Instant feedback on speaking in class for everyone

The Final!

I’ve spent many hours over the last six/eight months looking at nearly eighty ways to use Speech to Text apps and webpages to help students get feedback in class on their speaking and suggestions on how to upgrade their performance prior to redoing the task.

Little by little I have reduced the candidates down to a dozen, then four and now it’s The Final!

·         https://soundtype.ai/en 

·         https://www.notta.ai/en    

But this is not sport and there doesn’t have to be a winner: I think either of these apps would be perfect for use by students in and out of class to help them improve their speaking.

Here you can read my instructions for how language learners can use the two best apps:

SoundType AI Instructions                                    NottaAI Instructions

Both apps produce very accurate transcriptions in a minute or two for a wide range of languages. They both allow at least eight minutes of transcription per recording ( longer than 99.9% of my students’ recordings.) Both also offer a generous monthly allowance of recording time of at least two hours, which is way beyond even my keenest students’ output.

The two apps are simple for learners to use to:

• Record themselves
• Get transcripts quickly
• Listen back, if needed
• Edit out mistakes in the transcripts
• Copy and paste transcripts into AI to get feedback and feedforward

The apps don’t require the very latest version of the Android and iOS operating systems, so most students will be able to use them on either system:

• Android 7.0 and up
• iPhone iOS 12.1 or later
• One even works on Apple watches!!

How to use these apps:

It is possible for half the students or even more to be recording themselves at the same time and if they hold their phones as they do normally, the transcriptions will still work. Earphones are essential if students are going to listen to their performances. I haven’t been in a position to test how the time needed to get transcriptions is affected by having ten or twenty students doing it at the same time, but with two it makes no difference.

If you are wondering how it’s possible to get so many students speaking at the same time, here are some suggestions:

·     Communicatively with students working in pairs (main speaker records themselves)

o   retelling a story the other doesn’t know

o   describing a picture or video the other can’t see

o   being interviewed by other with questions they can’t see

·      As an exercise (everyone recording themselves)

o   reading a text aloud

o   giving the answers to a grammar exercise

o   doing a pronunciation exercise

o   describing a series of pictures that tell a story

What can the teacher do to help?

•    Giving clear instructions
•    Checking students are following these
•     Monitoring
•     Providing help when required (Pause recording)
•     Suggesting prompts for the AI part
•     Encouraging student to take notes on emergent language suggested by AI
•     Getting students to share these notes in class from time to time
•      Asking for task repetition and recording again
•      Offering students the choice of which of their recordings will be used for continuous assessment every week/fortnight/month/term

What will be the effect?

According to some theorists learners need between 12 and 20 encounters with a new word to begin to use it themselves. Undoubtedly, this applies to corrections as well, so the difference between for and since will not be learnt by many after just one correction. Emergent language must also be subject to the same requirements as new vocabulary, but fortunately the human brain will notice further encounters of all new language after the first ‘noticing’ much more easily and so for all common language the 12 to 20 exposures can come relatively quickly if the learner is doing extensive reading or extensive listening/watching or living in the country where the language is spoken.

Less frequently encountered language may require the use of some study techniques and here notes taken will be essential as a starting point.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the two runners-up:

·         https://app.transkriptor.com

·         https://app.fireflies.ai

Here you can read my instructions for how language learners can use these two apps:

Transkriptor Instructions                                        FirefliesAI Instructions

Transkriptor only loses a place in the final because they have introduced a new limit for ‘Trial accounts’ that makes use by students more complicated:

According to Transkriptor's Help desk, "With the trial account, we offer you 90 minutes of free transcription, each file's transcription output is limited to 80% of the file duration, up to 7 minutes. Transcription of the files longer than 7 minutes would be limited to 5:36 minutes in the trial period.

To get round this new restriction, simply leave the recording on for 25% longer than you need!

 

Fireflies lost its place as well because of a different problem that complicates student use unnecessarily. The problem here is that there is no way to edit transcripts in the app, although of course this can be done after it has been exported. But that is where the problem gets even worse as the process involves four steps rather than one and the instructions are different for Android phones and iPads/iPhones.