Speak is launching a winter update that focuses on measurable results and practical speaking practice. New features include the addition of a new fluency metric, Speak Level, as well as a home screen redesign that helps learners focus on next actions, voice-first lesson content, even more natural and realistic role-plays in lessons, and streak tools to help them maintain consistent study habits.
What’s New in Speak’s Winter Update and Home Screen
The centerpiece of the update is a redesigned home screen that purports to help you cut through the noise. Instead of the long lesson list, Speak moves your progress to the front and center, along with the next thing you can do now — a pattern that learning science often correlates with higher engagement and less dropout.
Speak Level is the new measure of skill we’ve developed to bring even more granular insight into how much you know and where your weak spots are.
The measure, which the company says factors in multiple signals to address three practical questions — what you know, how confident you can be about what you produce, and what to tackle next — will also account for opinion variance from different raters going forward. Initial access is being made available to English learners outside the country, with plans for more widespread availability after an initial wave.
The release also introduces voice-first lessons and vocabulary practice tools. Role-plays are being reshaped in order to sound more authentic and less rehearsed — more like the typical exchanges of a particular language, for example: ordering food, getting directions, or negotiating a timetable — exchanges that require turn-taking and repair strategies rather than perfectly correct grammar.
Why a Fluency Metric Matters for Real Proficiency
Lots of consumer apps measure learning through streaks and completed lessons, which can get users to log in every day but don’t necessarily translate to true proficiency. Frameworks such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and guidance from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages focus on communicative competence: spontaneous production, accuracy under pressure, and recovering when you don’t know a word.
A well-designed measure of fluency can connect everyday drills to those outcomes. And if Speak Level is tracking signals like pronunciation precision, how wide the vocabulary actually stretches, time lag before responses, and error correction, students are developing a much more reliable picture of being ready to go traveling/working/taking exams. Just as important, a metric that indicates what to learn next can help reduce wheel-spinning and plateaus by nudging learners into the right zone of challenge.
Voice-first Lessons Focus on Real Conversation Skills
Speak has always leaned into speaking, and the winter update doubles down. Voice-first lessons promote production from the initial tap, and voice recognition rates responses with prompts for correction. When feedback is timely, targeted, and forgiving, learners tend to practice more and learn faster — something that traditional language teachers have known for generations, and which modern technology like automatic speech recognition can now help deliver at scale.
The revamped role-plays are dispensing with strict scripts. That matters, because that’s how talk goes in real life: you miss a word, you rephrase yourself, you clarify what you said, and just keep right on going. By minimizing prewritten material and allowing for flexible response, Speak’s simulations can provide a more accurate representation of pragmatics, including discourse markers glossed over in textbooks. Handling a restaurant mix-up (“Actually, I ordered the vegetarian option”) or other forms of confrontation involves specific politeness strategies and corrective language that learners are unlikely to get through multiple choice alone.
Smarter Streaks, Protections, and Improved Reviews
Consistency leads to results, but life interferes. Speak is throwing in unit refresher courses to help you get back up to speed when returning after a hiatus, along with the option for streak pause and repair for those worried about losing long-running records. Bite-sized vocabulary sessions fill the interstitial minutes and keep spaced repetition humming when you can’t do a whole lesson.
These inclusions reflect best practices we know from the field of language teaching: retrieval practice, spaced review, and interleaving. Small, spaced exposures strengthen long-term memory, and on-point refreshers limit relearning overhead. In addition to the home screen orientation, these new tools should help learners stay in the productive struggle zone more often, where progress starts to compound.
Availability Timeline and What Learners Can Expect
The winter update starts rolling out in-app, with Speak Level opening up to English learners outside of the launch markets at first, and eventually for all as the system develops. It’s joining new vocabulary practice features and streak management tools, as well as the home screen refresh, voice-first lessons, and updated role-plays.
For novices who want a feel for the approach, Speak offers a seven-day free trial. The update makes the app a better fit for learners who care about measuring what matters most — how well they can actually speak — through clearer progress tracking and conversation-first practice.
