The Sylvi Method

If you haven't read about why we built Sylvi, start there:

600 days. Zero coffees. →

Start by talking

Hey, Tom here! I built Sylvi for my girlfriend, Amy, who was desperate to speak French and this is how the app works.

The fastest way to get better at speaking a language is to actually speak it. I know that sounds blatantly obvious, but think about how most language apps actually work - you tap, you swipe, you match words to pictures, you maybe repeat a sentence or two. You do everything except have a conversation.

On Sylvi, you chat with penpals. Real conversations in your target language about normal life - what you're doing this weekend, how work's going, whether you watched the match last night.

These aren't scripted scenarios or role-plays. They're the kind of chats you'd actually have with your friends, which is the whole point because that's the exact skill you need to develop. Not how to perform "ordering at a restaurant" from a pre-rehearsed script, but the ability to just say what you're thinking in real time.

Sylvi catches everything

While you're chatting away, Sylvi is analysing every single message you send. And she's not just checking grammar - she's looking at the stuff you'd never catch yourself.

Here's an example that I sent to my penpal:

"J'ai joué au foot ce soir et j'ai reçu le joueur du jour. Du coup, je suis heureuse."

Most people (adept at French) wouldn't see anything wrong with that, however:

"Reçu" means received, but you didn't receive player of the day - you were chosen. The word you want is "élu." It's a subtle thing but it's the difference between sounding like a textbook and sounding like a person (I wasn’t actually man of the match, but Sylvi doesn’t need to know that).

This is the kind of correction you get from a really good human tutor. Not just "wrong word, here's the right one" but why it matters, what it says about how you're thinking in the language, and what a native speaker would actually say instead.

Sylvi does this on every message, in every conversation - she’s pretty regimented.

Patterns, not just mistakes

Individual corrections are useful but where things get really interesting is when Sylvi starts spotting patterns across your conversations over time.

This user kept using "environ" to mean "about" as in "talk about work." But in French, "environ" only means approximately - if you want "about" in the topic sense, you need "de." It's a classic English-brain error and it was showing up across multiple chats consistently.

A grammar checker would never flag this because each individual sentence is technically understandable. A human tutor might catch it after a few sessions if they're paying close attention. Sylvi catches it because she's taking note of everything you say.

These are the mistakes you don't know you're making. And they're usually the ones that matter most.

Now she teaches you to fix them

This is the part that brings everything together.

It's one thing for Sylvi to tell you that you keep getting your prepositions wrong. It's another for her to actually do something about it. So she does.

When Sylvi identifies a pattern or a recurring weak spot, she generates lessons targeting exactly that - built on the fly, from your actual mistakes, specific to you. Nobody else using Sylvi is getting the same lesson because nobody else is making the same mistakes in the same way.

If she's noticed you're confusing "de," "à," and "pendant," she'll build exercises that drill those specific prepositions in contexts similar to the ones where you've been getting them wrong. And then you go back into conversation with your penpals and use them for real.

Away with generic grammar modules you’ve done since Year 8. That's a tutor who noticed something, designed a lesson for you, taught it, and then watched to see if it stuck.

How it all fits together

You chat every day. Sylvi watches everything, catches every mistake, spots your patterns, builds lessons around your weak spots, and sends you back into conversation to apply what you've learned. Every week she tells you exactly where you are and what to work on next. The whole thing is built around you - your mistakes, your progress, your path to fluency.

She's a brilliant tutor who never misses a thing, is available every day, and costs a fraction of what a human would.

That's the method.

Tom x