Babbel

Reviewed by

Kathy YuCarnegie Mellon

Product at a Glance

GENERAL DESCRIPTION (667)

Babbel is an web-based, mobile and tablet app, and Apple Watch language learning platform, developed by Lesson Nine GmbH in 2007 in Berlin, Germany. It follows the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The focus of this platform is to deliver content to fill the crevices of time each day, rather than have the user sit down for two to three hours at a time, so that it fits into the user’s everyday life. Progress is synced across all platforms.

For the free version, the first lesson is free for every course. The platforms are the same in content, with the amount displayed per page depending on the size of the device. The website has all the languages, but the mobile app has the option of downloading a separate app per language or one with all languages.

Product Type Web and Mobile App Resource, Tutorial, Assessment

Language(s): Evaluated for Turkish, but also offers Dutch, Danish, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Spanish.

Level Beginning, Low Intermediate

Activities Fill-in exercises, interactivity, pronunciation, dialog repetition, listening comprehension, vocabulary learning, reading, multiple-choice

Media Format: Cross-platform web application, iOS, Android, and Window apps

Operating System(s): Computer: All that have an internet browserMobile Device: All that have an internet browser

Hardware Requirements: PC, Mobile, smartphone, Apple Watch, Tablet;2 GB RAM, 4 GB HD, RGB Color;Microphone;

Supplementary Software N/a

Documentation Online FAQ: https://babbel.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

Price:

Single User: 1 month ($12.95/mth), 3 months ($8.95/mth), 6 months ($7.45/mth), 12 months ($6.95/mth) Site License: CopyrightDistribution: Lesson Nine GmbHRights: http://about.babbel.com/en/terms/

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https://babbel.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

Babbel won the Europas in 2014 in the category “Best Education Startup”, which is Europe’s biggest technology startup conference. It also won Best of Mobile 2014 at the Global Mobile Awards by the Mobile World Congress for its innovative mobile content delivery methods.

Babbel’s name is inspired by the biblical Tower of Babel, where the builders were scattered all over the earth due to a breakdown in a common language .

Summary of Features Babbel’s course material is broken into small blocks that centered around everyday life, focusing mainly on vocabulary and having grammar built off of that. The courses are broken up into five categories: New (the newest Turkish courses), Beginner’s Courses, Grammar, Specials (topical units), and Words and Sentences. Examples from Words and Sentences are The 100 Important Words, Body, Relationships, and Food and Drinks.

Each unit has reading, writing, listening, and speaking, but speaking is only possible if the device’s microphone is activated. The units are made up of new vocabulary words, grammar instruction, and review and drilling of previously learned materials. At the end of each lesson, the user is given a numerical grade, which can be seen on the certificates earned for each course that also indicate what topics have been mastered with Babbel.

All the vocabulary that is learned from every course is compiled in the Review Manager, which allows the user to cycle through the vocabulary, create personal lists, and Babbel gives feedback on whether a word has been learned adequately.

Figure 1: VocabularyHardware Unit in Specials

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The initial screen of every course is three or four words that is read by the computer and studied at a glance by the user. If the microphone is activated, the screen has an additional feature where you repeat the word after the computer and Babbel analyzes it for adequate pronunciation before moving onto the next word. The user is then tested on these by given some scrambled letters, asked to type it in the correct order. If the order of the letters is incorrect, it will flash red and the student will not earn any points. If correct, it will flash green and the student will gain points. These small sets of 3-4 words occur about twice in each course.

Figure 2: End-of-course Vocabulary AssessmentHardware Unit in Specials

At the end of every course, there is a screen where all the words learned in that course will be tested by presenting the Turkish word, at the same time the computer reading it aloud, and asking the user to click on the English equivalent. Points are accumulated by getting it right on the first try. 


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Figure 3: GrammarPossessives

In the Grammar section, there are lessons and exercises associated with the topic. The lesson is structured such that the students learn by example, instead of teaching the entire grammar structure immediately. The purpose is to see the consistency of Turkish grammar across many examples, infer the grammatical structure, and have it confirmed by filling in the blanks like in Figure 3. Sometimes, there are green icon symbols that allow the student to look at more information.

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Figure 4: Review ManagerAfter completion of Hardware course

The Review Manager at the very end is a bank of vocabulary words learned in the courses. It drills on these words, over and over again, using the principles of spaced repetition. The students can make their own personalized lists, but only from courses that he or she completed. Based on the amount of review and the number of times the student got it right, the Knowledge Level will increase. When it has reached six bars, the implication is the student has attained mastery of that word.

DocumentationThere is no physical manual. However, on the website, they have a very extensive FAQ. Here is the English link: https://babbel.zendesk.com/hc/en-us. You can also email or contact Babbel via their “Contact” tab. On the mobile app, there is a tab for “Help” where a request can immediately be sent directly from there. There is no FAQ on the app though.

EVALUATION

Technological Features (453)The website was very easy to sign up and register. You may use Facebook, Google+ login, or email address login. It sends a confirmation email and after clicking on it, leads you to a series of screens which allow you to have a free trial at a selected language. The mobile app is very easy to download, and syncs with the desktop app in the same way.

The mobile app and website had no delay at startup, loading videos, and screen and web page loading. For pronunciation, however, several tries were needed for the computer to register it

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because either 1) Babbel was not ready to accept the input 2) the user was not loud enough or 3) the user needed to over-enunciate for the computer to deem it passable. There were no crashes or stalls during the entire time of the evaluation.

Babbel is compatible across all computers and Apple, Window, and Android phones. The OS needs to be able to handle browsers that render HTML5 and CSS3. Some common examples would be Chrome, Safari 6, and Internet Explorer 10.

The interface of each screen for the website and mobile app was relatively simple and aesthetically pleasing, most of the time with a couple of pictures and words. Icons were intuitive. The mobile app was easier to navigate and had a cleaner organization than the website because the sidebar had less ambiguous options like “Home”, “Courses”, “Review”, and “Help”. The courses are numbered and shown in a list form for each category so the user can easily see all courses offered. On the other hand, the website has “People”, which could fit better in the “About Us” section, and the courses are organized such that you can only view one category at time, which takes extra clicks to find a specific one. Above all, the website and mobile app complement each other. The website has a comprehensive FAQ and the mobile app allows directly sending of help from the app. There’s no FAQ on the mobile app.

Pronunciation activities use the microphone if it’s activated and has active speech processing, although a bit unresponsive sometimes. There is immediate feedback after each student’s response to exercises, but it is not personalized, simply “correct” or “no”, with a vague explanation. Babbel keeps track of the score earned for each course and allows the student to take it again until a perfect score is attained. The Review Manager also keeps record of all the vocabulary the student has gone through and his or her mastery of it. Connectivity has been quite stable and sound is clear and the same across all devices. Graphics used for the courses and vocabulary are the same on all devices.

Activities (Procedure)The vocabulary presented in every course accurately does describe what Turkish people would use in everyday life. However, there is little vocabulary exercise beyond rote memorization. There is no sentence completion, writing a sentence with the new vocabulary, and no pronunciation practice after the initial screen, even for evaluation. When the vocabulary is first presented, it’s best to only have the English translation or a picture, instead of both, with respect to the Turkish word, because having information come in through two places causes cognitive overload (Clark, R. and Mayer, R, 2011). This is foregoing the “learner style” theory because simplicity is most clear for the user, rather than a myriad of options to accommodate for different styles. However, for the evaluation, only the English word was displayed, not in conjunction with a picture. It only appears after the student gets the answer correct. Although it’s not in parallel with how the vocabulary was displayed in the beginning, it follows principles of e-learning design where display simplicity is among the most important for the learner.

The grammar exercises unfortunately did not reinforce the grammar. In the attempt to deliver quick spurts of info, Babbel spliced up a grammar concept into bite-size pieces instead of as one cohesive whole. Although a student may be able to answer a grammar exercise, there is very little transfer because to the student, the exercises are disjoint pieces of answers to disjoint grammar lessons.

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For the Review Manager, although the cyclic nature of the words is very effective, the student cannot review the vocabulary by course. Instead, they must made a personalized list with the course words together in it. The Review Manager is an excellent way to track the student’s progress and evaluate mastery of the word in both topical and cross-topical settings.

Teacher Fit (Approach)Babbel’s approach is centered around delivering bite-size, contained pieces of information per screen so that the learner may squeeze in some language in the crevices of their daily schedules. Since Babbel is heavily learner-centered, the course material is delivered at the whim of the learner and is not flexible for modification.

For the instructor, Babbel is best used as a complement to a classroom lesson because it alone cannot ensure fluency, but only maintenance of what knowledge a student already has. The instructor may pick among the courses to what fits their current curriculum. Review Manager may be of most importance to the teachers because they can assign what words in the courses will be tested on. Although Babbel uses the microphone for pronunciation, it is only for helping in memorizing words and not so much for speaking accuracy. Teachers may also use Babbel as an opening activity in their classrooms to prepare the students’ minds for Turkish language, like pre-condition (Clark, R. and Mayer, R, 2011).

The linguistic accuracy of Turkish in Babbel is native level and the sociocultural representations of the vocabulary and expressions are equivalent to what a modern Turkish person would say and use. This is from Babbel’s claim of following CEFR and comparing with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACFTL).

Learner Fit (Design)

The linguistic level of the learner would be from beginning to low-intermediate, with respect to first-year university student learning Turkish. Since Turkish is a formulaic language and builds upon each concept like stepping stones, the learner should be able to smoothly transfer from one course to another. If they are struggling in one course, it is easy to go to the previous one and identify one’s weak concepts.

Babbel gives very quick feedback, incorporating colors and sounds associated with correctness or incorrectness. For vocabulary, a misspelling is immediately highlighted in red. For grammar exercises, since there is only two choices given per question, only when the user selects the correct answer is an explanation given. This feedback is simply a reiteration of the grammar concept that is being taught and does not give feedback as why the other choice is incorrect. Instructional guidance is given in green info icons scattered around the grammar lesson, where hovered over, more information is given. However, by the end of the lesson, the icons would have been already been selected by the computer in order to make a point at some time. Thus, all things programmed into the course would have been displayed at least a couple times before completion of a course.

There is no consideration of individual learner differences or different contexts, not even a diagnostic test to see where the learner currently is. The only option is at the beginning of the course, there is an option to toggle for fast and normal learners, where a fast learner can go through the course concepts more quickly or have more information displayed on one page.

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Learning styles are heavily independent, asynchronous learning, with inductive reasoning, since a lot of examples are given but little grammatical theory to back them up.

Babbel is centered around the individual and would not work well for a group. Learner has control over timing and order of courses, pace they can go through a course, and vocabulary review. There has been no published usability testing conducted with Babbel, as of the time of this evaluation.

SUMMARY

Babbel is a well-designed online and app language learning software with many appealing features, such as a clear user interface, bite-sized pieces of information, and cohesive organization of information. It’s best used as a supplement of a formal language course or for maintenance of a previous exposure to Turkish.

SCALED RATING(1 low - 5 high)

Implementation Possibilities: 4Pedagogical Features: 3.5Sociolinguistic Accuracy: 4 Use of Computer Capabilities: 4Ease of Use: 5Overall Evaluation: Value for Money: 4

REFERENCES

Clark, R. and Mayer, R. (2011). e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning, 3rd edition. New York: Pfeiffer.

www.babbel.com. Berlin, Germany Imprint 2007

ACFTL, http://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/actfl-proficiency-guidelines-2012/turkish. Alexandria, Virginia. 1967

PRODUCER CONTACT INFORMATION

Developer/distributor: ImprintName: Lesson Nine GmbHAddress: Bergmannstr. 5, 10961 BerlinPhone: +49 30779079600URL: info@babbel.com

REVIEWER’S BIODATA

Kathy Yu is a masters student at Carnegie Mellon, studying educational technology and applied learning science. Although she has a background in computer engineering, she has a keen interest in language acquisition technologies, discourse analysis, and text analytics. After graduation in August 2016, she hopes to find a position as a full-stack developer and learning

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http://www.babbel.comhttp://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/actfl-proficiency-guidelines-2012/turkish

engineer at a software company. Kathy learned English and Mandarin Chinese from growing up in America and spending holidays in China and recently added on Turkish after studying in Istanbul, Turkey for a gap year.

REVIEWER’S CONTACT INFORMATIONEmail: kathyu8@gmail.com

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