Google is taking aim at Duolingo with a new Google Search feature designed to help people practice and improve their English speaking skills.
Search will be rolling out to Android devices in Argentina, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Venezuela over the next few days, with more countries and languages coming in the future. The new feature will make translation interactive for language learners. Will provide speaking practice. From English, Google writes in a blog post.
“Google Search is already a valuable tool for language learners, providing translations, definitions, and other resources for improving vocabulary,” the post reads. The post is attributed to Google Research Director Christian Plasman and Product Manager Katya Cox. “Now, learners who translate to or from English on their Android phones will have a new practice speaking English with personalized feedback.”
The new search experience provides prompts to users and asks them to speak the answer using a given vocabulary word. During each practice session, which lasts 3 to 5 minutes, Search provides personalized feedback – and the option to sign up for daily reminders to continue practicing and advance to the next level of difficulty.
How personalized is it, really? Well, according to Google, the experience gives Meaning Feedback – Reflects whether a response was relevant to a given question and understandable to the theoretical conversation partner. It also recommends areas where grammar could be improved, and, to give concrete suggestions for alternative ways to respond, provides a set of example answers at different levels of language complexity.
During a practice session, learners can tap on any word they don’t understand and see a translation that considers that word in context.
Plageman and Cox write, “Designed to be used with other learning services and resources like personal tutoring, mobile apps, and classes, the new speaking practice feature on Google Search is yet another tool to aid learners on their journey.” Is.”
Google says these features require a great deal of AI and machine learning engineering.
For example, the Google Translate team had to develop a model, Deep Aligner, to combine different words that generate meaning to suggest translations. Other research groups at Google adapted the grammar correction model to text to work on speech transcription, especially for users with accented speech. Google Research teams created a separate model to power the semantic feedback component of the experience. And the same teams created another model to predict the complexity of a sentence, phrase or individual word in order to “challenge learners appropriately for their ability level.”
Google says it recruited “linguists, teachers, and ESL/EFL educational experts” to create the Search language learning experience, combining human-expert content with the addition of content — like prompts, “focus” words, and examples. Answer: Received. Built with AI assistance and in-house “humans” review,
Google says other, unnamed language learning partners also participated — helping to surface the content they’re creating with learners. And Google plans to expand the program to additional partners in the future.
Plajman and Cox added, “We look forward to expanding into more countries and languages in the future and starting to offer partner practice content soon.” “With these latest updates, which will be released over the next few days, Google Search becomes even more useful.”
One might wonder what Google’s end game could be with the rollout of a new AI-powered language learning experience for Search. Certainly, this will boost – or, hypothetically, could increase – engagement. But does this mean laying the groundwork for a true challenger to language learning apps like Duolingo, Memrise, and Babbel?
The language of the blog post suggests that this is not the case. However, given the profits to be made in the broader field of language education, it is difficult to say for sure. (Incidentally, Duolingo stock is down slightly (0.63%) today.)
It’s worth noting that Google has dabbled in language learning and education tools before, so this isn’t unprecedented. In 2019, the tech giant launched a module that teaches search users the correct way to say a word and provides instant feedback on the page.
It will be interesting to see where Google takes its current and past efforts, whether it is bent on making profits or not. Or where this does not happen. Years passed between the company’s final release and the public debut of the new set of language learning tools.
This time, Google’s promising expansion is getting off the ground early — and soon. But like everything else, development plans will likely depend on the popularity (or lack thereof) of the service.
