A brief introduction to ELSA

At Elsa, we believe everyone deserves an affordable way to learn English pronunciation. A major problem for many English learners is the limited opportunities they have to practice speaking.

Elsa, short for English Language Speech Assistant, is an artificial intelligence powered coach that lets students practice English conversations. As students speak with Elsa, Elsa identifies where their mistakes are and gives tips on how to correct their pronunciation.  

Elsa is created by a team of language learning experts who all experienced the pain of learning to speak  English as a second language. It is available on iOS and Android.  ELSA is recognized on by Apple as the featured app in over 89 countries. It has now been serving more than 2 million users worldwide, 81% of which reported to witness the improvement in their speaking skills after only 4 weeks of using the application.

How To Get The Most From Elsa

This article helps you use ELSA most effectively, whether you have months or even weeks to practice.

1. Take assessment test

We strongly recommend you take the assessment test before you begin practicing. To take the test, tap “Learn Faster” on the home screen. The test identifies which skills you are weakest in and recommends the right exercises for you to practice. Watch this video to learn how to take Assessment Test in ELSA App

2. Set a goal and practice regularly

ELSA users improve their pronunciation within 4 weeks if they commit to practicing 10 minutes daily. The best way to help yourself improve is to set time aside each day for this. So make a decision now, what time you’d like to practice each day. Most of Elsa’s students practice at 9PM.

Then, follow these simple steps and ELSA will help you keep steadily practicing:

• Go to PROFILE section
• Choose LEARNING AND SOUNDS SETTING. In this section you can see:
• LEARNING GOAL: Set the time that you want to practice every day. For example, 15 minutes.
• DIFFICULTY: Depend on your English level to choose a difficulty level of ELSA scoring systems.
• DAILY REMINDER: Turn it on and customize the time and frequency you want ELSA to remind you. For example, 9 PM and Daily

Make sure your phone is set to receive reminders:

• Go to PROFILE section
• Tab NOTIFICATION section and turn it on.

3.  Follow the planets on the home screen

To learn most effectively, you need to master the important English sounds, which are called phonemes. How ““sh” should be pronounced differently from “s”, how “e” is not similar to “ee”. Once mastering this, you will be directed to learn about word stress and sentence stress (or, intonation). These will not only help you speak the words more correctly but also help make your sentence sound more natural. The lessons follow a strict study roadmap which ensures that users can get the best out of their time spent practicing with ELSA.

Here’s how you’re going to use each lesson:

• ELSA will speak the sample word / sentence first, then it’s your turn to speak it yourself.
• After you speak, ELSA will give you a score

Green: you got it right
Yellow: you’re almost correct
Red: you are incorrect

• After you get the score, tap the word to listen to ELSA speaking again (as many time as you feel like, Elsa is a very patient coach)
• Then, mimic the way Elsa speaks until you get a green score. Congratulations! You did it!
• If you do not get green or yellow, you can skip that word/ sentence. Elsa will automatically save the word into your WORD BANK’s Needs Work list, so you can practice it there. On Android, you can tap the ♥ under the word to save it to the WORD BANK’s Favorites list.
• On Android, REGULAR feedback analyzes 1 sound per sentence.  ADVANCED feedback analyzes the whole sentence. It’s cool, isn’t it? Coming soon on iOS.

4. Using the Pronunciation Dictionary

Learning pronunciation is a slow process for everyone. If you dedicate 10 minutes a day for 4 weeks to practice Elsa’s lessons, you will certainly see results. But what if you have an important interview or presentation in English, say, tomorrow? Can ELSA help?

Yes, definitely.

What you’ll need to do is simple:

• Go to DICTIONARY
• Type in any word or sentence that confuses you
• ELSA will show you how to speak it first, then you speak
• ELSA will score you on what you just said
• If you want to watch other people pronounce your  words in real life tap WATCH PEOPLE PRONOUNCE THIS

ELSA’s dictionary makes suggestions on interesting topics to practice: “ 4 ways to express your love”, “Famous quotes from Star Wars”….

5. Send us your wishes!

The ELSA app now features more than 530 lessons on 22 topics.  New topics are added every 2 weeks, like the new “Star Wars” movie, so students can use their lessons in everyday communication. If you have a wish for a new topic, contact [email protected]

Should you want to report other issues, you can:

• Go to profile
• Choose Feedback and Sharing
• Click EMAIL US or REPORT A BUG at REACH THE TEAM section.

Gone were the days when you had nobody to practice speaking English with.  ELSA Speak is created for you with the sole purpose of helping you get better at speaking English. Now it’s just a matter of time before you’ll actually see improvements.

With love,
The ELSA team