Custom Chat Assignments: Conversations With Anyone
Language and culture aren't really separable, are they? The best units of your year are the ones where students walk away feeling like they actually understand something about the world the language belongs to. With v1.4.0, you can build chat assignments around any speaker you can imagine — a chef from Oaxaca, a Resistance fighter in 1944 Paris, a marine biologist working off the coast of Cádiz — and have your students hold a real conversation with them, in the target language.
Video Overview
Beyond the Generic Chatbot
The built-in LinguaBuddy characters are great for general practice — they're patient, friendly, and they keep conversations flowing. But every teacher knows that the moments when language really clicks are usually the moments when students are talking about something they actually care about. A conversation about hobbies is fine. A conversation about something genuinely interesting is the one they remember.
Custom Chat Assignments let you bring those conversations into your classroom. You describe who the speaker is, what they know, and how they talk. We handle the rest. The language practice happens inside a conversation that's actually worth having.
What This Looks Like in Real Lessons
Imagine you're teaching a Spanish or French ecology unit. Instead of another generic "let's talk about the environment" assignment, your students are speaking with a naturalist working in the cloud forests of Costa Rica. She knows the local birds, the toll deforestation is taking, what it actually feels like to work conservation at altitude. Your students aren't reciting vocabulary — they're asking real questions to someone whose whole life is shaped by the topic of the week.
Example: Ecology Unit
Spanish IV studying environmental vocab. The custom speaker is a field biologist in Monteverde. Students ask about quetzales, about how warming temperatures are pushing the cloud line higher, about whether ecotourism actually helps. The grammar and vocabulary practice is embedded in a conversation they want to be in.
Or maybe it's a French history unit. Instead of reading another textbook passage about Charles de Gaulle and answering five comprehension questions, your students get to actually push him on his views — about the Resistance, about Algeria, about what France should be in a postwar world. The same historical content lands differently when a student has to engage with it in real time.
Example: History Unit
French III studying postwar Europe. The custom speaker is de Gaulle himself, with his positions and his rhetorical style. Students who did the reading have a conversation they'll remember. Students who didn't get a polite but very revealing exchange. You learn who's actually engaging with the material.
Where Language and Culture Finally Meet
One of the most frustrating things about language teaching is the gap between students who can conjugate beautifully and students who have something to say. A perfectly correct sentence about nothing in particular doesn't move anyone — and we all want our students to have something to actually say in this language.
Custom Chat Assignments close that gap by making cultural knowledge the prerequisite for a good conversation. A student who knows nothing about Diego Rivera will struggle to talk to him — not because their Spanish is weak, but because they have nothing to bring to the conversation. Suddenly, learning about the murals matters. The content of your course becomes the thing that unlocks the language, instead of an afterthought.
Culture as the point, not the garnish
This is the difference between a language class that mentions culture and one that treats it like the actual subject. The language becomes the way in; the conversation becomes the reason.
You Stay in Full Control
Setting one up is as simple as you'd want it to be. You give the speaker a name, write a quick description of who they are and what they know, pick an avatar, and you're done. From there, everything else works exactly the same as a normal chat assignment — the same scenario field, the same vocabulary and grammar targets, the same exchange count, the same due date. The only thing that changes is who your students are talking to.
Graded the Same Way
Custom chats are evaluated exactly like standard chats — the same engagement score, the same skill points across vocabulary, grammar, fluidity, and cultural awareness, the same specific feedback on strengths and growth areas. You still see annotated transcripts with errors and corrections highlighted in context. The character is custom; the grading is consistent.