TalkSmart vs ELSA Speak: pronunciation or fluency?

ELSA Speak is an English speaking app that made its name with pronunciation feedback. It describes itself as a coach giving instant AI feedback tuned to your voice, and it has added role-plays for situations such as meetings and interviews. Few apps focus as closely on whether your sounds come out right.

TalkSmart starts somewhere else: with the conversation itself. You talk freely with an AI partner, act out a scene, or rehearse an IELTS Speaking test or a job interview. The report after the session gives you pronunciation, fluency and grammar scores and your corrected sentences. Pronunciation is measured, but the centre is deciding what to say and building the sentence.

Is it pronunciation or fluency that holds you back?

There is a simple way to find out. Record yourself talking about a topic for one minute, listen back and ask two questions:

• Do people say "sorry?" If your words are right but misunderstood — ship and sheep, three and tree blur together — the problem is probably pronunciation. A tool that gives sound-level feedback helps a lot here.
• Are you understood but stopping often? Long silences before a sentence, sentences left half-finished, "how do you say it" moments: that is fluency. What you need there is not pronunciation drills but real conversation repetition.

Most learners have a bit of both, but one usually dominates. Fix the dominant one first.

Which one, when

• Your accent causes misunderstandings or you struggle with specific sounds: a pronunciation-focused app is the right place.
• You understand but freeze when you speak: speaking practice that trains real-time sentence building gets results faster.
• You have a specific exam or interview: being able to rehearse the whole scenario matters. TalkSmart's IELTS Speaking mock test gives a band estimate, and interview mode asks questions for your sector.
• You want the interface and explanations in your own language: TalkSmart works in 14 languages.

Using both

Pronunciation and fluency feed each other: the more relaxed you are when speaking, the more attention you have left for sounds, and the better your pronunciation, the less you hold back. If you have a clear pronunciation problem, combining short sound drills with daily conversation practice is a sensible routine.

Where to start

If you do not know your level, the free level test takes four minutes with no sign-up. For how speaking practice works, see the English speaking practice guide.

Frequently asked questions