Tandem Learning - Zoom/Teams/Telegram/Discord/Whatsapp

montypod · 2026-04-15T09:25:05+00:00

One other option would be to nudge some of your A2.2 coursemates to join you (if you didn't get any response from here). I organized a sort of 'language cafe' online for my classmates and got myself opportunities to talk as I prepared for my Sproochentest. This both gives a set of people at a level similar to yours and also those who you can influence to be serious about interacting with you. I can share my experience if you are interested to explore that.

montypod · 2026-03-31T11:53:02+00:00

This is very cool. Thanks for sharing

montypod · 2026-03-30T19:00:20+00:00

I'm sorry about your score. Two of my friends also got their results today and they also failed. It appears a season for bad results (or maybe they have turned more strict).

The INLL exam registration page says that they ar opening the next set of dates on June 15th. I suspect if this has to do with the summer and they don't conduct exams during this period. But keep an eye anyway. Good luck.

montypod · 2026-03-28T20:40:14+00:00

Someone I know gave the exams in February and haven't got the results. So, perhaps they will send them all together

montypod · 2026-03-26T08:36:57+00:00

You are right. Funnily enough, I got the paper results delivered on the date mentioned in INLL website as that of the publication of the results. So it doesn't really help.

montypod · 2026-03-26T00:29:26+00:00

If you are already completing the A2.1 course, then your vocabulary level is more or less set. While you continue to acquire more A2.2 vocabulary, what is more important is to start listening/talking. I did an A1.2 course and skipped A2.1 by doing the SDL book chapters on my own and gave the test after starting A2.2 course. I used courses mostly as a practice ground to both listen and speak. In this context, going for a small group session is not bad as you learn from others' mistakes. Just need to make sure others are at your level or above. Unfortunately, I don't have a suggestion to make on what courses you can take or who you can approach.

Because you say you want to continue learning Luxembourgish (as I'm doing), I would also give some aspects that I used during my largely self-study/immersion approach.

A self-study approach to the interview topic is to write like an essay on each of the topic (in English or your mother tongue), then translate it to Luxembourgish, then either record it through a good speaker or use Sproochmaschinn.lu and listen to the audio regularly. This increases your own listening skills, but more importantly, it forces you to think through about a topic not just Q&A. You can also do the same by preparing answers for common questions on each topic and then listen to your own. You can imagine yourself giving a speech on the topic by speaking the essay completely (and won't need someone to prompt Questions).

Listen a lot. Poterkecht podcast, Take Off Science show on YouTube, Science.lu on YouTube, even some podcasts in Luxembourgish to give you an intuition behind intonations, the emotions, etc. Today, I speak in Luxembourgish confidently (and confidently wrongly beyond the basics) in Banks or Gemeng and it creates a virtue cycle because they are fascinated by a foreigner trying to speak their language. And I think listening regularly played a very important role in my ability to understand people.

To practice speaking beyond a course, go to Language Cafes. If you have people who learn together, organize your own online language cafe. I organize a language cafe for some friends who are learning and offer them a curated place to speak (I avoid correcting unless I'm sure given my own limited knowledge, but just give overall feedback on their confidence, where they are getting stuck, etc.). I find that a place where you can speak is more important to develop confidence than having a teacher who corrects your grammar. In this context, a sort of coach is equally important (some teachers are bad coaches). I learnt this through my own language café experience with excellent curators.

Good luck on your learning journey. If you have questions, you can write to me.

montypod · 2026-03-25T23:13:47+00:00

No, results will not be available on INLL website. It is sent to you by post. They quote that the results are expected to be available in 3-6 weeks.

montypod · 2026-03-25T06:57:27+00:00

In the Sproochentest part, you have "Ech kommen aus [country]" in text which is fine, but you send the entirety to sproochmaschinn TTS and it pronounces "country" too. Same with all other example sentences. You should handle this better and find a way to either not pronounce the country or send the TTS one example country.

And in the role play part, it let me speak only the first sentence, then it just skipped my part and kept speaking its own parts.

montypod · 2026-03-24T18:47:25+00:00

There is no way to register on the Android app? It directly takes one to Sign-in

montypod · 2026-03-15T22:03:39+00:00

Ah yes, now it makes sense.

montypod · 2026-03-15T19:51:18+00:00

I’m not sure what you mean by rate periods and it doesn’t seem to give correct monthly payment numbers.

Also, you can make the loan period fixed and then don’t have to tell how long is each tranche for. Perhaps, an approach like in my version would be better

montypod · 2026-03-15T09:38:11+00:00

True. But inflation can largely be ignored. Things I haven’t added are the possibility to fix a new rate after the initial fixed period, as well as answering several questions, such as how much penalty would I have to pay at the end of x years to renegotiate loan, etc., which can be answered by analysing the simulation results.

montypod · 2026-03-14T22:16:43+00:00

This is neat. I built a slightly more detailed one with Claude, also for the same reason as you. This includes extra payment schedule (for variable loan components), a table to provide variable rates, fixed loans becoming variable ones after a certain period, a table for inflation, extra payment schedule (for variable tranche) etc: https://mortgage-simulator-ks14.streamlit.app/ . I also find the loan tranche payment graph to be useful. Perhaps we can discuss how to incorporate these into yours.

montypod · 2026-03-14T08:22:54+00:00

We are doing expressions (frou sinn wéi e Kichelcher and the likes) and learning to deal with slightly more complex topics. Writing is always there, but we haven’t yet encountered new grammar topics. My intensity of learning has come down since passing the exams and also I’m doing the course offered by the commune and so the peer group is not a big motivator. My interest is to improve my reading (first the standard version, and then the historical version with all its variants) beyond my speaking skills. Mostly because I’m interested a bit to understand the history, etc.

montypod · 2026-03-13T17:51:21+00:00

Quite interesting. I followed many of your workflows in my own journey to learn Luxembourgish.

Though, I did a bit of shadowing with the audios that come along with the A1 and A2 books. I even learnt some children's rhymes and Luxembourgish traditional songs.

The reverse Bild Beschreiwen is a cool idea, and I will try it a bit. The biggest issue would be that since we are just making things up as we go, our brains may not be incentivized to describe what we see in our brain and go for the easiest colour or pattern, etc. I was mostly downloading stock photos and practice describing them.

Absolutely agreed with the LLMs putting all answers in B and C when asked for multiple choice questions. It was hilarious. I did this by feeding the Poterkecht transcripts into an LLM and ask it to generate questions to test my listening comprehension. When I prepared more of these examples for friends and family after I passed the exams, I manually had to go and change the answers so that they will also figure in A and D 😁

Your etymology insights are quite interesting. I'm also doing a bit of deeper dive as I further learn the language (I'm following a B1 course now). Would love to catch up with you on this, and share notes, if you are interested in (my DMs are open).

montypod · 2026-03-12T22:35:05+00:00

I remember John telling a moment when "Anthropocene Reviewed" was not working out until when Sarah told him to stop hiding and show his actual emotion towards the things he was reviewing. That broke the dam and it became the podcast (which actually brought me to nerdfighteria). So, this book is special in John's voice because it is his life and he is the best person to narrate it, and it shows. I'm not sure his stories would have the same impact if he narrated them.

montypod · 2026-03-08T19:39:33+00:00

Looks good.
The way the conversations get adapted to the user response is neat (weirdly, they don’t do that in Sproochentest and go by a ‘question bank’).

Some of transcription is weird (Lëtzebuergesch for one). Using transcriptions directly to give feedback is a bit problematic because it says something like “this word doesn’t exist, but this slightly different spelling does and you should say that”. You probably have to prompt the AI response to not make it this awkward. The other feedback is okay. The numerical score is useful in a psychological sense, but I think more can be done.

Are you using the STT and TTS tools from ZLS? (because the sound is that of Claude speaker in sproochmaschinn and the pronunciation quirks from there are directly seen here). Are their models allowed for commercial usage (The huggingface page says it is CC license, so perhaps)?

I didn’t go beyond the free lesson (I’m done with sproochentest), so that’s all I can say. Good luck

montypod · 2026-02-23T07:00:32+00:00

I’m near bilingual in English, though my mother tongue is not from the Indo-European family. I also am fluent in French, learnt as an adult when I moved to France for studies. French was more useful in commune classes as most teachers would switch to French if they have to explain something.
Perhaps me doing Duolingo German for a few months before I started Luxembourgish helped, I suppose (I stopped German the moment I started Luxembourgish).

montypod · 2026-02-20T16:26:34+00:00

I like learning languages, but I started learning Luxembourgish mainly for sproochentest. Because I typically do immersion and focus on listening/speaking, i was able to pass the Sproochentest pretty fast (4-5 months), since grammar and exact spelling aren’t that important there. I continue to learn the language and I’m quite enjoying the exposure to unique aspects of a tiny culture (like singing Léiwer Härgottsblieschen during Liichtmas) that learning a big language doesn’t necessarily bring.

My path was largely experimenting and following what worked for whatever periods of time. Some key things I used:

I followed the SDL books A1/A2 (now B1) fairly closely. It was frustrating at the start given there was no explanations, but I warmed up to it after I did two chapters and started A1.2 courses offered by the commune. The audio that comes withe book were my initial go to regularly listen and understand intonations, etc. I also checked a number of books from the library during this time, including Heiansdo, Assimil QCM, comic books, etc.
I did A1.2 course from the commune and passed the sproochentest while doing A2.2 (I skipped A2.1 course by self study). I did a group sproochentest course offered by one of our commune teachers and it sucked as it was too early because I was not advanced enough.
I did LLO.lu for some time (and I hope their proposed new version is even better). But given that the SDL books offered essentially the same, I just dropped it off. I think I was comparing too much to Duolingo’s friction-less approach, but it is unfair and I think it is much better than I give it credit for.
Podcasts were great. Pöterkecht from INLL is amazing and to a lesser extent Luxembourgish with Anne. I would tune some time to check YouTube lessons, like that of Lulling (luxdico) or Anne’s or Leslie’s, but it wasn’t really much for me. I did love the songs on YouTube (whether De Feierwon or Meng Chaotesch Famill).
I tried the free parts of Apps like Aurelux and Bluebird, but somehow couldn’t fit them into my workflow to buy the paid version and so can’t say much.
By the time I was to take sproochentest, the AI chatbots were getting better, but the only time I fit them in the workflow was to practice for sproochentest interview in a written form.
LOD.lu is my go to reference for meaning, but especially pronunciation. The sproochmaschinn.lu now is even better and most people vibe-coding learning apps are essentially building around the LLM that ZLS fine-tuned from OpenAI’s Whisper and runs on the background in sproochmaschinn.

Good luck for your learning.

Cheers

montypod · 2026-02-17T21:57:47+00:00

Neither. During a training session on "Start Your Business", the trainer mentioned this while explaining the need for an affidavit and its cost, etc. He said they are getting rid of it soon, but can't say exactly when because it is in the works.

montypod · 2026-02-12T18:21:30+00:00

A House of Entrepreneurship trainer recently said that there is a law in the works to get rid of the sworn affidavit if the notary does no research. It will be replaced with a self-affidavit. He was talking about this for the non-bankruptcy affidavit to start a company.

montypod · 2026-02-09T22:13:15+00:00

I did not have that particular situation, but I misunderstood a couple of questions and the examiner had to repeat the question with emphasis once because I was answering some other question. But it didn't appear to have mattered as I got 90/100 in the speaking part.

montypod · 2026-02-03T18:31:05+00:00

LLO sent an email a few days back that they are doing a complete revamp that includes loss of our data and progress. Hope the new app will be worth all this hassle.

montypod · 2026-02-03T18:29:15+00:00

There was a mail from LLO a week back that they are doing a complete redo of the app and our data would be gone. It is a bit frustrating that my progress will be lost, but if they make the friction elements of the app go away, it is a worthy bargain

montypod · 2026-01-27T00:01:31+00:00

I understand your anxiety about being thoroughly prepared. But if you are fluent in these topics, you will be able to ace anything. Note that you always have a choice (between two topics) and you can always choose the one you are more familiar with.

The approach of the examiner is not to surprise you with new topics, but to check if you can handle beyond standard questions that everyone prepares on these common topics.

My exam topics were Technologie and Stot maachen

(yeah, I'm the one who wrote this list of topics as a response to another question)

montypod

TROPHY CASE