Hi, I'm Mikaela.

Let me share a personal story about language learning and cultural heritage. Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, I was encouraged only to learn and speak English despite having multiple heritage languages, Spanish being one of them. All of my grandparents, including my grandma pictured, are fluent in Spanish, but being multilingual in my family ended with that generation.

One reason for this is that learning any language other than English was highly discouraged in the state of Texas, where it was illegal to speak languages other than English in schools and other public spaces until 1973.

Many people in my family vividly remember this period, so they actively discouraged me and my siblings from ever learning to protect us.

However, as I grew older, I wanted to connect more with my culture and older people in my family, so I actively tried to teach myself.

Undeterred by the initial challenges, I turned to popular language-learning apps like Duolingo and Rosetta Stone. However, I soon realized that these platforms didn't provide the immersive practice I needed to feel confident in holding a conversation in Spanish.

Moving to another country to immerse myself in the language crossed my mind, but it didn’t feel realistic for my life. My journey for effective language-learning tools and a desire for immersion led me to the realm of AI language-learning applications. Through research, I discovered a new wave of language-learning applications that utilize generative AI to create technologies tailored to each user's unique needs.

Curious about how this might help someone learn to speak another language, I started researching Generative AI chatbots to learn more about this technology and how a potential user might interact with and benefit from it.

If you want to learn more about that research or try out the game first, select from the buttons below.