🗣 Speechling: Speak Languages Better

Hello everyone! Welcome to the continuation of my blog series. Today's topic is related to "practicing speaking a foreign language". With the advances in internet technology and the emerging concept of "fragmented learning", online education has overcome some of the limitations and challenges of the past, not only helping teachers to plan their classes better, but also helping students to learn foreign languages on their own. Here, I will introduce a free website which can help you learn a foreign language in a variety of ways. Are you ready? Follow me below and have a look!

📍Brief introduction

The name of this website is Speechling (click here to access it). The most unique feature of the site is that it uses a combination of computer and live teachers to encourage users to practice their speaking skills and give feedback on grammar, pronunciation, word choice and other aspects of speaking.

❓ How to practice speaking

Step 1: Listen🎧

First of all, you need to listen to an audio clip spoken by a professional teacher from the website. The content of the audio can be adapted and chosen to suit the learner's level of target language. For example, a simple sentence, a description of an image, or even a free dialogue pattern. The most important thing is that you need to keep repeating the process at this stage.

Step 2: Speaking and recording 🎙️

You then need to repeat what you heard in the previous step (of course, as you progress through the levels, you can choose to record what you wish to say!) Speechling will then send your recording to your matched live instructor.

Step 3: Receive feedback 📝

After the instructor has received your audio, they will listen carefully and send you feedback in a number of areas. For example, they will correct your pronunciation of words, grammatical errors, optimise word choice and adjust the tone and rhythm of your speech.

Step 4: Repeat ♻️

You will need to keep improving your speaking based on feedback, and repeat the process over and over again, practicing many times and gradually progressing until your speaking ability is such that you can converse fluently, even at a native level!

❓ Other features

In addition to speaking practice, Speechling has many additional features to help users learn various skills in Languages. These features are suitable for teachers to organise practice with their students in the classroom, or even to conduct a quiz, or for students to learn on their own. For example:

✏️ Dictation

Learners can listen to sentences of varying difficulty several times and write down what they think the answer is in the box below. This exercise is good practice for both listening and spelling and it will train learners in different listening skills.

💥Complete the blanks

Against a native language translation, users will need to fill in the gaps in the sentences to complete them. This exercise is good for improving users' spelling skills and helps them to check their mastery of words and use of grammar.

👂 Listening to sentences

This exercise is very simple and the website will keep playing sentences in your target language appropriate to your level (you can choose whether you want to play the corresponding native translation or not!) to try and help you adapt to the foreign language. It saves a lot of time when you can practise listening while eating your breakfast and understanding its meaning in your mind, right? 

❌ Limitations
Of course, Speechling has a few limitations. Like other online learning sites, it is device demanding and students must be on a computer or mobile phone in order to use it. In addition, Speechling only allows learners to learn the target language in their own mother tongue, but not in the target language. Specifically, if a Chinese person wants to learn English on Speechling, the translations and explanations of the English words and sentences on the website can only be in Chinese, not English.

Above is the introduction to Speechling! Before you leave, you can choose to watch this video, which has a more detailed introduction about it. I will see you next week, dear readers!