Practice vocabulary hands-free: the app speaks, you answer

How hands-free mode works

• The app says a word from your dictionary, in the language you choose to train from.
• You answer out loud in the other language. Speech recognition hears you, and the answer is checked against your translation.
• A correct answer is confirmed and the next word follows. A wrong one gets a 'try again', and the word is spoken once more.
• One voice command keeps your hands free: say 'pass' to hear the answer and move on to the next word. A pass counts as a mistake, so the word comes back soon.
• Every answer feeds the same spaced repetition schedule as typed training, so the evening walk and the morning desk session are one and the same course.

Where it fits

On a walk, on the bus or the train, while cooking or folding laundry, in the queue. With earbuds in, nobody around hears the words, and a session of twenty words fits between two stops. If you drive, keep your attention on the road and treat it like a radio programme you answer.

The words come from your own dictionary, so you practice what you actually need, and the voice you hear is a natural one for the language you learn, so the pronunciation you copy is worth copying.

Listen mode: learning by ear without a microphone

When you cannot speak out loud, the Listen mode in the Learn tab turns your words into a playlist: a word, a pause for you to recall the translation, then the translation. You choose the direction, the length of the pauses and whether the list is shuffled, and play it with the screen off, like a podcast made of your own words.

The clips can be saved on the device, as many as your plan allows, so a playlist you built at home plays on the metro without a connection.

Recognition quality and allowances

Hands-free mode uses a premium speech recognition service for accuracy across all 17 languages, and every plan includes a monthly allowance of it: half an hour on the free plan, several times more on the paid plans, which then continue without a limit on a basic, less accurate recognition engine. Recognition needs an internet connection; a saved playlist does not.

Pronunciation practice on the side

Hands-free is also the closest thing to a conversation you can have alone: you hear the word pronounced correctly, and you have to say the translation clearly enough to be understood. Auto-speak in regular training does the first half of that: it pronounces every new word as it appears, while you type the answer.