How to contribute to the english.best platform

In January, we will start adding new features that will allow you to contribute to the platform while earning a share of its overall future value. The new version will include voice recordings of our most popular phrases and sentences, as well as our dictionary entries. Here are some of the ways you can contribute to it:

  • Add more example sentences to dictionary entries (from single questions and forum topics)

  • Add “favorite” function to personal account (users can tag sample sentences “favorite”, “idiom”, “strong collocation”, “false friend”, “homophone”, etc and they can add translations which they can also request a review on

  • Add audio recordings and definitions to dictionary entries

  • Similar sounding words in your language (for example, the English word ‘dosh’ sounds a bit like the Russian word “дождь”), words that rhyme (bit, fit, kit – borrow, tomorrow, sorrow…)

  • For professionals like @EnglishwithLiz, @Arinker, @NearlyNapping, @Alan, @Anglophile, @JadeJoddle @Masme, @Andrea, you might want to evaluate how learners like the following ones speak English:


As you can see, there are so many people who want feedback on their speaking because they are unsure and maybe even afraid of sounding unnatural. When we encourage them to keep practicing their speaking skills, we help them build their confidence, which in turn encourages them to unleash their creativity and contribute to the project.

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What a selection of sound clips! My first thoughts are that if learners want a helpful evaluation, that can be undertaken quickly, then perhaps a standard text for them to read would be helpful, together with a structured scorecard for clarity, intonation etc. They can then compare with each other which should encourage further learning and development.

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Yes Liz, you are right, we should create some kind of guideline on how to evaluate a person’s speaking skills using criterea such as

  • How easy is the recording to understand overall?
  • Does the speaker pronounce all consonants correctly (voiced vs voiceless, fricative, etc.)?
  • Does the speaker pronounce all vowal sounds correctly? (length, diphtongs, etc.)?
  • Does the speaker stress all syllables correctly?

In addition we can evaluate such aspects as pitch, intonation, clarity, motivation, etc.

In addition to English we should encourage our learners to share voice recordings in other languages as well, I’ve started here:

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Any further breakthrough here, Torsten?

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Hi Lawrence, we launched the new version of the site a few days ago and are in the process of fixing some issues before we start adding the planned new features.

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Torsten, it looks really beautiful.
When are you going to populate the existing data on to the new one?
How do you rate the top winners of the week? What are the criteria?
What actually do you mean by private coach?
I find that directions were not given at the top of exercises.

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Hi Lawrence, thanks so much for keeping an eye on the project. Your feedback and questions are very useful for our Softvoya team. We’ve compiled a list of issues that need to be resolved with the current release, and I think we’ll be able to get most of them done by the end of next week, so we can then move on to adding new features. All of the items you mentioned are on our list, so please check back in the second week of January. I will keep you posted…

Happy New Year :wink:

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Thank you, Torsten. I’ll keep a watch on the progress.

Wish you and yours a better new year this time with very few restrictions!

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