Multimodal: Learning with the sound ON

“The more senses are employed in the learning process, the more pathways there are for the signal to reach the brain. Therefore, the relevant parts of the brain are activated more and they also interact with each other more. With that, the likelihood of new information being remembered increases.”[1] (translation: Vojtěch Janda)

It’s clear that expanding your learning experience with an audio component will help you progress more efficiently. Learning styles vary, as does what learning style is preferred by individual students. It’s not uncommon for people to prefer a combination of two or three. What this means is that teachers who go the extra mile to help students struggling with the usual read/write presentation and include visual and audio cues — or, with some creativity put in, even kinesthetic ones — are more successful in the end.[2] That’s why many learning apps — including Engramo English, of course — have their users use more than just their eyes. There are differences in how the philosophy is implemented, though. Let’s take a tour of some apps’ use of sound.

Duolingo

The global phenomenon with the now-famous owl mascot automatically plays recordings of sentences in some — but not all — exercise types, with recordings of individual words being played on request by tapping or pressing-and-holding (or by clicking with the mouse on the computer). In 2020, Duolingo started replacing synthesised speech with recordings of real speakers. There are also exercises in which users actively practise by speaking, though those have long been criticised for their user speech recognition issues.

Babbel

Another big name in the language app market, Babbel also features sentence recordings for their exercises as well as listening and speaking (repeat-after-recording) exercises. It’s important, especially in the latter case, to note that the recordings are of real speakers.

Engramo English

This ambitious European startup knows the importance of audio in learning too. For now (early 2021), it uses a combination of synthesised speech and native speaker recordings, but it’s good to know that the amount of human speech in Engramo is growing rapidly. The Engramo Team is well aware that having a template to follow in practising not only pronunciation but rhythm and melody as well, is extremely important. Recordings are available for all sentences across all exercise types but the real kicker is that in Engramo English there are explanations and reasonings behind each and every correct answer and these have been recorded by real native speakers as well. This gives users the opportunity to basically listen to actual grammar lessons cut up into small, digestible chunks. Perceiving them with two senses instead of one helps to store them in memory more effectively.

References

[1] Zelinková, O. 2005. Cizí jazyky a specifické poruchy učení. Havlíčkův Brod: TOBIÁŠ. ISBN 80–7311–022–9

[2] Fleming, N.D. 1995. I’m different; not dumb. Modes of presentation (VARK) in the tertiary classroom. In Zelmer, A. (ed.): Research and Development in Higher Education, Proceedings of the 1995 Annual Conference of the Higher Education and Research Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA). Volume 18. Sydney: HERDSA. pp. 308–313