Learning Pronunciation in Elsa Speak

Let it goooooo, let it goooooo!

Now that’s out of my system, here’s a review of ELSA Speak. It’s an app that teaches you to ‘pronounce English like an American through real-world conversations’. It’s a great use of AI in language learning – it really is amazing what some of these apps can do now!

With ELSA Speak you can work through a wide range of activities that mainly focus on the individual sounds of English. Most activities involve recording yourself saying a word or phrase. The phrases are topically related (introductions, family, business, food, and drink, etc) so not only can you improve your pronunciation, but you can also learn phrases that are relevant to your own context. Probably the most interesting aspect of this is that it highlights areas that need improvement. When I ran the test for instance on the Android device, I was told that I could improve my pronunciation of voiced and unvoiced, the letter, ending sounds, and w/v.