The video covers the following:

It includes reviews of Elsa, TalkPal, Bold Voice, Loora, and Pronuncia.

• Apps are helpful but limited:

They can usually tell if your speech is understandable, which is useful for basic communication.

• Accuracy issues:

Apps sometimes correctly detect mispronunciations but they also make mistakes.

This inconsistency undermines confidence in their feedback.

• Teaching value varies:

Some apps (Bold Voice, Pronuncia) explain how to fix mistakes.

Others (Loora, TalkPal, MakesYouFluent) only point out errors without teaching how to improve.

• These apps neglect rhythm, stress and connected speech:

Pronunciation is not just about sounds but also stress patterns and blending words naturally.

Apps often penalize natural reductions (e.g., pronouncing *and* as *un*) or ignore incorrect stress placement, leading to unnatural speech habits.

• Accent bias:

Most apps judge only against American English and may flag correct British pronunciations as “wrong.”

• Underlying technology:

Many apps use the same external speech assessment systems (e.g., Microsoft, SpeechAce), so their quality is similar and progress over the years has been limited.

• Other options for English speaking feedback

For general speaking practice, with advice about your grammar, vocabulary and fluency, you can use the app Spoken. It doesn't yet contain pronunciation feedback but we plan to add it when good enough technology is available.

Or, get personalised pronunciation feedback from a human teacher (Spoken's founder).