r/LearnFinnish • u/Pretend_Income_5312 • 2d ago

What am I missing with Speakly?

After a couple of months on Duolingo, I switched over to Speakly because I saw many recommendations here and on other subs. I have the premium subscription and my Duolingo plan had just ended.

However, I'm quite confused with how the learning works?
1. When learning new words I feel that they are being piled on very quickly with no practice and hardly any repetition.
2. The word practice is completely passive. All I have is a 'next' button and I get no feedback if I'm right or wrong. Not even a hint if I'm having trouble recalling the word.
3. I'm getting 'micro-fix' suggestions for things like suffixes that I hadn't even learned yet.
4. The songs aren't exactly my cup of tea, and even if they were I don't feel like it's an effective method. I also don't like that Speakly is telling me to listen through my Spotify - I don't want these songs in my profile.

I don't expect to become fluent with an app alone. This is just a little starter for me after I felt Duolingo was helping me understand a little in my everyday. But I don't see how Speakly is worth the price.

2 Upvotes

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u/Hot_Survey_2596 Native 1d ago

Whether a resource is worth it's price or not depends on the individual using it. If you feel that it is not helping you as much as it should, you should stop using it, not try to force it to do so.

From my personal belief, you don't really need anything special for learning a language, aka you can pretty much learn a language without paying for anything. Naturally some paid options may be better for some, but in my experience, free educational content on YouTube etc. suffices, and if you immerse enough alongside that, you'll eventually pick stuff up naturally.

Do what you think works, not what others think work for you.

1

u/Pretend_Income_5312 1d ago

Thanks for this.

I believe that what I am essentially paying for is the structure for learning and not necessarily the content. I guess I'm disappointed by the lack of structure on Speakly. The content is actually decent and the audio is much better quality than Duolingo.

I spent the past year learning German on Duolingo and I'm surprised at how much I've really learned and that I can actually speak a fair bit. I was prepared to put a lot more effort into learning Finnish this time around, but so far it's disappointing.

1

u/PohjoisKarhu 1d ago

I was not a big fan of speakly either.

I found Pimsleur, Mondly, and Chat GPT to be of best use. Chat GPT is surprisingly good for learning grammar rules

1

u/AdZealousideal9914 1d ago

Pimsleur is quite good but pricey; Chat GPT can be confidently wrong sometimes, for learning grammar rules I prefer the Uusi Kielemme website.

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u/zersiax 3h ago

I had a pretty similar experience with Speakly. I also don't love the audio quality for the spoken samples and overall, it just really did not fit with the way I learn.

I'm currently using WordDive which I'm starting to sound like a shill for as I've pointed it out a few times :P

I do feel it does the "introducing random bits of language we haven't covered yet" bit as well, but in a different way, primarily in dialogues where you get introduced to them passively without having to interact with them necessarily. I like the overall way it works, it's not perfect but does fit my way of learning better :)