uTalk January Challenge

I know, I know. I have plenty to do already (today alone I’m supposed to be translating and studying Spanish and simplifying an article for tomorrow for school and presumably packing at some point) – so what am I doing making a post about a challenge in January?

Planning ahead, that’s what! 😉

So I read this post over on the EuroTalk blog when it was first put online and thought that their idea to compete against each other using the uTalk app in January seemed kind of cool, but that was about it. I think I maybe glossed over it a little – I certainly didn’t think about doing it myself. I was still sorting out my own Spanish challenge in my head, so this wasn’t that big a deal.

Fast forward to today and the link to that blog post was published on twitter again – but this time with the addition that ‘Spanish is the most popular choice so far in the uTalk challenge…’ Wait, what? So I moseyed back on over and, lo and behold, there’s a sentence that I must have missed, where it says if you email them and let them know which language you’ve chosen, they’ll send you a code to unlock the Essentials upgrade and you can join in the challenge. (The gist of the challenge is simple – don’t use the app until the 1st of January and then whoever’s first to score maximum points/whoever has the highest score come 31st January wins.)

I emailed them, I got a lovely reply and then an email with my promo code all within about half an hour. You do have to have an iPhone/iPad to join this challenge (the app isn’t available yet on android, I don’t think) – but it seems pretty cool. I did the basics for Spanish in the app today (I’ve not chosen that language for the challenge, for obvious reasons) and it looks fun; there are even games where it records you speaking which I haven’t really used before. (I turned the speaking off in duolingo because I used to use it on the bus to uni last year and no one needs to hear me mumbling German to myself.)

I have, then, two questions for you all. One, is anyone going to take up this challenge with me? I’m very intrigued to see what an app alone could teach me in a month (I’m not seriously investing in the language I’ve picked right now – I have so much else to do!) and my competitive streak is well up for the idea of a challenge like this. Two, any guesses as to which language I’ve chosen? uTalk has about 100 different languages to choose from (which does include, I think, four or five varieties of English, which is kind of awesome) – so which one do you think I picked? I’m going to post again on Friday – I’m flying home for Christmas on Saturday – and I’ll reveal it then. 🙂 Let me know what you think it might be!