Have you ever discovered that you’ve been pronouncing a word incorrectly? Everyone makes mistakes, and English pronunciation isn’t easy, so don’t worry about it. They’re a natural part of the language-learning process.
However, any English learner can achieve perfect English pronunciation with a little time, a little patience and perhaps the help of a few apps. I’ve made a list of thirteen powerful apps that you can browse through and pick from, based on your needs, goals and budget.
This app is made by the British Council, which is known for its English learning courses throughout the world.
The app has a phonemic chart that allows you to tap any symbol in the chart to hear how it’s pronounced. It also shows three example words for each sound.
The chart in this app is arranged according to the shape our mouths make for each particular sound.
For practice using these charts, it’s best to speak out an example word and focus on the different kinds of sounds in that one word. Comparing your pronunciation with the recorded sounds in the app is also a good way to improve English pronunciation.
How cool would it be to have a private English tutor who points out all your pronunciation issues and patiently helps you improve your accent?
Well, there’s an app that lets you do just that. Focused on American English, ELSA Speak comes with speech recognition technology that’ll help you correctly pronounce common English words and phrases.
Moreover, just as though you were talking to a real person, you’ll receive feedback on the right way to move your lips and tongue to get the sounds just right.
You can even create your own pronunciation curriculum by choosing certain challenges and topics, as well as tracking your progress.
This app shows English sounds in both charts and the different categories of vowels and consonants.
Each sound has a diagram with instructions on how to produce that sound. You can also listen to each sound and see the words that use that sound.
In case you’re looking for a specific word, you can also search for it directly. This is really helpful when you need to listen to the pronunciation of a particular word.
You can also use this app in reading practice. In English, a word’s spelling is often different from the way it’s pronounced. Listening to the pronunciation of words while reading helps you avoid confusion.
This particular app is especially great for Vietnamese speakers since it has an English-Vietnamese dictionary.
FluentU is a program that teaches English with videos that native English speakers actually watch like movie trailers, commercials and music videos.
FluentU takes real-world videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.
It uses a natural approach that helps you ease into the English language and culture over time. You’ll learn English as it’s spoken in real life.
FluentU has a variety of engaging content from popular talk shows, nature documentaries and funny commercials, as you can see here:
FluentU makes it really easy to watch English videos. There are captions that are interactive. That means you can tap on any word to see an image, definition and useful examples.
For example, when you tap on the word "searching," you'll see this:
Learn all the vocabulary in any video with quizzes. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.
The best part is that FluentU keeps track of the vocabulary that you’re learning and gives you extra practice with difficult words. It even reminds you when it’s time to review! Every learner has a truly personalized experience, even if they’re learning with the same video.
Many of us struggle with pronouncing certain words, while being perfectly fluent with others. There are particular vowel and consonant sounds that give us trouble all the time.
With this app, you’ll be able to confidently pronounce different sounds in the correct way. First, you’ll receive detailed guidelines (with pictures) that show you how to move your tongue and jaw in the right way to produce a certain sound.
You can also tap on words individually to learn their correct pronunciation, as well as get access to special videos that explain “phonetics” (the art of pronunciation) in a clear way.
This app has a unique learning technique that’s especially great for visual learners.
If you’re not very confident about judging your pronunciation by listening to your recorded voice, then maybe looking at a visual representation of your voice might help.
This app generates a picture of the sound wave created when you speak a word. All you have to do is compare the visual sound wave of your voice to the sound wave produced by a native speaker.
Moreover, this app has the option of slowing down any recording. So if it’s a particularly long word, you can touch and drag on a difficult part, to slow it down and make it easier to learn.
You can learn both British and American English in this app. Instead of focusing on all the individual sounds of English, this app is designed to teach the pronunciation of words.
With one tap, you can get the search option and listen to how a word is pronounced. You can also share any text from another source (such as a web browser, a reading app or an e-book) and listen to its pronunciation.
This app is perfect for reading practice, doesn’t show any ads and doesn’t require an internet connection.
Language learners can also compare the pronunciation of different languages since it has Spanish, Italian, German, French, Japanese, Hindi, Korean, Greek, Portuguese and Russian pronunciations along with English.
Many words from these languages have related sounds and can help learners connect an English word to a language they already know.
Note: As of January 2022, only the American English version of the app is available. In addition, since this app has changed hands, it is no longer the same quality and is missing some of the original features. Please be aware of this and read the reviews before you install it!
Original description: This is a fantastic app to have, as it includes pronunciation charts in both British and American English. Most of the above apps are geared towards either British or American English, but with this app you can shuffle between both, depending on your learning goals.
Plus, the premium version has pronunciation quizzes, special word lists, videos and some useful tips to help you become a fluent speaker.
This app promises to improve your listening and speaking skills at the same time.
There are a lot of everyday conversations all featuring native speakers, which you can listen to and learn from.
In addition to learning the right ways to pronounce different words, you’ll also learn useful vocabulary and work on your grammar. The app even provides access to an offline dictionary.
So if you’re looking for a good all-around app to help with learning English, but with a special focus on pronunciation, you’ve found the right one.
Howjsay is a pronunciation dictionary with over 175,000 words. Each word is pronounced by a native speaker and they also have a translation feature in the app.
Apart from common words, the app also has specialist vocabulary relating to fields like medicine, law, science and even current affairs and names of famous people.
They also have different recordings for heteronyms (words that are spelled the same but have different meanings in different contexts). Often, English heteronyms are pronounced differently based on their meanings and this can be very confusing for learners.
If you don’t know the English equivalent of a word in your language, you can also use the translate-and-search feature on the app.
This pronunciation checker is made for American English learners and has versatile features for pronunciation practice.
You can focus on specific sounds, specific words, specific topics and even sentences, plus each word comes with an audio recording. After the recording is played, you have to repeat the word and the app will tell you how accurate your pronunciation was.
For each sound there are video tutorials that tell you how to properly move your mouth while making that sound. This feature really helps in correcting your pronunciation fast.
The app also has some recorded sentences for various topics like food, family, asking for directions or greeting people.
Each sound has around 30 example words in this app. It also has an offline dictionary that lets you look up any word and listen to its pronunciation.
This is a general English learning app. Since pronunciation is a part of speaking, reading and conversing, this app will let you practice all these skills at once.
The app has voice recognition features that tell you if your pronunciation is correct or not. It also has short stories, idioms, daily conversations and short sentences in both audio and transcripts (written words).
Read the transcripts and speak along for pronunciation practice that’ll help you in real life!
Simple Ways to Improve English Pronunciation with Apps
Record yourself while you speak. Sometimes, we don’t know exactly how we sound until we carefully listen to our own voices. So when you’re practicing pronunciation, record yourself and then compare that with the learning material.
Make your learning social. Pronunciation isn’t like spelling or grammar. You can’t expect to memorize certain rules and magically be able to pronounce everything the right way. You need to speak more often and get feedback from the people you speak to, in English.
Supplement pronunciation apps with other English content. The more exposure to English that you get, the better. So when you aren’t using your English pronunciation app, watch English television shows and follow the news on BBC, paying attention to the way people speak.
Replay videos again and again. You won’t be able to memorize how a word is pronounced just by listening to it once. So replay your audio or video materials over and over until you’re confident you’re getting it right.
Learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): The IPA is a pretty useful thing to learn, especially for non-native speakers. As you can see on the IPA chart, different sounds are represented by particular letters and symbols. Once you know the chart by heart, you’ll be prepared to pronounce any word you find online or in an English dictionary app.
The only fool-proof way to improve your pronunciation is to practice speaking English as much as possible.
Yes, when you’re starting out you’ll make a lot of mistakes, and that can feel embarrassing. But the important thing is to learn from those mistakes. It’s the only way to improve.
The more you speak and the more you interact with other English speakers, the faster you’ll learn. So keep trying and don’t give up hope! Soon, you’ll sound like a native speaker.
