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Speakly

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ElmerRamone
United States of America

Speakly

Post by ElmerRamone »

I just posted a query about Rocket Languages for Spanish, and in my search for life post-Duo, I also looked at Speakly. I tried the 'short free trial. I'm pretty bummed. I took the placement test and got fed up. More than once the sentence to translate was written in the simple preterite, but wouldn't accept the same as an answer.
Example: 'did you speak with them? only accepted 'has hablado con ellos?', not 'hablaste'. What???
There was no ability to accept alternate correct answers and no explanation was given for this choice, even in the lesson. There was only one correct answer for every question, heaven forbid you know another one and try to use it.
And the voices are very robotic.
Why is Speakly getting such rave reviews on You Tube.? I don't get it.
Do any of you have any thoughts on this?

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Speakly

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

I was in contact on the support chat last year.
Wow, that's a very usable contact method.
They directly answered me some questions and got the system working again shortly after being in contact with their admins internally.

Gives us direct feedback.
Duolingo could learn from this.

For the French text and listening examples for the three beginner I-III chapters 1-3 for each course (they split them by three) I noticed they heavily make use of more advanced grammar and verb tense concepts which I haven't learned on the Busuu A1 French course.
Imperfect comes much later in the A2 course, same for direct/indirect objects and other stuff.

Therefore I don't think that one year French pre-knowledge is enough for me without more formal grammar exposure to make use of Speakly that early on.

With Portuguese I had the chance to at least run through the whole shorter Duolingo PT course (69 skills, 406 lessons) within my first year in 2017 so I knew the 2+ futures, several past tenses and the four Subjunctive forms.

Placement tests:
I have only tried the Android app and initial test for French, not the trial and no real lessons.
Got placed a few times in French beginner III, chapter (2 or) 3 of 3.
Last time I managed to place at Intermediate I chapter 3 as an exception; but the beginner placement looks more accurate.
In the Speakly test I often either A) have to guess the answers or B) can't understand yet the full sentence meaning and C) all shown vocabulary or D) wouldn't be able to construct the shown sentence and puzzle all parts together (recalling) on my own.

But as I said, the early beginner examples contain the Imperfect which I can't answer correctly.
So I probably would start with Beginner I - chapter 1, totally from scratch, not to skip by accident over any useful dialogue practices.

I already found that the Busuu French placement test is not so easy either and always seems to put me way down from the last finished A2 37 lessons (it somewhere starts at A1 lesson 50 or maybe 30 if you gave too many wrong answers).
There is a min and max threshold for important language concepts/words and it never can't find the right mid position where I really stand.

Q: How were you placed?
How did you find the Speakly placement test with your two years exposed Duo CEFR knowledge?

Maybe it would also work out by reading the Duolingo French Web Tips & Notes (contributor tree3, German FR notes) or consulting my other Dr. French grammar university and Fastlingo Android apps to check examples, grammar concepts verb tenses,...more dynamic from case to case.
Maybe I could wade through Beginner I chapter 1 that way amd get around (if difficulty is really that high like in shown chapter examples).

My very first impression for French was that I better start and complete the slightly shorter Duolingo De->Fr course or learn missing grammar elsewhere.

With Busuu I'm stuck again at A2 lesson 39 (speaking/writing) and next lessons are all locked on the free account.
I learned a lot, but with my speaking (repeating aloud) focus a lot is still on the weaker side including single words.

Doesn't make it any better to see direct/indirect object usage, y and en constructs and imperfect too soon.

But to be honest, the LingoLegend game isn't doing it much different exposing me too early to unknown concepts I have not learned before so I'll need to find a new learning approach.
For Spanish another game Langlandia exists.
Maybe more usable for a beginner (haven't installed or tried it)?
Is there upper-intermediate content?

..(...)..

You know, your Spanish CEFR course from English is ultra-long.
A beginner can't quickly grasp most grammar aspects with it.
But you've written already that you're finished with it (golden owl, L5 + further L6 Legendary), twice, within the last two years.

Did you have any previous experience with Spanish as you completed 19 skills on the start, so you maybe have tested out a bit?

For a true Romance beginner (not you):
Duolingo alone might take you 2.9-3.88 years and longer and that previous calculation was only some simple math for finishing L0->L1 crown sessions (+ L1 reviews), not forced snake repetitions, based on my own Portuguese progress (pre-crown era).
A L1-L3 tree might be realistic too as I had re-strengthened my PT tree for the first 40-60 to max 70-75% tree half in the pre-crown area and that tree was later migrated and several skills were converted for L2, only a few are on L3.
But then you need to do much more lessons than only 1-2 L0 crown lessons per day + on top higher crowns lessons / snake repetitions.

I'm pleasently surprised that you have reached 125k XP and finished the whole Spanish course (268 skills, over 1193 L0 lessons) so soon.

So I'm curious:
How is the example material what you see on Speakly?
Is it easy for you to understand?
Can you recognize all grammar concepts and remember verb tenses what you've previously learned on Duolingo more implicitly?

Do you feel ready without formal teaching?

TL;DR:
My first impression of the Speakly example content is that you can't be a true (French) beginner, not to start from scratch.
Their rating of their own "beginner" grammar and verb constructs seem to require that you actually self-study a language before for 1.5-3.8 years to know most of the fundamentals?!
One year is NOT enough with French as I didn't use Duolingo, not for me!
The Speakly French placement test is quite challenging for me.

..(...)..

Mondly (currently focuses more on word banks tapping) now offers a report button to accept new synonyms and alternative answers for the feature.
But it surely will be difficult to find another resource which accepts thousands of possible solutions for each sentence, like Duolingo could theoretically do it (and often does not as course maintainers can hardly catch up with constant new user reports).

Neither Memrise nor Mondly accepted all my answers when I'm free typing.
Lingvist (based on cloze-deletions) also had some problems end of 2017 for English and not accepting several synonyms.
Can't say for sure how many Spanish words it had rejected from me during my 11 day challenge where I "learned" 1000 words; I always tried to guess from Brazilian Portuguese first.

Will edit this comment for more corrections and layout improvements.

Last edited by Thomas.Heiss on Mon Jan 30, 2023 5:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

ElmerRamone
United States of America

Re: Speakly

Post by ElmerRamone »

Hi, Thomas, thanks for such a thorough answer. Speakly placed me @ intermediate I. Don't know how accurate that is, since I made errors choosing words they wouldn't accept. The lessons I've tried since posting are still frustrating me. So rigid in what they accept. For 'no problem', instead of 'no hay problema', which is what I wrote, they only accepted 'claro'. Otherwise, I could understand the material quite well. But I can't stand the narrow teaching choices. So I'm done.
As far as my Duo experience and progress, I had no previous Spanish experience other than one quarter in college a few hundred years ago, which fell out of my brain long ago. So I was a beginner when I started. I just went at it like gangbusters, spending 1-2 hours a day, sometimes more. Interesting to hear your experiences with other platforms. Very helpful.

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Speakly

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

Is the Speakly audio TTS or recordings from native speakers?

Can't help, but Busuu or Mondly somehow sound more crystal clear and high quality in general?!?

There doesn't seem to be any rhythmical flow when a French sentence is quickly spoken.

Overall I liked the Lingvist Spanish audio in (end of) 2017, but I think it's TTS too.
Was much better than the (old) Duolingo Spanish audio.
Newer German cartoon Ai voices sometimes can sound annoying, even to me as a native German speaker.
As I said, I can't listen to many of the English comic voices either.

Bluebirds (Pronunciator LLC) specifically mentions it that Premium offers HD audio, but so far I have only used the free daily - audio lesson - topics (three difficulty levels) so it's the lower quality audio which IMHO isn't that bad as it is spoken by natives.
But it's not so cheap.
Don't have a library for Pimsleur/Mango/Pronunciator.

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

ElmerRamone
United States of America

Re: Speakly

Post by ElmerRamone »

It sounded like TTS on Speakly, but I gather some of the more advanced levels use native speakers? Can't vouch for that.

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Speakly

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

I've found Speakly on StackSocial for $69.99 (LIFETIME): https://stacksocial.com/sales/speakly-l ... -languages

Their website only shows the 6 (49.98€) and 12 (69.96€) - all languages - subscriptions: https://speakly.me/pricing
1 (10.99€) or 3 months (27.00€) subscriptions only include one language.

The Android app "Upgrade to Premium" button from the top left menu link shows:

  • LIFETIME: 99.99€
  • Annual: 47.99€
  • Monthly: 9.99€

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

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