps rely on speech recognition, where speech is machine translated and the output is then analyzed and used in the conversation. The apps generate responses to what I said and add feedback in terms of small corrections. It's great for practicing production of language, but the apps typically don't give feedback on your pronunciation. The speech recognition may also be good at predicting the most likely word you're saying from the context of the whole sentence.
My most effective learning happened with real teachers in language classes. I practiced speaking, got immediate feedback relevant to my specific struggles, and had someone to guide me through the confusing parts. I could learn from others' mistakes or from observing, while not being on the spot myself.
The homework format and my own time constraints often made my learning less efficient. My teacher would often give a lot of homework that might require 1, 2 or even more hours. Reading texts with a lot of new vocabulary words. Grammar drills. Sentence construction. All good practice, in theory. But with a busy adult life with work responsibilities and many other things to do, I would end up doing my weekly homework in a single 1-2 hour sitting in the weekend or the night before. Getting setup and getting started felt like a huge undertaking that for some reason made it feel unfeasible to do just 10-20 minutes and leave the rest for another day.
In practice, I often ended up hurrying to get done, more focused on ticking off exercises than learning. After having looked up the fifth word in a text with many new words and time running out, I would end up copying the whole text into Google Translate. Trying to only glance over to the translated side when stuck, but ending up reading longer parts of the translated side. Or when stuck on a specific exercise hurry on with the ones I could already solve and hoping to get back later, but often not.
I've also tried 1:1 tutoring sessions through online services like Preply. I would get immediate feedback on my speaking and the tutor could tailor the lesson and focus on my needs or interests. I could book classes more or less when I wanted - off course restricted by my tutors availability.
I've tried a couple of tutors. One would create short texts in ChatGPT and send to me for reading at home and going through in our lessons. When she detected some grammar I would benefit from understanding and practicing further she would share an online document she had ready from other students. She would try to indicate what parts I should look at and what wasn't necessary.
The amount of homework was less, a bit more tailored for me, and a bit ad-hoc. In general it was shared through the chat in Preply and as such even the small texts took some time of navigating Preply and finding it in our chat thread before getting started. When the homework was less it was more feasible, but I also progressed less.
1:1 tutoring is more expensive than classes for the learner, but it is still hard for tutors to scale very tailored homework and lessons. Tutors need to have many learners throughout their week and they need to spend time in the lessons with each individually. The prep time they spend on each one individually takes away from how many learners they can actually have - and the income they can have.
Looking back over 10+ years of on-and-off attempts, I've made the most progress when I could fit language practice into daily life in small, consistent doses. I've counted in my head while in the shower to make the numbers stick. Recalling rules for gender of nouns on the bus. Conjugated verbs while running. Formulated sentences describing my day while biking home from work. These weren't formal study sessions, but short pockets of practice woven into my routine.
When learning felt like something I could do in tiny moments throughout the day, I actually did it. When it felt like a big project requiring setup and focus, I procrastinated and eventually ended up hurrying through with less learning. I'm not uniquely lazy or uncommitted. I'm just a normal person with limited time and competing priorities. If the barrier to practice is high, I won't do it consistently, no matter how motivated I feel on day one. Convenience architecture matters more than motivation.
After conducting interviews with other language learners, I discovered I'm not alone. Many people reported doing all their homework in one go, typically on the weekends or the night before class. They said the same thing I felt: they'd practice more frequently throughout the week if bite-sized sessions were more accessible.
This realization is what led to building Edumo. I wanted a service my teacher could use that would let me practice in bite-sizes throughout the week, not all in one sitting. Something as convenient as an app, but with my teacher providing the materials and guidance that she knew I needed (not just endless construction of sentence variations from a small set of words).
I then started talking to language teachers to understand how it might help them, too. They were juggling material creation, student engagement, and progress tracking across scattered tools. Many were pressed for time, a few ended up just sticking to a textbook, but most spend a lot of time on prep - and feelt they don't have the time or get paid enough for it. This is what I've set out to try and help with.
I've started by focusing on assisting material creation with AI and providing a bite-sized and mobile app format that actually makes it feasible to practice 5 minutes at a time. Without that, time gets stolen by having to log in, navigating, figuring out what exercises to do and in general just getting started. I don't intend to stop there, I want to assist more of the workflows that language teachers spend time on to allow you more time and focus on what only you can do; build rapport and accountability, understand us learners, motivate, adjust and try new approaches when stuck - and generally teach.
Ten years in, I'm still not fluent. I'm still making mistakes, still looking up words I should know by now, still mixing up verb conjugations. But I've learned something valuable although hard: consistency beats intensity. Ten minutes every day builds momentum. Two-hour marathon sessions build dread.
Building Edumo has been about solving my own problem as a learner, and then talking to teachers to make sure it solves their problems, too. It's about making bite-sized, consistent practice genuinely convenient, not just theoretically possible.
If you're a language teacher looking for ways to give your learners bite-sized, mobile-friendly practice materials, try Edumo and see how it fits into your workflow.