How to improve oral fluency -- using Speechling!

Have you ever encountered the following problems in oral English teaching: students are unwilling to express themselves; their pronunciation is difficult to correct; their oral weaknesses are different, and we have difficulty coordinating course content. However, oral proficiency determines whether our students can effectively communicate with others. Therefore, it is important and necessary to choose a network technology for auxiliary teaching of spoken language.

Hard to understand

This week, I will introduce a foreign language learning website to you, Speechling. Speechling supports to learn 16 languages, including English. The Speechling includes over 1000 interesting exercises and free native language coach guidance to help users quickly achieve fluency in speaking. In Speechling, learning a foreign language is not only about reading through a single text, but about reading follow a sentence. On the one hand, users are able to compare their pronunciation with the standard pronunciation in order to see if their pronunciation is accurate. On the other hand, each user will be randomly assigned a pronunciation tutor. Every time the user finishes reading a sentence, the recording of his reading will be uploaded to his tutor, who will provide feedback as soon as possible. In brief, unlike other websites, Speechling provides both technical support and manual coaching assistance to users.

homepage of Speechling

User Guide

Step 1: Go to the website through the link: https://speechling.com/zh/

Step 2: Register and log in to your account, select the spoken language you want to learn;

Step 3: Select a speaking tutor, speaking projects, etc. 

Step 4: Make some oral practice and have recordings, wait for your tutor's feedback.

How to use Speechling

Website evaluation

Advantages 😀😀

(1) Each user is equipped with a native speaker tutor. Their tutors will give them personal feedback, which  is more authentic and targeted.

(2) Users are no longer nervous and embarrassed when practicing speaking. Research has found that in Internet environments, participants have significantly longer vocalization time than in face-to-face environments (Blake, 2009).

(3) Speechling helps users correct their pronunciation, reduces ambiguity caused by pronunciation, and facilitates effective communication in subsequent life.

(4) There are diverse forms of practice here. Speechling does not only use text reading, but combines audio to help oral practice.

(5) The Skill Tree and Audio Journal functions in Speechling record the user's growth process, from which users can gain a sense of achievement and motivation. In addition, users can repeatedly practice unfamiliar words and focus on.

(6) Teachers find it difficult to take into account the abilities and characteristics of each student in the classroom, especially in countries with limited educational resources. While Speechling users can choose the difficulty level of their learning content and conduct personalized learning.

Provide a coach for each user

Disadvantages 😔😔

(1) Although Speechling equips every user with a coach, the coach is not real-time online. Therefore, users need to wait for a period of time to receive feedback, which is not timely.

(2) Users may experience blurry recording content due to their physical condition or noisy background sound, which hinders Speechling from evaluating their pronunciation.

(3) Speechling mainly improves users' oral proficiency through practice, lacking real-life scenario practice for communication and interaction, and its assistance in face-to-face conversations is limited.

If you want to learn more about Speechling, you can watch the short video below.

In short, we can recommend Speechling to our students to use it for autonomous learning after class. In addition, we can also present practice on Speedling in classroom to motivate students to speak and improve their oral proficiency. However, we must exercise students' face-to-face communication skills more in the classroom, which is the most important!

Reference

BLAKE, C. (2009). Potential of text-based internet chats for improving oral fluency in a second language. The Modern Language Journal (Boulder, Colo.), 93(2), 227-240. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00858.x