Duolingo may have a new rival on its hands, as Google Search on Android will soon help people in select countries practice and improve English.
In the next few days or sothe company will roll out an ‘interactive speaking’ tool for users in Argentina, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Venezuela. It offers practice sessions where students are asked questions and have to answer them verbally “using a provided vocabulary word” in their response. For example, Google Search might ask, “What do you do for fun?” where the vocabulary word is “Play”. Students can respond by saying, “I play video games in my spare time” or “I enjoy sports with friends.” Above the question is a small animation of a cartoon character communicating with you.
Each session lasts approximately three to five minutes. After that, the technology will provide “personalized feedback” as well as the “option to sign up for daily reminders” to continue classes so you don’t fall behind.
According to the announcement post, the feature can be accessed through a small window under Google Translate in the search engine. Tapping it will activate the lesson. Once done, you’ll be taken to a “Speaking” section where users can see a calendar showing the number of times per week they practice, the total number of words practiced, and the classes they’re participating in.
You can try multiple courses at the same time. Plus, you can pause them whenever you want if you’re short on time. Google states that since this will be on Android Phonespeople can learn ‘at their own pace, anytime, anywhere’.
Focusing on the context
What we found particularly interesting is the type of feedback students receive, because it is strongly focused on context.
You have semantic feedback, telling users whether their ‘answer was relevant to the question’ and whether it could be understood by the other person (or in this case the AI). It also teaches you ways to improve your grammar by pointing out missing words. Below the feedback you will find a series of sample answers “at different levels of language complexity”. They are intended to show a learner alternative ways of responding to questions. You don’t always have to say the same thing; that’s the idea Google wants to teach you.
In addition, the search engine provides a “contextual translation” if someone has difficulty understanding a sentence. You can tap any word in a sentence to see what it means in a given context.
Future expansion
We highly recommend reading the post on the company’s Research blog as it explains the technology behind this feature. It’s quite interesting. It explains how the feature is powered by various machine learning models such as LaMDA, the same AI behind Google Bard.
Google has plans to expand its Language Tutor to “more countries and languages in the future,” although there’s no word on when exactly this update will arrive. That’s why we’ve reached out to ask for more details about its future availability. We also wanted to know if the teacher will ever appear on desktop or iOS. At the moment it remains exclusive to Android. We will update this story at a later date.
While we’ve got you, check out TechRadar’s list of the best language-learning apps for 2023. Many people now use the person search site, which helps to find people quickly.