Article content
In the old days, learning the basics of any language could take a lot of time and money. Now that the technology is available it can be a bit of a double-edged sword for language learning. On the one hand, the internet offers a vast array of learning apps which are difficult to choose from. On the other hand, basic translating apps like Google Translate can do the hard work for you but won’t help users to remember what they learn.
You might have experienced that learning languages is an arduous task: picking up an efficient learning methodology can actually make a big difference. We had the chance to ask Ott Ojamets a few questions regarding the launch of the innovative language learning app Speakly, and talk about the secrets beside its success.
Please present yourselves, Ott and Ingel – what is your background and how did you come up with the idea of Speakly?
Creating Speakly has been a really natural process – it started in 2012 when I published my own language learning methodology as a book and a web-environment in different languages. After that, I saw how it helped so many people study languages much faster and easier. So we decided that we want to help even more people to get their language studies going, and started putting together the kitchen side for Speakly development. This whole process took almost 4 years with the development and testing. We launched Speakly in October 2017 with 3 available languages. Now we have 7 languages available and many others coming up in the next few months, so our development is pretty fast. Ingel Keskpaik – language teacher and co-founder – and I have been a part of the world of language learning for a really long time – teaching, translating, running a successful language tutoring company – and in Speakly we have combined all our expertise.
Why Speakly is better than all the other language learning application?
Speakly is more practical than other learning solutions because you can learn words and sentences based on their statistical real-life relevance. Simply said, it means that every word you study is statistically important in real life, leading you to faster fluency. Of course, Speakly has many other characteristics – helping you to memorize words faster, thanks to memory techniques and so on. But the main thing is its practicality. For example – when you would start studying a new language today and learn it for 10 hours, then in this time you will learn the necessary words to handle about 40% of real-life situations. It might sound incredible, but it’s just science.
How long would it take for a foreigner to learn Estonian with your system?
We have tested and developed Speakly for a very long time, to make sure that we are able to guarantee our promised result of being able to feel comfortable in a foreign language after 100 hours of study. And that’s what we see in our learners’ feedback as well. It’s funny for me that people usually think that learning a language takes years – but our experience shows that people write to us every day to say thanks because they started speaking French in 3 months. I advise everybody to experience this feeling of learning a language in a smart way – it really makes a lot of difference.
What is the LIVE learning methodology about? What is so innovative about it?
The main thing about Speakly’s methodology is to be as practical as possible – so everything that you do as a learner will give immediate results that you can use in real life. Of course, there are additionally many other things that the powerful engine inside Speakly is doing to help you as a learner, but these are a part of our secret sauce and a real chef never gives out his secret recipe. Therefore I advise everybody to try out Speakly – it can really make a difference in your language studies.
How many users do you have at the moment?
Speakly has 50 000 users and we’re growing fast in different countries.
What are your future plans and goals?
We currently have 7 available languages, but we will grow this number to 11 in a few months, adding some really exciting new language pairs! And of course we’re adding some innovative and cool new features to the program in the months to come – so hop on board everybody and make your dream of speaking French, Spanish or Estonian come true.
