Speakly: Learn Languages Fast

beats the **** out of Duolingo. i highly suggest saving up the money and buying a life-time subscription, if you want help in succeeding at your target language. the only downside is that the amount of languages to choose from could be better than what it actually is. however, if you want to learn an Eurocentric language, look no further.

It's a good app. The voices are natural and sound good. The Spanish is European Spanish. If you are learning Latin American Spanish, it will be different but not a deal breaker. The voice processing engine has issues with processing. Sometimes, it takes dozens of times to get past an exercise. It flags different words at the same set of attempts. It definitely has issues with ambient noise. I've also had it reset my streak incorrectly a few times. I don't know why it didn't count.

Good: So far the best gamified language learning platform I've used. Far superior to Duolingo and not as difficult to get into as Lingq (which is good and you should also be using). It has several features that you can use depending on your preference and it doesn't stick you on a 'path'. Bad: More often than not the Russian cards will have a blank back card for the English translation. The latter German audio in the vocab building is computer generated. It sounds pretty rough. Recommend.

I think the app is actually pretty good. The voices sound good, a bit slow but still clear. The layout is clean with little clutter. The main issue is 95% of the content is premium. The daily vocabulary (free) is about 3 minutes of material, after that you must pay, or wait until tomorrow. One part of the daily free vocabulary is recording which is a premium feature so you cannot actually do all the free lessons. Good app, but forces you to actually pay to utilizes the app in any sense or form.

The listening exercises are the best part. I listen to them on loop mode while I'm driving, and I love that I can choose to see paragraph-by-paragraph translations. Unfortunately the program is set up to only unlock the next listening exercise each time you pass off 50 new words. I learn more words from listening than drilling so I feel like I'm being artificially held back. I think as a paying customer I should be able to access everything from the get-go and move at my own pace.

I tried Finnish. Word choice seems strong and the demonstration voices are high quality and easy to understand. The learning pace for the free version is unbearably slow, so this app is probably best if you are able to pay for premium. I won't be doing that, however, because the method has this very confusing approach wherein they introduce new words in sentences full of words that haven't been introduced and remain unexplained and untranslated. It's VERY confusing.

The learning system seems really excellent. There's a huge amount of podcast-like listening material, and the app rewards me for repeat listening. New words are introduced as phrases in context, and I can turn off multiple-choice answers. The music discovery is great. The app itself is a little flaky. Voice recognition doesn't always work, there are a couple bad translations and audio/text mismatches, the app sometimes freezes and has to be force restarted. Overall, worth it.

I am testing German first since I already speak it. Some of the English cues are awkward, e.g., "I promised to myself . . . I will," rather than "I promised myself . . . I would." If you don't guess that the app won't accept "Flugscheine" for "plane tickets," you're out of luck. Easy to misread choices (some aren't real words) on small screen, and which "Meine Damen und Herren" is correct? Seems to accept variations in pronunciation, e.g., "Weech" for "Weg." Customer service excellent thus far.

After using many other language-learning apps, I'm happiest so far with Speakly. For this reason I'm giving it five stars, even though there are some small bugs to work out. It's very simple (no flashy graphics at all), but this is what you need to learn a language. Matching games and media make the user too passive - with Speakly you have to type in all your answers, using both the mobile and desktop versions (this is why I like it more than Duolingo). And even though it asks more of the user, I still find it very easy to squeeze in a few minutes throughout the day, so that I maintain contact with the target language frequently. I would only advise the developers to mix in more of the already-learned words with new words. It's a little too easy to forget old words, especially if I haven't seen them for months.

This app is great. It has so many practical and valuable features to help learn a new language, but it is constantly crashing, kicking me out, freezes in a loading frame. It makes it impossible to get in any practice or studying sessions. I just give up and move on to something else. I paid for the lifetime subscription and it's disappointing that I can't make any use of it. :-/

Well designed app though a bit 'much' at first before going through the tutorial. The methodology is great. I used the same idea (studying top 5k words), but never was able to find a program that would let me repeatedly and constantly use those words in a natural context. The listening exercises are good, and music suggestions is a nice additional touch. Additional focus on speaking without knowing the translation in advance and having more 'flexibility of expression' would be nice.

They say that fluency isn't a destination, but a journey. I'm on my second foreign language. My first language was two years of jumping between books, apps, and lessons. I spent far too much time looking for level-appropriate reading, realistic conversations, music with practical lyrics, usable vocabulary and speaking practice. Speakly gives me all of these things without childish games and rewards. If you're serious about learning and tired of wasting time, go with Speakly.

I'm a Linguist and English teacher and regularly keep up my other languages, so I mean it when I say this. This app is great! The presentation of vocabulary is more contextualized than in other apps and their placement test put me somewhere perfectly uncomfortable (like just a little). The manner of recall isn't irritating and it gives just enough to figure things out. I've never really considered paying for an app, but I might this time.

Absolutely amazing UI design and from what I can see a great methodology for language learning. But for my day 1 experience, I wasn't able to complete my daily goal after 40 (!) minutes because the servers were constantly failing to retrieve my next exercise, even after multiple retries. I went on the desktop app and the servers seemed better but then during a study lesson there was a flashcard that rendered on the side of the screen and overflowed, and I couldn't flip it to continue! 😔

I was very excited for this app. I tried it for a few days & then paid for a 6 month membership. The following day the app kept giving me an error message. I tried logging in/out,but now I can't even log in. Even worse-my email (and any other possible email I could have created my account with) isn't showing up for a password recovery-meaning that I paid, opened an account, and now it says my account doesn't exist. I emailed multiple people, sent messages & have had 0 response in past few days.

Switched from Duolingo to Speakly and I must say I'm quite satisfied with the amount of input I get through Speakly compared to any other app I've seen. Even when learning new words or phrases, it's almost always in the context of a sentence, and I get exposure to other words in that sentence through it. Also, as a front end developer myself, I can't help but remark on the beautiful user interface this app has to offer. It's far beyond what's offered in most other apps like it. I tip my hat. 🎩

Ends of words are not always heard, why are they cut off? Harder to understand. Also, repeatly get message that something went wrong on our end, please try again. Gets tiresome, tried reloading the app, did not help. The problem with something going wrong appears to have been corrected. Thank-you.

This is THE best language app I've found. I've been using Speakly for 2 years now, and have made excellent progress with French. It incorporates grammar, vocabulary, and speaking (excellent voice recognition) into the daily study. Other modules provide interactive conversation practice, and listening exercises with transcription. All listening and conversation are native speakers. Most of the vocabulary does as well. This really is a COMPLETE language learning app.

An easy 5 star rating. Had to move to Germany for my job, and started using this app weeks before leaving. It's been over a month, and even with days I can't study, I already understand plenty of words. So much so, that I am able to communicate with my new landlord in German. I can only imagine how much I'd know by now if I was able to fit in more study time. The app even recommends music to increase listening skills. If you want to learn a European spoken language, get this app.

No actual structured curriculum. No teaching, just testing. Jumps right in with full phrases and expects you to just reveal the answer until you remember enough to get them right. You can guess your way into advanced phrases, but it just assumes you've mastered everything along the way. And since there's no way to reset your progress, everything just keeps getting worse and worse.