Speechling Review: conversation-less pronunciation

Need pronunciation help with feedback from a professional, but on your own time? In this Speechling review, I’ll share everything I love about this way to learn a language, and how to know if it’s the right language learning resource for you.

Speechling review: languages

Right off the bat, Speechling helps learners of a variety of languages, including:

With a subscription to Speechling, you get access to every single one of them. You’re also free to switch between languages (and any level within each language) at any time. This makes Speechling excellent for learners of multiple languages, or those who want a Duolingo dabble focused on speaking practice/pronunciation.

But I digress, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I mentioned that Speechling makes for great Spanish-speaking practice for introverts, so that’s the next section of this Speechling review.

Speechling for introverts

There are quite a few options for language learners to practice Spanish speaking – resources like italki, Verbling, and BaseLang, all of which connect Spanish language learners with native Spanish speakers to get conversational Spanish.

While Speechling does connect you to native speakers, instead of having classes/conversations online, you submit words, phrases, answers, and more and get feedback on your pronunciation, while also getting fluency practice (depending on the exercise you choose).

Let’s get a behind-the-scenes look at Speechling, starting with the first screen you’ll see when joining Speechling.

Speechling review: getting started

When you first join Speechling, you’re presented with this very basic screen. It’s not the fanciest looking thing in the world, and it takes some learning to navigate, but it’s worth it.

Here’s a basic lesson and some basic definitions.

Here I’m being presented with the same basic word in 3 different formats, depending on which mode is selected:

• Speak: practice saying the word or phrase
• Understand: listen to the word or phrase, and report on the difficulty level
• Lecture: a combination of listening, and then speaking.

You can see in the “Understand” section that you report on your difficulty level to tell Speechling how quickly you need to see it again. While spaced repetition like this is common these days (see easier words less often, more difficult words more often), I appreciate knowing exactly what time frame I’m looking at, as opposed to just trusting the app to do it right.

Now, this is really simple, but it can be a little more difficult to see the variety of activities you have access to. There are two different ways to change how and what you’re practicing. The first (and easiest) way is to scroll down and select from these lists.

This will give you the same kind of exercises, but using different kinds of content, depending on your selection. If you change your selection, it will not change the language/content outside of your current activity.

So as soon as you switch activities, you’ll be reverted to the options chosen in the Settings tab. This is the second way to choose how and what you’re practicing.

The Skill Tree: what you’re learning

Speechling essentially breaks up its content into 2 categories: the content you’re learning, and which strategies you’re using to learn it. The “Toolbox” tab provides you with a variety of different ways to use and express yourself using the sentences and phrases that Speechling has (which we’ll discuss later), and the “Skills” tab is where you choose the content you’re learning/practicing.

These words, sentences, and phrases are organized by skill level and category.

Every one of these icons contains countless native audio clips and opportunities for you to practice repeating those phrases. These opportunities include:

Speechling phrasebook: useful simple expressions for everyday life and travel

AKA: basic, tourist-level vocab

Speechling foundations: build your vocabulary for the core curriculum

AKA: the very beginning foundations of the language

Speechling core curriculum: use your vocab in context on thousands of sentences

AKA: build your vocabulary and learn how to use it right

Except, of course, at the very end where you can practice expressing yourself freely, which is incredibly important. The pre-made sentences and phrases give you practice saying the vocabulary, while the free speak allows you to practice using the phrases and sentences yourself.

Speeching conversations: don’t just repeat sentences. Apply your skills.

AKA: take everything you’ve learned and practice using it naturally

• Answer the question: pretend like you are in a real conversation
• Describe the image: harness your descriptive skills
• Freestyle mode (say anything): bring in your own curriculum/study materials

Once you’ve decided where you are on the Skill Tree, you can either return to the Study tab (shown above), or go to the Toolbox tab and select an activity.

Dictation

Dictation is one of my favorite ways to practice listening comprehension, personally, so I’m excited to see Speechling has it! This activity combines passive and active skills: you listen to what somebody else is saying, and then recreate that sentence by typing it out.

By selecting “automatically continue on correct” you can easily get in tons of practice understanding the language; if you struggle with a phrase (like I did in the above video), you can flag it for practice later.

And if you’re really struggling, just click “Give Up” to see the correct answer.

Yes, these are the same phrases that you would be learning in Speechling’s regular activities, so you can consistently review your new terms. Listen to the audio as many times as you need, slow it down, go to the next audio track…it’s all customizable so you don’t have to practice phrases that aren’t useful for you.

Listening Practice

The next activity is listening practice, where you’ll get a native audio clip followed by a translation. This helps you to make the connection in your mind between both statements.

I love the ability to change the settings, even mid-activity, by scrolling down and selecting:

• target language
• translation language
• half speed
• play original sentence after translated sentence
• automatically pause activity after the original sentence

Plus, you get to see the list of sentences you’ve already heard, including their translations, and the ability to record yourself repeating the sentence and send off your recording to your pronunciation coach.

With this activity, Speechling makes it so easy to get in your listening comprehension however you need it.

Flashcards

If you prefer more of a flashcard-like activity, here’s what Speechling’s flashcard option looks like.

I honestly don’t like this method just because it trains your vocabulary to be dependent on your native language, as opposed to attaching meaning directly to the target language.

There’s nothing wrong with doing this method every once in a while, but I would recommend you try to avoid it if possible, or at least turn off the translations using the option I selected in the video above.

Multiple choice quiz

The next option on this “choose your engagement type” list is a multiple-choice quiz. This strategy leads you to get a general gist of a phrase by picking up on one or two words, making it less precise than dictation, but more precise than flashcards.

Again, I’m a huge fan of the customization, because you can change this activity from hearing the language and translating to your native language, to hearing the language (with the transcript turned off) and selecting the correct transcript.

As always, you can opt to record your pronunciation of a phrase at any time.

Fill in the blank

Similar to dictation is fill-in-the-blank (also known as clozes). While dictation requires typing in an entire phase, fill-in-the-blank only prompts you to type in one part of it.

If you want more hints, you can opt-in to get the number of letters you need to fill in; for more of a challenge, select the checkbox on the bottom labeled “use normal text field instead”.

Regardless, you can see in the above video that there’s no real mention of my lack of accents. Speechling automatically corrects it for you, without highlighting the accent, making you correct the mistake, or even noting that accents are important.

Many similar apps provide you with the option to turn accents on/off, as well as giving you buttons to press in case you can’t create the correct letters with your keyboard, but unfortunately, Speechling doesn’t seem to care.

Search

Speechling offers lessons in 13 languages, which means they have a lot of native recordings. Not only that but since you can listen to any given recording in a male or female voice, that makes for literally double the content.

Suffice it to say that Speechling’s search function can be highly useful.

Honestly, if you want to practice understanding and pronouncing words, and all you want is to be given a whole bunch of sentences to practice with, Speechling is your best option.

Premium Offline Content

As I was going through this Speechling review, I had the thought “This is all excellent, but I just know that someone out there would rather take these audio clips outside of the activities and simply listen to them over and over again”.

Speechling’s already ahead of me here!

I already mentioned the sheer number of native audio lessons available with Speechling (over 10,000 sentences, apparently) – from this page, active subscribers can easily download them all for their use.

This content includes:

• 10,000+ Speechling sentences
• audio downloads broken up by skill level
• Anki decks broken up by skill level AND speaking/listening practice

Speechling review: your pronunciation coach

Of all the content and features mentioned thus far in this Speechling review, there’s one thing we haven’t mentioned: when you record and submit your pronunciation of these words and sentences, where does it go?

If you opt to submit these recordings to a coach, they’ll be sent to a native-speaking coach hired by Speechling to give you feedback on your pronunciation within 24 hours. If your coach has any corrections, they’ll respond with another recording clarifying how you can improve.

And if you’re a subscriber, you can click over to Audio Journal to see your history of recordings.

All languages and all levels are grouped here, but you can also filter your recordings by the target language, topic, and feedback: if you need to work on something, you did just fine, or if you haven’t received feedback yet.

Your recordings are also color-coded:

• Green: no critiques
• Yellow: needs work
• Brown: no feedback yet
• Blue: rerecorded (in the event you had a correction and tried again)

Over time, you can get a great roadmap of your skills developing over time.

Speechling review: price

Speechling offers two categories of pricing: free and unlimited.

The content (meaning the curriculum and the audio recordings) is available totally for free. If you opt for the unlimited plan, you also get:

• unlimited coaching (as opposed to the 10 you get for free)
• audio journal
• switch between languages at any time
• offline premium resources

Unlimited plans start with a 7-day free trial.

Click here for Speechling’s updated pricing.

Speechling review: is it for you?

Speechling is the best language app for those looking for professional pronunciation help. It’s also really excellent for building up your vocabulary, considering its curriculum and the fact that it’s available for all free users.

It’s also excellent for introverted language learners looking for speaking practice, with its more advanced options to speak freely and submit it to an online coach (or not).

However, it’s not the prettiest platform. If you need something easier on the eyes, maybe with some fun notifications or any of the other common motivation hacks, try something like Yask which won’t teach you the language, but will get you practicing and speaking it.

Another Speechling alternative is Busuu, which has a nicer platform and similar speaking prompts, but also has more of a focus on grammar; in fact, speaking the language is more of a side quest on Busuu, rather than the whole enchilada.

Ready to try it for yourself? Click here to give Speechling a try!