Welcome to this weeks #ELSAStory! Today, we talked to a friend of ours who just immigrated to the United States of America from India.

Our friend, Surya, is from the small city of Gwalior, India. He grew up speaking Hindi, and didn’t feel the need to learn English until he got to high school. He moved over to Delhi for high school, and was shocked to see that most of the kids there were fairly proficient at English. Surya felt very out of place as he started school here — he had to think of something quick in order to learn.

To begin his journey, he started attending English classes taught by a retired professor who lived in the same housing tract as him; however, this wasn’t enough. Surya wanted to learn English even faster. A good friend of his, Takumi, who lives in Japan and knew him from a summer trip the two had met on, reccomended that he use ELSA! Surya, at first, had tried to learn from various other apps on the iPhone App store such as Duolingo, and HELLO English, but fell in love with using ELSA.

ELSA gave Surya the feedback he needed to really improve his speaking ability. We asked him:

How did ELSA help you speak better English and better prepare you for your English classes with that retired professor?

Surya: Well, using the ELSA application on my new iPhone helped me a lot because my pronunciation was getting a lot better, and I found myself doing much better than the other people in my class. When I started taking the classes a few months ago, I was towards the bottom compared to all the other people in the class; however, once I started using ELSA, I found that the other people there were shocked at my speaking ability. They all asked me what my secret was. A lot of them don’t have smartphones, so they could not use ELSA, but they were definitely very impressed by the app when I did a small demo for them.

All in all, ELSA served to be a great catalyzer for Surya’s English speaking journey. We asked him:

How long did you spend a day using ELSA?

Surya: I would use it when I woke up, and before I went to asleep, about 15-20 minutes a day. It helps a lot. I recommend all people to do the same.

10 minutes a day is all it takes to improve your pronunciation! Surya is one of thousands of success stories ELSA has had. Tune in next week for another great #ELSAStory!