Speak & Improve, a tool to improve spoken English and pronunciation

Description: Speak & Improve helps users improve their speaking and pronunciation skills in English. It works by providing users with speaking prompts or topics to talk about, recording their responses, and providing feedback on pronunciation, fluency, and accuracy. In this way, users engage in a conversation with an AI-powered robot. Speak & Improve is free and does not require having an account for use, although having an account provides access to more functionalities. It is being developed by the University of Cambridge and is currently a research project.

Evaluation: Speak & Improve is a useful tool to encourage students to practise their spoken English and help them gain confidence. A suggestion for use would be to ask students to record a conversation with Speak & Improve, and then listen to themselves paying attention to mistakes. Speak & Improve also provides a grade of the students’ CEFR speaking level by analysing their responses, although this is not always accurate.

Cost: Free.

Respect for privacy Privacy evaluations indicate how a tool handles personal data collection, storage, and sharing, including GDPR compliance and security measures, among others. The ICT-REV team provides them for informational purposes, reflecting our best understanding at the time of review, but assumes no legal responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of these evaluations and encourages users to conduct their own assessments: Medium. Speak & Improve collects no personal data but it records users' submissions to improve the software. For users who create an account, Speak & Improve collects various types of personal information, including information voluntarily provided. This includes email addresses, passwords, levels of study, mother tongue, and additional personal information, such as biographical details, personal opinions, likes, and dislikes. Speak & Improve also collects technical information, such as IP addresses and browsing data, together with cookies, which can nonetheless be deactivated. It also shares data with third parties for purposes such as providing services, research, analytics, and advertising. Speak & Improve stores data on secure servers, and payment transactions are encrypted using SSL technology. It also acknowledges users’ rights to access their data, request copies, make changes, correct, delete, limit or stop data usage, move data to a third party, or change their consent. Speak & Improve does not explicitly state compliance with the GDPR. See more here.

Type Of Interaction: Individual work,

Skills: Speaking, Pronunciation,

Content: Website/other users supply, You supply,

Usability and tech notes ▼