ELSA Speak: English Learning Reviews

by Sneks4life

I’ve been speaking, writing, and reading English my whole life. I was BORN in America. I decided to try ELSASpeak out, and I reached a point where it gave you whole sentences. I thought, “Well, this shouldn’t be an issue right?” WRONG. It said my pronunciation was incorrect multiple times even though I know I said it properly. On the word “up” I said it exactly how they said it, but it said my pronunciation was incorrect ones again! I’m not trying to be petty, and I know ELSASpeak helps other people who can’t speak English that well, but I don’t know why it keeps saying I’m wrong.

by Myyang2020

Deceptive!!! I forgot to cancel after the trial period and got charged for three months. The fine print stated “payment will be charged to your iTunes account.” Why charging for three months and not one. I did not agree to this. Also they have a clever use of word,. They use the word “automatically renew” Which means you will get charged even you turned off the automatic subscription in iTunes. At this point, I try to look for a way to cancel the subscription so I don’t get charged again in the next three month. Guess what there no cancel button in ELSASpeak to be found. What kind of company that don’t give your customer a way to cancel the subscription. Well I am calling my credit company to dispute the charge. Dishonest company won’t last long. They either change their way or they will go in the way of the dinosaurs.

by Toonyun

1. I have noticed that if I stop the recording, the sound for stopping the recording would be recorded at the end and that confuses the result. So best to let it stop automatically after saying the sentences.

2. There are many errors which the text and sample recordings don’t match. Please fix.

3. There are a few exercises simply wouldn’t advance to the next sentences. It got stuck. Please fix.

4. Sometimes I have to exaggerate my pronunciation in order to score higher points. I listen back to my recording and the sound quality is not so good. Please improve.

Overall, I want to say that this is a great app. I have noticed my problems and I have been improving everyday and I can hear it. It’s very enjoyable and I’ve been practicing at least two hours a day. I look forward to the improvements. Many thanks!

by Nat Da Gnat

Native English speaker here. I decided to try ELSASpeak to test for any “background error” due to ELSASpeak rather than the language learner, and there definitely were a few. Most exercises would put me in the 85-98 percent fluency range, with the number going up some when I spoke slower and tried to enunciate, but that wouldn’t be how I would speak in a conversation.

English accents vary wildly depending on your region, and I found that some possible pronunciations weren’t programmed into ELSASpeak . For example, in the Midwest US many people pronounce “I’ll” in the same way as “all”, but this was marked as wrong.

Another minor issue was with the word “sounds”, where it said the “ds” should be pronounced like the z in buzz, which it isn’t. When a native speaker says the ending, its less voiced, more like a “ts” sound.

Again, just some small critiques, but they add up, and this was just in the first 5 minutes or so of my use.

Please be wary of using ELSASpeak, especially if your accent is already pretty good. It might do more harm than good.

by RilkaThomson

This is a brilliant app that uses speech recognition to improve your American accent. Unfortunately ELSASpeak is very buggy. So much so that I had to cancel my annual subscription. I have alerted the customer support many times about the issue over the past year and the issue persists. It’s essentially a crash, because I have to restart ELSASpeak every time it happens. If you don’t mind that, ELSASpeak is still valuable and highly recommended.

by Esther In MO

My mother tongue is Chinese and I am learning Spanish. I saw there were 8 languages so I thought I could choose Spanish during the initial setup, but I didn’t see that option?!? So what it means by it has 8 languages?

If there is a way to choose the language that you want to learn. I have missed it somehow. Can you show me how? Also, can I change to practice different languages at anytime I want? I am learning Spanish but i would also like to improve my English pronunciation once I feel like I have mastered Spanish well. I gave 3 stars right now because I came here to learn Spanish. Thank you!

by Liodapeng

I have been using ELSASpeak for more than half a year. not sure whether or not this is the best app helping learn English, in general it’s great, especially on pronunciation and covering various scenarios. but it does not help my intonation too much and it often has network connection issues, almost daily. occasionally ELSASpeak is stuck in weird ways. in total I really appreciate ELSASpeak, buying its one-year license has been one of my best investments. i also look for help in other ways, say, online education videos, and, some have been greatly helpful. ELSASpeak gives real time feedback, which is great, however I still have to think hard how to improve by myself all the time. well, that’s understandable, though frustrating. I give ELSASpeak a four star mostly because technically ELSASpeak can be better and more stable.

by KykaViana

Great app to improve pronunciation. Easy and nice design. I don’t have any complain about the quality of content or teaching method but I had two problems with ELSASpeak . The first one is that I paid for 1 year Elsa Pro, but decided to upgrade VIP for a lifetime membership access (after receiving an discount email from the CEO). ELSASpeak changed me booth but, for record, my account expire next year. The second problem is that I’m having difficulty to enter on app and download my progress. I can make the lessons but ELSASpeak doesn’t keep my scores.

by Aalireza

So here is my review for a few days working on it
ELSASpeak has a cool AI for speech recognition that works perfectly and I did some tricks that could really comprehend amazingly so well done to the team for providing such a great AI. You can use a test to find out your English level and even it shows you some scores about pronunciation, stress, intonation, fluency, and listening. It gives you different topics to learn like daily life, trip, finances, technology, and etc. However, when you are working with you might find some crashes that it is a little bit annoying for example, ELSASpeak crashed 2 times in almost 2 to 3 hours but I think it is worth to work with it, I’ve already reported the bug so I hope they would fix it soon. One last word, try not to use ELSASpeak with VPN because sometimes it gives you warnings that says there's no internet connection.

by Hanif Khosravi

I have been using Elsa for the past 7 months. It’s a great way to improve your pronunciation. But I wish it didn’t have too many bugs.
It freezes frequently in the middle of a lesson. And gives the same lesson every day for like two weeks.
You have to exit ELSASpeak and reopen it very often. I use Elsa on an iPhone Pro Max.
I will continue using it as it’s really helpful.

by Nb1155bn

It’s a pretty decent program but extremely buggy by today’s standards. They have to keep updating their apps every few days. They definitely need better QA. From the program standpoint sometimes the lessons are repetitive rather than a mix of words, sentences, intonations, conversations etc. but I do get a sense they are constantly tweaking their algorithm (as well as content) which is great. One star less for the bugginess.

by Guany Summy

I never thought I would be able to get rid of my strong Chinese accent. My accent has made me depressed and felt less about myself. I think I have good knowledge of English language but my accent usually holds me back. Then I discovered ELSASpeak. It helped me identify issues with my pronunciation that I was not aware of. Now I’m obsessed with ELSASpeak and practice with it everyday. There’s already a vast improvement with my speech. Now I’m feeling hopeful that I will be able to sound like a native speaker in no time. ELSASpeak is changing my life for the better. I’m so glad that I discovered it.

by Weather Stalker

I spent 10 minutes trying to pass one sentence - I was getting everything around 85-95 points with couple yellow mispronunciations but it just stucks.

Another thing - you can listen to your try and I literally pronounce every sound but ELSASpeak just mix the sounds where the end of one sound can be detected as “mispronounced” beginning of other letter.

by Captain America MRR

This is #1 English learning App for me, not just because I am enjoying my experience on ELSA, but also when I had concerns with my subscription, I found attentive staff in a flash, a very proficient and professional support and assistance until I resolved all my issues!
I do highly recommend ELSA FOR ANYONE LOOKING FOR SERIOUS STUFF AND SOME POWERFUL TOOLS TO MASTER ENGLISH BUT ALSO WITH ZERO CONCERNS WHEN IT COMES TO DEALING WITH SUBSCRIPTION AND YOUR MONEY!
REAL TALK, ELSA IS THE BEST
Big up ELSA team

by Meomeolily

I am very glad to find ELSASpeak to help me enhance my pronunciation. This is the best app I have found. There is one more thing Elsa can improve better that is the instruction pronunciation for the group of vowel and consonant in each word. For example, a word “important”, now Elsa has instruction for each letter: i, m, p, o, r, t, a, n. If Elsa has instruction of pronunciation for the group of related sound such as “im”, “por”, “tant”; it will be easier for learner.

by JoyKim25

I love ELSASpeak!! It helps me speak English fluently and fix my strong accent. I can see my improvement clearly after 3 months using. I just set a small practice which is around 15-20 lessons a day and after 3 months, when I try to speak in Google Translate, it is correct nearly 85% , much more than before. I’m so happy to see improvement, and I recommend ELSASpeak for all my friends!!

by Lquang222

I’ve tried a few apps out there to improve my accent. ELSA stands out as the pronunciation app for Vietnamese learners like me. It focuses more on your speaking skill and less on your grammar. I set up a goal to learn 20 minutes a day or 1.5 hours a week.

If you want to improve faster, you can hire an American pronunciation coach who can identify your problems and then you can focus more on the areas. Learning American accent is persistent. It will pay you off eventually.

by DouglasFrontier

Revised this review after trying out the dictionary part of ELSASpeak , where the scoring for system is very strict. I’ve tried over 100 times and couldn’t pronounce the sound “g” and “o” in “geothermal” correctly, and the dictionary doesn’t explain what I’m doing wrong. I wish this kind of system is implemented in the lessons as well. Maybe it already is, however, I stopped after the first lesson due to its leniency.

by 123bigcat123

I really like itcorrectly it is free but if I want more in detail I have to pay is interactive it has an AI you pronounce the word and it tells you if you pronounced it correctly Look what I found online it will help me to pronounce words correctly it is free but if I want more in detail I have to pay is interactive it has an AI you pronounce the word and it tells you if you pronounced it correctly

by Wqsgs

ELSASpeak is great however the back end has a lot of room to improve. There are frequent timeouts though the messages indicated it was the phone had bad connection. No, it was not. Can watch HD movie with no issue and no issue with all other apps. Also this recent release broke the auth. I had to relogin every time if I restart ELSASpeak . The other issue is from time to time I saw the dialogue that ask to join premium member, but I am, kind of annoying.

by Learner0415

ELSASpeak is really useful but sometimes it still has bugs. Recently it shows slow internet errors too often to the point I want to end my daily practice before finishing. To be clear, I don’t see any problems on other apps so don’t really think my Internet connection is a problem.

by PeymanHafezi

ELSASpeak works almost fine but there is s problem: sometimes a multi-line text appears and the user have to read and record. Some words in the text could not be read because they are obscured by app buttons and icons. Please give me an email to send you the screenshots.

by Asiankingkong

I like ELSASpeak overall, but there are some improvements that can be made, and bugs that can be fixed.
1. Can you guys make an advanced option for stress practice, I like it that you have it for words and conversations
2. In the IELTS section, there are three lessons that are only available to androids, and I’m an IOS user , please have it available for iOS as soon as possible

by 弊案

I could not get ELSASpeak opened now after your upgrade yesterday. It is always showing “downloading”, “retry download”. I hope you can fix it without losing my history records as that’s what I am encouraged to go on.

by Sarah Uyen Nguyen

I love ELSASpeak very much, thank you guys for your good work. However, it is possible to add more synonyms and have more meanings for each word? Because one word will have many meaning to each situation. I hope that you guys will improve the dictionary part, otherwise it is a great app! Thanks again to help me pronounce better!

by Not Real Lifetime

I bought a lifetime license in 2018 but today I have been rejected for login. This company has a telephone number but it looks like a number in Vietnam. It has an e-mail account but I have never got response. Be careful for you money when you buy a lifetime license.

by Rockville20850

I work in sales at an international company where I interact with American clients almost everyday.

I used to pay thousands of dollars for the same services that ELSASpeak gives me, to evaluate my pronunciation and tell me which words I am speaking incorrectly. Now I use ELSASpeak and it is worth its weight in gold.

by Cpacfeguy

... pronunciation improvement and accent reduction app in the store.

Yes, it may still have some minor errors and/or bugs, but customer service is really responsive. They have fixed any issues I have found within a week of letting them know.

by Vabuk

ELSA is the best and smartest app that includes the package to all learner ,doesn’t matter your level of proficiency but rather you can speak without accent.I had masters level English student but when I tried It really helped me to learn accents ,I suggests everyone to go learn with ELSA ,it’s highly important

by Nh0xKevin

As a foreign speaker, I got a lot of struggles when learning how to speak a "correct" English. However, ELSASpeak helps me a lot. It helps me overcome the pronunciation problem that I had before. 15 minutes a day, which is not much, but it really changes your future.

by NikkiNikki2758

I’m so happy with the Dictionary function. Elsa presents for me a lot the clips that has the word I look up, so I can listen this word in real situations. It helps me easy to recognize the word in real life. I just want the clips are longer. Thanks for helping me to improve my accent.