Speakeasy

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Inspiration

While planning for our exchange semesters, I looked through the internet for resources to learn our destination's respective languages. We quickly found out that although there were many books, articles and lessons on theoretical concepts, there were not many on the more practical aspects, like speaking. We wanted to practice our speaking skills, but found it inconvenient and hard to find a study partner. We wanted to build some easy, and useful to us, as future exchange students, but to the whole language learning community.

What it does

Speakeasy is a platform that allows users to practice their speaking skills in various languages, like English, French (and Korean if we had 3 more hours!). With machine learning, our users can engage in natural conversation with an AI. Users can choose between different topics ranging from increasing difficulty to help guide and stimulate the conversation. Topics include food, sports, passions. Our system keeps track and analyses the conversation for grammatical and syntactical mistakes. At the end of a conversation, Speakeasy builds out an error log and provides feedback on how it went.

How we built it

Front-end was built with NextJS, ChakraUI and is deployed on Vercel. Backend was built with Express and Node and is deployed on GCP. We use the OpenAPI GPT-3 to provide natural conversation responses, and the LanguageTool API to analyse the specifics of the language.

Challenges we ran into

Learning curve of React. Use of Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech conversion Libraries. Also some issues related to personal workstation setups.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built something functional. The first sentence we heard from our AI was "I don't want to be friends. You are a stranger". And that was the happiest moment of the night

We deployed something practical that we would realistically use if the idea was more refined. We're happy with how the idea turned out.

What we learned

React, NextJs and Chakra stack. How to prototype, prioritize and plan out features.

What's next for Speakeasy

More language support. Our vision is that Speakeasy becomes the leading platform for language speaking. More functionalities like "Explain a topic", or even speaking lessons. Improved error logs. More curated error logs. More personalized error matching. Gameification: Add a point system, Loot crates O_O?, NFTs? O_O Faster processing.

Built With

• chakraui
• express.js
• nextjs
• node.js
• openai
• react