Earlier we had Grammaropolis – an app that focus on parts of speech introduced through my blog. This time is an app for speaking skill only. It’s called Speaking Pal.
As soon as you launch the app, you will get to choose which topic would I like to study: Everyday, At Work, Travel,… In each topic, there are short pieces of video scenarios of people holding a conversation. After listening to their exchange, there is a dialog where you can see the text version of the conversation with translation to another language that you chose. Here, underlined words are clickable it shows the definition of that word. You then have to record some sentences with your own voice. Immediate feedback is produced on how clearly you say each phrase. This feedback is a color-coded bar that reflects your voice performance. If you get red, you should try again. Yellow is you still have room for improvement and green is acceptable result.
There is a practice option where you can record the sentences and practice as much as you want, hear yourself again and try to improve your pronunciation. Another part available is in which all the new words are shown with cartoonish figures. You can tap on each word to see its definition, sample sentence with audio, and a translated sentence. So together you can learn how to adjust your voice and pronunciation better, and you can study some new words in the lesson. At the end of each lesson is a small quiz about the content of the video. Well it’s not exactly fun but better have it than not.
Unfortunately though, I have yet encounter any app that has real life element, including this one. You get to record and listen to yourself, then compare your pronunciation with the sample one, but it holds minimal realistic quality. The lines that I have to repeat and record are fixed, so there is no chance that I can hold the conversation using different sentence structures and alternative vocabulary. This limitation irks me a bit and it makes me feel unmotivated. Speaking Pal seems to require patience; you have to try multiple of time to speak clearly and loudly, then increase your pace but keep your voice hearable by the app. The app sure is not a real person, but it undoubtly will help you improve your speaking skill.
Speaking Pal offers more than 500 lessons with simple exchanges to higher level like intermediate and advanced. The app is free to download; of course you have to purchase the premium version to have more lessons to study on.
I personally consider Speaking Pal as a pronunciation app but it does give you an idea of how a natural conversation and speaking voice is like. However I will definitely have second thought on buying the application. Speaking Pal is not exclusively the only app with voice-recognition so with its price, I expected better features. I hope the developer will update the app to have more natural conversation flows that match its name – Speaking Pal.