Babilala: English for Kids

What is Babilala app?

Babilala has won awards in its home country of Vietnam for its quality and approach to helping children aged 3 to 8 learn English as an additional language. There is no reason why kids worldwide preparing to unlock the opportunities that speaking English offers should not find Babilala a practical and fun way to support their learning.

It structures its lessons in the following way: study, listen, practise, karaoke, and report. Learners are encouraged to use the app for ten minutes each day to develop their skills.

There is a wide variety of activities that cover different skills. Kids will identify written words, listen to them, practise their pronunciation, and write English-language letters.

The activities include minigames, audiobooks, songs, videos, animations, and combinations of these working together as a single activity. The app tracks the content that kids have covered and how they have progressed, collating the data into reports that are easy to understand.

What we love about Babilala app.

Babilala is an app for kids to learn to speak English, and it focuses on its target audience well. The look and feel of the app is very child-friendly. Its use of native speakers in videos, colourful learning games, and its little-and-often approach to learning are perfect for young language learners.

Its videos use a clever mix of animation and live-action, which works well and looks superb. They also incorporate interactive elements to ensure that kids keep their attention on the video. These aren’t just restricted to screen taps but will also get kids to pronounce words that the app will analyse and rate for clarity and accuracy.

Babilala asks learners for ten minutes of daily practice, which is within the capability of most kids and will yield results.

Language-learning apps that employ voice recognition, like Babilala, have some key advantages over those that do not. Kids using Babilala can practise speaking and get feedback whenever they choose, not just when somebody with knowledge of the target language is ready to listen.

Shy kids can also develop their confidence by getting feedback from the app rather than making mistakes in front of another person.

Babilala recognises, whereas some apps do not, that learning languages is easier with visual support, especially when the target language uses sounds that the learner’s native tongue does not. Babilala’s videos include zoomed-in sections where they focus on the speaker’s mouth, which gives a good example of the muscle movements needed to make the sound.

What skills does it teach?

Babilala is for kids who are learning English as an additional language. Its learning content covers more than 3,000 words.

Babilala adheres to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) standard so that kids can learn English and understand their progress.

What age is it appropriate for?

Babilala’s developers have designed the app to appeal to kids between the ages of 3 and 8. Obviously, learning an additional language is not tied to kids’ ages. However, the learning resources that they use need to appeal to them, which Babilala will.

Is Babilala app easy to use?

Once you have overcome the unexpected challenge of setting the app’s interface to your child’s native language from its default Vietnamese, the app is easy to use.

Navigating through the lessons is easy for kids, and the app’s reporting features are clear for parents and teachers.

The app lets kids return to favourite lessons for more practise, and they can filter the collection into videos and songs, audio and storybooks, and games.

How will students benefit?

Kids respond well to learning when it only takes up a short time each day, and Babilala keeps its sessions confined to about ten minutes. It combines this with video content that looks as good as that shown on mainstream television but contains interactivity and effective practice. Many kids will love the chance to do some karaoke with the app’s custom-produced songs.

Kids also get to see their reports to see how they are progressing, and the app awards incentives like stickers to keep them motivated and reward their effort.

How will parents and teachers benefit?

Babilala’s reporting features are excellent and give a great breakdown of how kids have progressed. If parents or teachers don’t feel that their own pronunciation is clear enough, the reports also include the option of playing back the keywords taught in each lesson so that they can remind kids or work with them in support.

What can Babilala app improve on?

Babilala’s English-language FAQ section leads to a broken web link. The app should have a manual, flag-based language selection right at the start of the user journey so that it is not dependent on guessing and translating for non-Vietnamese speakers.

Accessing the app’s reports takes parents and teachers to their device’s web browser. As this is web-based, making the reports accessible to desktop computers could make it easier for parents and teachers to access, record and use the data.

Good to know

Babilala’s voice recognition worked effectively throughout this review, but the user experience can vary in this regard. Your device’s microphone quality, the learner’s environmental acoustics, and accents can cause problems for all apps that use voice recognition.

Babilala pulls in content as it is needed rather than front-loading it. This ensures that the app does not take up more storage space than it needs but can build in a delay between the time a learner begins and when they can play. Obviously, it also requires an internet connection.

The app has a tutor option, but this only leads to a message that the feature is under development.

How much does Babilala app cost?

Babilala is a free download on both iOS and Android devices. This free version has a limited feature set but is enough for kids to make a start and for you to decide whether to pay for the whole app.

You can use the app across multiple devices by subscribing directly with the app’s publisher. You will then have a Babilala account that will work on iOS and Android devices.

Is Babilala app safe to use?

The app asks for permission to track the user’s location. This does not seem to provide any functionality for the user, and it is difficult to see why it is requested. If it is for language detection, this is a flawed approach as geography and language are not necessarily linked.

The GDPR legislation of Europe and the UK requires that apps ask for a minimal amount of data to function.

Overall rating of the app.

Babilala has excellent content and is beautifully made, but the challenge of getting set up, caused by the app’s inelegant handling of the user-interface language, will be a source of considerable frustration for many users.

However, once you get the app ready, it works very well. Its content goes a step further than many other EAL apps for kids. Others might have animation or live content, but Babilala’s merging of both and built-in interactivity give it another dimension of entertainment. Keeping kids entertained as they learn is no bad thing.

Babilala’s content and learning approach are excellent, but the language default when first using the app and the request for the user’s location just hold it back from the fifth star in this review. Babilala is still an app very much worth considering, though.

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You can download Babilala: English for Kids on your iOS or Android devices from the app stores. Download the Babilala: English for Kids app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.