Archive for Babbel

Review: Babbel

Posted in Products with tags on December 12, 2016 by itnerd

By Ms. IT Nerd

Have you ever wanted to learn another language for work, to talk to your in-laws, to connect with the local people in another country or to learn for the joy of learning? For me it was the desire to learn French on my own schedule so that I can converse with Francophone speaking people when I travelled to French speaking cities of Canada such as Quebec City or any other French-speaking country in the world.

Why Babbel? The idea of learning in the privacy of my own home on my schedule was very appealing to me as I am still have memories from my experience in high school French class. Babbel offers instruction in many languages: German, English, Turkish, Italian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian Polish and Russian.

From the first lesson I can tell that the Babbel language program is designed for all ages with different learning styles that can be self-directed at times. It is an intuitive program each lesson within the course starts off with pronunciation with pictures then builds on it with grammar and along the way provides you with tips and setting you up slowly to conversational level French. I notice on the app it allows you to practice a phrase indefinitely if you have voice recognition turned on (which I highly recommend) then you can have it correct your pronunciation until you get it right. However, when I use my laptop and login via the Internet Babbel will only allow you a finite number of tries before you are move on to the next phrase or word. While I may be frustrated at times, Babbel does a good job of not only teaching pronunciation, but also corrects you on your grammar and spelling. Having said that, Babbel does an excellent job at bookmarking your spot from your desktop to mobile phone app as it’s all under your account.

One thing I wish was for Babbel to have a rewind button while you are in the middle of a lesson. While Babbel will repeat a phrase on the screen it does not allow you to go back to a previous screen within a lesson unless you are willing to start over. Another item on my wish list (after all this is the holiday season) would be for Babbel to have a chart of verbs in a similar way they have a running list of vocabulary of words that I have already learned. Finally, for any future updates Babbel a value-add would be to provide users with an explanation as to why they are wrong. Currently, it will beep and show the correction but I am slow sometimes and I have to look at the correct answer closely and reason out the various reason I was wrong as there could be a variety of reasons such as mis-spelled by one letter, I forgot part of a phrase, I used the wrong feminine or masculine form or plural or apostrophe, or I was missing an article in a sentence.

Babbel pricing is subscription based and can be viewed here. I enjoyed learning again with Babbel it’s intuitive and it’s easy to get started and use. Compared to other options it’s reasonably priced and more convenient than an in-person classes.

 

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New Study Examines Babbel And Its Efficacy

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 3, 2016 by itnerd

Babbel, the shortest path to a real-life conversation in a new language, today publishes the results of an independent study looking at the efficacy of the app’s Spanish courses. Over a period of two months, specialist researchers from City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of South Carolina examined the progress of 391 randomly selected learners. Using WebCAPE, a standard measure of language proficiency for universities and businesses, the researchers evaluated participants’ knowledge of Spanish at the beginning and the end of the study.

Key findings from The Babbel Efficacy Study are as follows:

  • “Truly novice users with no knowledge of Spanish need on average 15 hours of study in a two-month period to cover the requirements for one college semester of Spanish.”
  • “[In general] users need on average 21 hours of study in a two-month period to cover the requirements for one college semester of Spanish.”
  • “The average study time for the final study sample was about 19h, or a little over two hours a week.”
  • “The Babbel app works similarly well for people with different gender, age, native language, education, employment, status, etc.”
  • “There are only a handful of studies of direct objective measures of efficacy of language learning apps. Among them the efficacy of Babbel is the best so far.”In order to build on insights gained from product data and internal surveys, Babbel sought an independent and expert validation of its teaching methodologies. The results of the subsequent research should shed light on the market for online language learning and help consumers make conscious decisions.

While the study primarily measures academic test performance, it already offers hints as to how well Babbel helps people to converse in real-life situations: 81% of participants confirmed that Babbel had improved their ability to communicate in Spanish. This supports an earlier study conducted by Babbel in 2015, in which 73% of nearly 45k surveyed users stated they would have the confidence to hold a conversation in their new language after 5 hours with the app.

Additionally, the researchers calculated that Babbel has a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of +59.3. The NPS is the market standard for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty to a product. Considering that the industry average NPS for software and apps is +28, and that Babbel is a paid subscription service, this is a clear indication of the app’s high perceived value.

In contrast to other language learning products also tested by the researchers, Babbel has a unique methodology which combines established learning science with advanced technology. All courses are based on real-life dialogues, enabling learners to put their new language to use as fast as possible. Furthermore, the app is designed to ensure progress is made regardless of the learner’s background. The effectiveness of this approach is apparent in the study: researchers found that gender, age, native language and level of education have no statistically significant bearing on participants’ progress.

The 2016 Babbel Efficacy Study can be found here.

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Bilinguals are more attractive, say 68% of English Canadians: Babbel

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 29, 2016 by itnerd

Almost 70% of English Canadians think that speaking a foreign language makes a person more attractive, according to a new survey by Babbel. The leading language learning app polled English Canadians on their perception of languages. The survey also revealed that not only is French considered the most useful second language, but also that it makes a person seem cleverer.

Although Canada is increasingly diversified linguistically, it may not come as a surprise that 47 percent of English Canadians think French is the most useful foreign language, followed by Spanish (43 percent) and German (5 percent). A lot of business is conducted between Quebec and English Canada and being bilingual definitely helps when working with colleagues or different companies; not to mention it is an attractive skill set to have as it’s a sign of experience and education.

In addition to identifying French as the most useful foreign language, 41 percent of English Canadians believe that French as a second language makes people seem cleverer. German (18 percent) and Spanish (16 percent) came in second and third place.

Notable survey findings also include:

  1. Exaggeration of language skills: 14 percent of English Canadians have exaggerated their language skills on a resume.
  2. Hardest to learn: The top five hardest languages to learn according to English Canadians are Russian (33 percent), German (14 percent), Indonesian (13 percent), Turkish (10 percent) and French (9 percent).
  3. Easiest to learn: The easiest languages to learn are Spanish (37 percent), French (34 percent), Italian (12 percent), German (9 percent) and Dutch 92 percent).
  4. Language barriers: 21 percent of English Canadians have decided to not visit a country because they don’t speak the language.

The survey was answered by more than 2,000 Canadian Babbel users; more than 700 from English Canada. The survey was conducted during spring 2016.

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