Speakly is a unique application in the world of language-learning because it uses a unique methodology that was created by two polyglots, Ott Ojamets and Ingel Keskpaik, who are the two cofounders of Speakly.
Ott and Ingel speak seven and eight languages, respectively. They began creating Speakly in 2018 alongside a team of talented developers and language specialists.
But the Speakly approach dates back much further. It’s all based on the original learning methodology that Ott published in 2012. To read more about how Speakly began, check out this blog post.
So, how does the unique Speakly methodology work?
It’s actually quite simple. The Speakly methodology boils down to a very simple idea: to reach faster results, you must study the most relevant subjects in order of their importance.
Sounds logical, right? 👌
Let use an example. Imagine that we took all of the last ten years’ worth of conversations that were spoken in Paris, put all of them into a computer, and asked the computer to analyze which words and sentences were the most relevant in daily French life.
After compiling this list, we would know what to learn to boost our language skills much faster than usual. And we could be sure that every word that we study gives an optimal boost to our speaking skills. 😉
Five years of research
That’s exactly what Speakly does, but in addition to analyzing millions of bytes of data, we have also analyzed the speaking patterns and conversations of more than 3,500 people over the course of five years.
As a result, we accumulated massive amounts of valuable data and insights, which is to thank for Speakly’s present success; we can practically guarantee that if you start learning a language from zero with Speakly, you will arrive at a solid speaking level in just a few months—3.5 months, on average. That success is the result of a rigorous scientific process.
How can we be so sure which words and sentences are really useful? 😎
To boil it down to simple terms, what we found in our years of research is that studying the 4,000 most relevant words of a language allows you to manage nearly any real-life situation that may occur.
Changing the way how languages are learned
This might sound strange, because learning a foreign language may have always seemed like a gargantuan goal that requires years of study. But if we really look at the scientific data, the reality is actually the opposite.
What we discovered in our research was quite staggering.
When you know the 300 most important words of a foreign language, it provides you with vocabulary that is useful in about 42% of any real-life conversation.
When you know 1,200 words, that percentage rises to 72%.
And when you learn a language’s 4,000 most important words, you will have the necessary vocabulary for basically any situation. 🚀
You don't need to know as many words as you think you do to speak a language
When you look at a language from this perspective, you will discover that it’s not difficult to learn and it doesn’t need to take years to master.
You might ask, “But what about all the other words?” The answer is simple: If you know a language’s 4,000 most important words, then learning new vocabulary will happen most efficiently through conversations and from context. To read more about why Speakly teaches you exactly 4,000 words of the language and not more, check out this blog post.
All that is very different from the traditional methods and other language-learning applications that teach words and sentences based on topics, which produce slower results.
So, the core idea of Speakly is to learn a language’s most relevant words and sentences in the order of their importance. But that’s not the only thing that makes Speakly special. ☝️
Learning the language in a holistic way
In addition to that, Speakly teaches you a language holistically—in the same way, we learned our mother tongue—naturally, from context. That’s why you will find that right from the beginning of your studies, Speakly teaches you all forms of the language: vocabulary, writing, listening, speaking, and reading comprehension.
The learning journey is led by Speakly algorithms that observe your actions as you study so they can adjust the learning process in such a way that works for your personal learning style and memory.
Summary
Speakly is unique in the world of language-learning because it uses an original, science-based methodology—basically the Pareto principle (a.k.a. the 80/20 rule) for language-learning. With this method, you can be sure that you won’t study anything irrelevant and that each minute you invest in studying with Speakly provides real results.🤘
