The Talking gap

Why there is so much self-study content and so few talking opportunities

If you wanted to learn a language some 30 years ago, the default path was to enroll in a language school (I mean, a brick-and-mortar school), show up there at least once a week, take your lesson, come back home, eventually do your homework, repeat this next week. Or else, if you were wealthy or adventurous enough, you just moved to live in the country when the language was spoken. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I put it in writing just to contrast how much things have changed in recent years.

What changed everything was the Internet.

Now you can find and download books in any language, some of them specifically intended for language learners (like Olly Richards “Short Stories” series in Spanish, Russian, etc.), English, Korean or French lessons on YouTube, podcasts with advice (like Benny Lewis “Language Hacking”), complete language courses for self-study, either for any language (like Lydia Machova “Language Mentoring”) or for specific languages, literally any language you can possibly imagine (okay, not Klingon).

Even more, most modern courses have their supporting app, as the following good ones (I’m not affiliated to any of them): Duolingo, Babbel, Mosalingua, Busuu, FluentU, LingQ, Rosetta Stone, Fluent Forever, and the list goes on and on (in my iPhone I have several pages of language apps). Each app has a different combination of learning styles: for instance, Memrise uses flashcards, LingQ and FluentU are based on engaging real content, Duolingo uses gamification and spaced repetition, Rosetta Stone, ELSA, and Mondly use speech recognition, Beelinguapp uses translation…

If all those resources were not enough, you can spend your entire days immersed in the language you want to learn (immersion is one of the best strategies recommended by polyglots like Steve Kaufmann and Lydia Machova), listening to internet radio with apps like TuneIn, Pandora, iHeartRadio, etc, or watching Netflix shows in their original language. You can put your cellphone and laptop menus in English (or the language you want to learn). There are complete immersion guides, just Google it.

With all those resources, if you want to learn a new language, you have just everything you need, right?

Wrong.

There are 4 language skills that you need to master in order to become fluent in a language:

• Reading
• Listening comprehension
• Writing
• Speaking

You can develop the first two ones by content consumption and immersion, but the other two are trickier, and they are so for one reason: to learn to write, you have to write, to learn to speak, you have to speak. Well, nobody will stop you from writing, but what if you are writing it all wrong, and the more you write the more you solidify your mistakes? Isn’t it the same for speaking?

Now things get complicated. How on Earth can I learn to speak English, if I don’t know a single English-speaking person? Or if I know one or two but they are very busy people and sometimes a bit grumpy? Am I supposed to contact strangers over the internet? What if I’m shy and introverted?

Believe it or not, many language coaches propose to you to speak aloud what you are doing during the day, like “I’m washing the dishes”, “I just discovered a rat under the sink”, and so on. Those coaches tell you that at first “it feels funny” but you get used to it over time. But try to do this in a crowded home. And then, what about the pronunciation, and the lack of feedback? Lydia Machova shares an anecdote about when she was learning Spanish in Slovenia, initially with just a book, that she studied thoroughly. One day she found a Mexican girl and eagerly started talking to her in Spanish, except that some words were mispronounced beyond recognition. Of course, eventually, Lydia became fluent in Spanish and in many other languages, but you get the point that feedback, when you talk, is important. To speak alone is not the same as to converse.

Another solution for talking practice is to rent the services of a language tutor for 1-to-1 sessions, and there are several internet platforms for this, like Italki (the biggest one), Cambly, Rype, and many others, each one with a different proposition. They have two-sided markets, and as such they have to provide value to the tutors (reasonable income, discoverability) as well as to the students (range of prices, choice of tutor).

But all 1-to-1 lessons options have in common that, if you use them as the base of your language study, it becomes expensive as hell. You do the math: Italki average of 20 dollars per session, a couple of sessions per week (there is proof that 1 lesson/week is not enough to do substantial progress) is going to have the hefty cost of 1,000 dollars per year! So this option is for the wealthy ones only.

The other way is for the adventurous ones only: go fishing to the language exchange sites, where the premise looks wonderful (you’re a native Spanish and want to practice English, so you connect with a British block or lad wanting to practice Spanish). Theoretically, this is just perfect: the internet platform connects you with a suitable partner, and hours of fun and learning ensue.

Language exchange sounds too good to be true because, well, it isn’t. The experience goes like this: you register on the platform (conversationexchange, mylanguageexchange, Italki and many more), you put your most enticing pic and description, you try to connect with somebody suitable to you, then you have to wait for an answer (sometimes forever), and if you are lucky enough to get a partner, then it comes the second part: you have to agree on when to meet and how. Believe me, this is hard work, which doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Some language coaches like Stephanie (englishfulltime.com) give you tips and especially encouragement (you’ll need it) to get language exchange partners. But nobody will deny that this process involves a lot of friction.

This situation is what we call “the talking gap”: plenty of resources for all budgets on the content side, to develop listening and reading skills, and nothing really convenient for talking skills.

We can understand why there is the talking gap, because building internet-based platforms for talking with other users and doing so in a convenient way (lower cost than private tutors, less friction than language exchanges) is not easy, not at all. A convenient (low friction, affordable cost) talking practice platform would be the Holy Grail. This is why I got several partners, with expertise in advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality, and got to work to develop a new platform for talking practice (Avalinguo, not yet open to the public) that looks very promising. Users will be able to join instantly ongoing discussions in small groups, according to the user’s language, level, and interests, for an affordable cost.

What I can tell right now is that Avalinguo has the potential to close and destroy the talking gap.

(Originally published at https://avalinguo.com/the-talking-gap/)

Ramon Brena, PhD

CEO of Avalinguo
Twitter @rbrena