One thing that doesn't appear obvious to me is the level of proficiency required (if any) to get started. I suppose that could be an expectation to be set by the community, but is it feasible for someone to make Verbling their first stop on the way to learning a new language?
Jake from Verbling here. So far, most of our users are at the intermediate to advanced level, though we've got a bunch of beginners as well.
For beginners, we've built beginners conversation topics to provide some initial Spanish context to get you started. Click the "Beginner" button once you've got a native speaker on the other end.
My co-founder Mikael actually knew zero Spanish before the summer but just started using Verbling to learn (and get feedback). He's now very conversant, at the stage where I can hear him use phrases that real Spanish speakers would use in everyday life, which is often very different from what they put in textbooks.
Yep, there's not really a good explanation of what beginner/intermediate/advanced means. Also it seems interactions are rated--- meaning what? Ability of speaker in said language? Interestingness of speaker? Whether they are normal?
Jake from Verbling here. Beginner/intermediate/advanced refer to the different levels of conversation topics available to users.
You can click through all of them while you're in a conversation, so you're never "stuck" in any of the categories. Specifically, at the beginner level, you're exposed to mostly the present tense and beginner's vocab. At the advanced level, you'll see some conditional tense and more advanced vocabulary, for example re. politics, culture, technology.
Re. ratings: We simply ask you, "How was your conversation?" Based on whether you superlike/like/dislike, we can pair you up with that same native speaker more often, at the same rate, or never again.
