New Delhi, Oct 20 (IANS) Google has announced a new feature in Search for select countries, including India, that will help the users practice speaking and improve their language skills.

Within the next few days, Android users in Argentina, Colombia, India (Hindi), Indonesia, Mexico, and Venezuela can get even more language support from Google through interactive speaking practice in English.

The feature will expand to more countries and languages in the future. 

“Now, learners translating to or from English on their Android phones will find a new English speaking practice experience with personalized feedback,” the company said in a statement.

With the new feature, learners are presented with real-life prompts and then form their own spoken answers using a provided vocabulary word. 

They engage in practice sessions of 3-5 minutes, getting personalized feedback and the option to sign up for daily reminders to keep practicing. 

The company has partnered with linguists, teachers, and pedagogical experts to create a speaking practice experience that is effective and motivating. 

“Learners practice vocabulary in authentic contexts, and material is repeated over dynamic intervals to increase retention — approaches that are known to be effective in helping learners become confident speakers,” said Google.

The company said it is working with several language learning partners to surface content they are helping create and to connect them with learners around the world. 

“We look forward to expanding this programme further and working with any interested partner,” it added.

The key technology piece that enables this functionality is a novel deep learning model developed in collaboration with the Google Translate team, called Deep Aligner.