Top 8 Pronunciation Apps to Improve Your Spoken English Fluency in 2023
You might be avoiding some words in your daily conversations if you’re not a native English speaker, simply because you’re not comfortable pronouncing them correctly. It can work fine in theory, but you often run into situations where native English speakers ask you to repeat what you said because you mispronounced a few words. Be encouraged if you find yourself in that situation regularly. This is the place for you!
You might find it time consuming to master the standard American English pronunciation. Even non-native speakers of English can speak just as fluently as native speakers with the right tools and motivation. It may cross your mind, “Where can I find the most effective tools for improving my English pronunciation?” Well, the answer is right here! Your smartphone gives you access to the tools you need. In all honesty, it can be quite a challenge to sort through all the English apps that are available. Fortunately, our team of experts has compiled a list of the top American English pronunciation apps for your consideration. It will certainly be the first step to improving your American English pronunciation, becoming more confident in social situations, and building more meaningful relationships.
We’ve found some interesting results. Take a look:
ChatterFox
Developed by a team of language experts and app developers in Washington D.C., this well-structured English pronunciation app looks great, clearly displaying each section, and is easy to use. Enterprise plans are also offered for corporations to help them hire qualified employees with strong oral English skills who will be a valuable asset to the company. It offers some interesting features, including:
● Guided Smart Lessons: Instructional videos that build a strong foundation for the pronunciation of American English
● Human coach: Professionally certified pronunciation coaches providing personalized feedback
● Smart Growth Monitoring: Artificial Intelligence and human coaches work together to provide accurate scores and feedback, track your progress, and update your personalized study plan.
● Cultural Notes: Educational videos pertaining to American culture.
● Fluency Activities: Identify and decode important phrasal verbs and idioms along with practicing with others in their WhatsApp group.
This app combines human coaching and feedback with artificial intelligence to provide an effective combination. To begin with, each module includes pre-lesson recordings. The module continues with video lectures that explain how to articulate the target sounds in a correct manner. The next step will be to allow an Artificial Intelligence powered smart coach to assist you throughout a series of interactive activities to familiarize you with the target sound. These activities include listening to words that demonstrate the given sound, recording them, and taking quizzes. Your progress is measured by a certified pronunciation coach evaluating a post-lesson recording. AI and your coach provide highly effective feedback using the Advanced Progress Monitoring method (APM). You receive personalized feedback from your coach that provides details about how you pronounce words down to each and every letter, along with a focus on improvement areas of the language that previously presented a challenge for you.
Upon finding out which areas are most important to you, the coach will suggest areas to focus on, such as word stress, linking, and reduction, intonation, as well as specific pronunciation. It appears that this complete package offers all the tools required for non-native speakers to become proficient in English.
You can download the ChatterFox app on Android 4.4/iOS 11.3 or higher. It does not appear to have any bugs, and it does not crash so there is no need to restart. The app has received positive reviews from users, who said that it increased their confidence at work and in their everyday interactions. Others said the app was better than they expected. As the cherry on top, the price is still very reasonable considering the variety of features available.
Prices:
● Free 3-day trial for all plans
● Visa Plan: $17/Month
● Green Card Plan: $47/Month
Available on App Store and Google Play
Currently, ChatterFox is offering an attractive deal with a 33% discount, plus a 7-day trial, making it an opportune time to explore their services. This promotion is a great chance for those curious about ChatterFox to try it out.
Say It: English Pronunciation
With the support of researchers, teachers, sound engineers, and designers, Jenny Dance and Ruggero Gualdesi developed this useful app. The app uses the Oxford English accent model to help you improve your accent. By adding visual components to their practices and features, they hope to make learning easier.
There are several interesting features in this app, including:
- The Oxford Dictionary has over 35,000 words with Oxford-model pronunciations (British or American accents) — visual sound waves to indicate the stress and unstressed syllables
- Sound charts for the British and American English files
- Tests in four ranges: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and English File Method
With the interactive, visual model, you are first required to listen to words syllable by syllable while looking at their phonetic spelling, slowing them down if necessary. Afterwards, you will record yourself pronouncing the given word and compare your recording with the correct pronunciation provided by the app, to explore where you need to improve. In addition to keeping track of your progress, assessing your progress across three levels, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced, or choosing “shuffle” for all the words in their glossary, you can also practice your pronunciation. If this app were part of a more comprehensive program, its simple practices would be more useful.
This app is compatible with Android 7.0 / iOS 9.0 or higher.
Despite the lack of engagement and the long download time for the word lists, the way the information is presented is very clear. This application would be even more helpful if a human coaching system was incorporated. Having a face-to-face coaching session can greatly improve pronunciation and fluency in English. In addition, a human coach would be able to see things that an AI couldn’t. However, training on beneficial topics may also be purchased separately.
Prices (after free trial):
● In-app products: $3.99-$129.99 per item
Available on App Store and Google Play
ELSA Speak
Developed by a team of talented scientists and linguists, this well-designed app focuses on voice recognition. Developers have had plenty of time to work out any bugs and kinks, as it has been available for quite some time. Using the application is very easy; all pages, buttons, and other visual elements are strategically placed to ensure maximum functionality and convenience. Users are highly motivated to improve their English pronunciation steadily with the interactive features. Some of these features are:
- Artificial intelligence speech recognition
- Assessments of speaking proficiency
- English dictionaries
- Language games that focus on pronunciation, intonation, word stress, rhythm, and listening skills.
You can choose from many practical lessons. You can also browse topics that help you perform better on exams such as IELTS, TOEFL, and TOEIC. There are plenty of resources available to you if you are pursuing that dream job and the success of your application depends greatly on the way you communicate in that job interview. It would appear that the only thing they’re lacking is a human coach who could pick up the slack where the AI fails. An individual coach can provide specific, customized instruction tailored to a learner’s specific needs.
You can get this seasoned app on Android 4.2 / iOS 10.0 or later. For those who cannot afford a lifetime subscription, the one-year deal may be more affordable.
Prices (after limited free trial):
● Lifetime- $494.99
● One-year pack- $74.99
● $12 / month
● In-app products- $0.99 — $99.99.
Available on App Store and Google Play
Speechling
Hongyu Chen offers pronunciation instruction in a variety of languages, including English, in this app. Languages covered include Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, German, Russian, Korean, Portuguese, and English. Visual enhancements could be made to the interface to better convey the features of this application. Among them are:
- Coaching for free (up to 10 feedbacks per month)
- Dictation and listening practices
- Certified personal pronunciation coaches
After creating your account and selecting the language you wish to practice, a personal coach will be assigned to you. After listening to your recordings, the coach will either give you a thumbs up or correct your mistakes. If you’re on the free plan, your coach will give you feedback on 10 recordings you send in a month.
During practice, you can listen to an audio recording of a man or woman, then record yourself repeating after them, getting feedback within a day. It is also possible to record yourself answering a question or describing a picture and then receiving feedback. On the platform, there are a number of different practice drills and flashcards, categorized by level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert), as well as various social situations such as health, transportation, and housing. There is also a dictionary with the correct pronunciation of each entry.
The app is compatible with Android 5.0/iOS 10 or higher, as well as IOS. Visually, it doesn’t look the best and it takes a little while to get used to. Reviewers pointed out that recordings can get stuck in a cycle and that the app may crash at times, leaving users with no other option than to reboot the application. You may not need more than ten coach feedbacks per month if you are a casual learner. A certified coach is available for a reasonable fee if you are a more avid learner.
Prices:
● Free plan including 10 lessons/mo.
● Certified pronunciation coach- $19.99/month
Available on App Store and Google Play
American English Pronunciation
The English pronunciation app was designed by Kepham and Suragch to help beginners grasp the basics of the language. Vowels can be categorized into short, long, double, voiced, and voiceless. They are also described in terms of mouth and tongue positions for each sound. Apps like this one are easy to use for young learners, but its overall design needs some improvement. Among its simple features are:
- Pronunciation video lessons
- A practice area where you can tap and hear how words are pronounced
- Accurately pronounce English words to earn points
Listen to properly pronounced phrases and sentences first to practice these foundational sounds. The videos offer visual clues to help with accurate pronunciation. In the practice area, you can tap on specific words to hear their pronunciation. Earn points by practicing the pronunciation of the words, phrases, and sentences. This app does not seem to be the only one that uses such simple techniques. An added coaching component would certainly improve their effectiveness. It would provide a more personalized experience with more customized feedback. It is currently unavailable for iOS devices.
Prices:
● In-app products
● $1.49 — $6.49 per item
Available only on Google Play
Pronunroid — IPA Pronunciation
Boardings Inc. created this free app to assist English learners in their pronunciation, spelling, and phonetic development. A more visual understanding of the English language was achieved by using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in this educational game. To complete all four of the games, players will need to use phonetic symbols. These four games include:
- Guess pronunciation: guess the IPA pronunciation of one word
- Guess symbol: Three words with the same IPA symbol, guess the symbol
- Guess spelling: write the correct spelling of one word using IPA
- Look up word: Find the IPA of the word
Although, the visual elements in these games are good, they could use some improvements. Additionally, the app could use more detailed explanation.
An audible human voice would be more natural than the robotic voice pronouncing phonetics. There are plans to expand game word lists. This app might prove to be a handy addition to another more comprehensive program for the English learner in the future.
Available only on Google Play
Keewee
Developed by a team based in South Korea, Keewee is a free app that helps users practice American English pronunciation and improve fluency. It seems that Keewee users will benefit from this app, but it’s still in the development phase. There are some features that do not work as well as they should, despite the fact that some may consider them as “game changers”, such as the ability to create your own training material using your own texts as references. The following are the features offered by this app:
- Users have the option of challenging themselves with relatively harder sentences.
- To practice on (speeches, presentations, etc. ), users can upload their own documents.
- It’s free
Since it’s free, and this app is relatively new, you may want to keep your expectations low. Due to the lack of courses, it seems insufficient when compared to the variety of courses and videos offered by other apps; this is a major drawback for this application. However, in spite of minor errors and setbacks, the AI feedback system works reasonably well.
The application requires Android 5.0/iOS 10.0 or higher. The app could have provided some other features which would have made it an ideal choice for users looking to improve their proficiency in English language. It might have helped this application a lot if it had features such as a dictionary or human coaching. This might be included in upcoming versions since it was recently launched.
Available on App Store and Google Play
Cambly
The Cambly platform aims to improve the fluency of English among its users. Its approach differs from that of other companies. The company solely offers live human coaching sessions. There are hundreds of tutors available on this platform from the US, Canada, and Australia. Each tutor has a rating on a scale of 0 to 5; previous student feedback is available on the tutor’s profile. Tutor profiles are easy to navigate. Among the features of this app are:
- Hundreds of coaches from the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, etc.
- Former students can rate and review coaches
- A two-minute trial session for first-time users
- IELTS and TOEFL speaking courses available
- Solutions for enterprises
Users will receive a 2-minute video call with a random tutor when they sign up for the app for the first time. After that, only premium subscribers will be able to utilize the tutoring services. The application offers courses, but access to them requires a premium subscription. Some coaches perform better than others, so some users may have a hard time using the reservation system.
Android 4.4 or higher / iOS 10.3 or higher are required to run this app. Free plan members are severely limited, as there is no way to communicate with coaches except by paying for a premium membership. The variety of coaches and their valuable feedback make this application a popular choice for students looking to improve their spoken English skills. However, you cannot talk to your coach right away. If an AI feedback system were implemented, this problem would be solved perfectly.
Prices:
● 15-minute sessions per day, 2 days per week: $65 / month
● 30-minute sessions per day, 2 days per week: $110 / month
● 60-minute sessions per day, 2 days per week: $200 / month
Available on App Store and Google Play
Conclusion
We scoured the web for the best English pronunciation apps available, and we came up with these diverse options. The ratings of each application, as well as the features it offers, may vary quite a bit. Hopefully, the information we have provided will allow you to make an informed decision.
As part of the pronunciation practices within Say It: English Pronunciation, visual components prove to be extremely beneficial. Additionally, the fact that they include both British and American accents may appeal to some English learners. They should eventually make the app more engaging as they continue to develop the program. Despite their numerous courses focusing on so many intriguing topics, this simple program would need to be used in conjunction with more comprehensive English pronunciation programs for someone to become fluent. Beginners should try out “American English Pronunciation”. The emphasis they place on foundational aspects of the English language is admirable since it provides a solid start for non-native English speakers; anyone who is more ambitious can seek out a more complete resource for English pronunciation following these simple beginnings to develop a more native-like accent. With the “Speechling” app, you receive both personal certified coaching and the AI component. However, the quality of the coaching may be compromised since there are multiple languages within the app. American English is not a strong focus. Even so, along with dictation and flash cards, their emphasis on listening comprehension is highly beneficial. This app would be advantageous if paired with a comprehensive program that would fill in the gaps where more detailed skills are absent, ensuring success in achieving fluent speech. “Cambly” is definitely a good option for those seeking only an accent coach or a private tutor to improve their fluency in English. The “Keewee” app was launched recently and has a long way to go before it gains some edge over its fierce competitors.
When it comes to English pronunciation apps, the “Elsa Speak” app is definitely a great choice. Over the years, the team has been working through trial and error to develop their app into a mature, experienced learning tool. Nevertheless, it would be extremely beneficial if they could integrate a personal human coach into the mix in order to guarantee fluency for their clients. Together with a state-of-the-art AI component, the “ChatterFox” app effectively blends human coaching with cutting edge technology. They offer all the tools you need to speak like a native fluently through their well-rounded app. The way cultural awareness is integrated into the program, while facilitating the learner’s grasp of rhythmic intonation, word stress, linking, and reduction, absolutely contributes to their success.
I hope this rundown of English pronunciation apps has given you much to think about. For those undergoing American accent training, remember that simple lessons and practice may not be enough. An immigrant struggling with English pronunciation might require a comprehensive program, diverse practice opportunities, and a coach to provide feedback, correct their mispronunciations, and monitor their progress. Choose a program that not only helps you refine your accent but also aids you in acquiring fluency in English. Now, you’re ready to embark on your journey to becoming an effective English speaker who communicates with clarity and grace.
