- There's this app, the service that was introduced to me by one of my students, and it's called ELSA Speak. The purpose of this is to help students who are learning English sound more native. So you go into the service, you pick out your native language, and then you select your level. I was told by that student that only advanced works and everything else doesn't work because the other levels don't work because it just says, Oh yeah, it was good. So apparently, only advanced works. We're going to take a look at it. I'm going to try to put on a bit of an accent and see, and then we're going to see how it is. I have not reviewed it before. So when I'm looking at this now, I'm looking at it for the first time, okay? I haven't done it. I haven't used it. This could be a disaster. I don't know.

We're going to see, okay? Let's pop open this app. I've got it on my phone here. I'm just going to hold it close to the mic. It's called Elsa Speak. Okay, so the interface here says Elsa Pro Upgrade. I've made a free account, but I haven't done anything else. I just didn't want to spend time doing that. So, I've made a free account here, and I can go to the settings, and I can change my profile, which includes my mother tongue. I can choose French, in which case I will have to try to speak with a French accent. It is not very easy for me. So, I chose Chinese as my mother language. Okay, so I'm going to try to use a bit of a Chinese accent just because I want to see, you know, how close it is. So, I'm not trying to make fun of the Chinese accent.

or any accent, okay? I'm just trying to see how it works. I'll do the, I'll try my best to do the Chinese accent, and then I will do my own accent, and I'll see if the score is different and how accurate this is. Get your personal learning plan. Okay, so you have to find your level, and I would assume that that means there's some sort of evaluation. So, let's do the evaluation. Obviously, I need to have good internet, a quiet place, and headphones, headphones, headphones. Can I do it without headphones? All right, let's just try it without headphones. If I need headphones, I'll get headphones. This summer, I will visit a new country with two of my best friends. This looks like I have one, two, three, four, like, like seven or eight. Okay, so I'm just going to go through these one by one. We will go sightseeing and stay at a resort by the ocean.

Okay. The weather will be very good; we look forward to swimming and sunbathing. They really trust me, I am not afraid but proud. Since I can speak English correctly and confidently, life is such an adventure and I am the star. All right, I've reached the end. Here we go. Okay, so I don't know if you guys are checking this out as well on your own phones with your own versions of this, but I'll tell you what I got. I got a score, okay? My score is 77%. Your level, intermediate. The troubled, 99%. Aspiration sounds like P, T, K, 98%. Okay. Soft and strong, 96, the L and the R confusion, 92%. W and V confusion, that's definitely what I made sure to do, 81%. The unstressed schwa sound, 75%. Here it's giving me a breakdown of the scores,

but it's not telling me, okay, you said this and you should say this. Maybe that's next. Overall score, 77. I guess that's, maybe feels about right. But I'm not sure what it means because I feel like I need some context, right? All right so, you sounded so good. Did I though, 77? If I sounded so good, why would I need this service. Finish, finishing this pronunciation test is a big achievement. Do you want to share it with your friends? No. Okay. Okay, now it's giving me an assessment test score. Okay, so I'm seeing This summer I will and then they have a red mark on V for visit, country with, they're having, they're giving me a red mark on the TH of with and let's see if I hit the play button what it's, what happens. This summer I will visit a new country with two of my best friends.

Okay, so it's giving me problems, which is kinda cool actually. - [Woman] This summer I will visit a new country with two of my best friends. - Okay, and then they give me how a native speaker would say it, so that's actually pretty cool. Now I'm seeing some of the text highlighted in yellow and some in red, and I guess the red maybe means it's a big problem area, whereas the yellow means that it's a small problem area. So let's see the second one here. I'm seeing the D and the T and the T have yellow, and then the red are the TH and the A, and then let's see what I said here, I got 83 on this one. We will go sightseeing and stay at a resort hub by the ocean. Okay, and then if I listen to this. - [Woman] We will go sightseeing and stay at a resort by the ocean. - We will go sightseeing and stay at a resort by the ocean.

Now I'm more impressed that they're giving me my sentences back to me, highlighting the problem sounds and giving me a native example, so that's actually pretty cool. I like that. Now I can see my learning plan. Okay, they've created basically modules for me, and they have certain scores from other users starting with the basic introduction of the schwa sound, which is the unstressed syllable. All right, so that's pretty cool. Now then you may be thinking, all right, well great, but if I'm good at this, I should be able to, once I get at a native level, get a hundred percent, does it work for that? And the answer is, I don't know. Why don't we see? Yeah, and I'll do it with my totally natural pronunciation as clear as I possibly can, and then we'll know. This summer I will visit a new country with two of my best friends.

We will go sightseeing and stay at a resort by the ocean. We will get to enjoy a nice room with a beautiful view of the ocean. The voice I have can now be heard. It makes a huge difference in my travels. That's a weird thing to say. That's very strange. The voice I have can now be heard. All right. Since I can speak English correctly and confidently, life is such an adventure, and I am the star. These examples are silly, all right? All right, so that's it, submit and continue. Okay, so. (laughter) Well, I have to say, I mean, I don't know if I should feel sad, but I did get a higher score, so this time I got a 97%. All right, and 97 is my score, and so I guess that means that, now I wonder, I was being extra clear, so I was actually putting space between words, speaking a little more slowly.

I wonder if I had read completely natively without any trying to help the app. I felt like I was trying to help the app understand me by speaking super clearly. I wonder if I would get a higher or lower score if I spoke like I would to any other native English speaker, totally relaxed and letting my words blend together. I expect I would probably get a lower score, but I'm not sure about that. Now I see, I got a 95 in the category of breath and breathe. I got an 89 in the category of short and long. Ouch, that's pretty low. All right. Well, if I'm not right, who's right? Any sounds 88, 87 in awe and an owl. All right so, yeah, there's always room for improvement. So if I keep working hard, I can get up to a 100%. Right now I'm at a 97, and I consider that to be a major improvement.

from the one I did before. So I'm, I'm, I'm happy about that. However, I do feel like I want to catch up and get that 3%, and I'm going to test later. I'm going to see if I do completely natural with no gaps between words, completely fluid, very fast, if I get a higher or a lower score. I'm definitely curious to see how that works. I'd really like to see how you guys do with this. As far as I can tell, this is completely free until you start taking the modules. So you get to do the evaluation for free. So check out Elsa Speak. Let me know in the comments what score you get. I'm very curious to see the scores you get. As you can see, I went from a seven, was it a 75 or a 77? Whatever, to a 97. So I went up significantly, and now I know where I need to improve.

as a native English speaker. Apparently, my long and short vowel sounds have some trouble. I'll work on it. You work on it. I'd love to hear about your scores, your strong and your weak areas. Let me know in the comments. By the way, don't forget to subscribe. Don't forget to hit the like button. It really helps, helps out the channel. I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys get on this app and if you think it's useful or not. (subtle music) (subtle music)

My Review of an English Pronunciation App (ELSA Speak)

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