While working your way through your lesson timeline, you’ll find lessons marked ‘speaking practice’.
Speaking practice is a series of "listen and repeat" exercises – which involves repeating aloud what you hear, word for word, with as little delay as possible – inspired by Alexander Arguelles’ shadowing technique.
Each lesson includes:
- A full-screen, high-quality video of a fluent speaker saying a word or phrase to watch and listen
- A ‘record’ function so you can repeat the word or phrase, mimicking the fluent speaker's pronunciation
- Immediate feedback that highlights the word(s) needing more practice (available in our English, Spanish, French & German Complete courses – all interface languages)
- The ability to listen to your recording and the fluent speaker’s recording side by side to compare and contrast before trying again
- Clear, useful and actionable AI-generated, large language model (LLM) feedback on the pronunciation recorded (currently in English & Spanish interface languages)
Our videos contain speakers with different native accents, but don't worry—you don't have to mimic the perfect accent to pass the exercise. The model we use is trained on many varieties of each language and considers different ways of saying certain words. Learners are encouraged to mirror the speech of the native speakers in the video, as paying attention to the rhythm and tone of the speech helps you produce the words authentically without your accent affecting your score!
How does it work?
Once you opt-in to receive targeted pronunciation feedback, you’re ready to go!
- The speaking practice lesson starts by playing the video of the first exercise with the native pronunciation of a selected word or sentence
- At any point, you can select the
button at the bottom right to translate the word or phrase to your interface language
- You may also use the repeat button (↻) at the bottom left to listen to the native speaker’s pronunciation again
- At any point, you can select the
- When you’re ready, press and hold the record button at the bottom of the screen and repeat the word or phrase from the video; your audio will be then analysed by AI
- You’ll instantly receive feedback in two different ways:
- Words pronounced incorrectly will be highlighted in red (Complete English, Spanish, French & German courses)
- Detailed pronunciation feedback explaining how to improve the words pronounced incorrectly (LLM feedback currently only in the Complete English & Spanish courses)
- You’ve got two more attempts to get it right, or simply continue to the next exercise
- Continue until the lesson is finished
Where can I find speaking practice lessons?
You can find speaking practice in all levels within the following courses:
- 🇬🇧/🇺🇸 Complete English
- 🇪🇸 Complete Spanish
- 🇫🇷 Complete French
- 🇩🇪 Complete German
- 🇮🇹 Complete Italian
These lessons are available on all interfaces. Personalised feedback (LLM) is only available for our English (US), English (UK) and Spanish language interfaces.
When and how can I access this feature?
Unlike other lessons, you can access speaking practice without unlocking the previous ones. Simply scroll to find a ‘speaking practice’ lesson and give it a go! You can also test out the feature a limited number of times before subscribing. Once you run out of attempts, you will need a Premium subscription to access the feature.
If you have a Premium subscription, you have unlimited access to speaking practice lessons to build your accuracy confidence.
Find out more about our Premium features here.
Speaking practice is currently available on the iOS and Android versions of the Busuu app. Remember to keep your app updated for the best experience, as we regularly make improvements and address issues.
As we continue developing the Busuu experience, we'll release this feature on other platforms in the future.