There are plenty of English learning apps on the market, but the vast majority focus on vocabulary, grammar, reading, or listening. Products specifically designed to help you actually speak are incredibly rare. For those of us living in a non-English environment like Taiwan, this really hits home—there’s practically no chance to speak English in everyday life. The only way to practice is to pay for a tutor, and online one-on-one lessons are expensive and require coordinating around the teacher’s schedule.
Many people actually have a solid foundation in English—their vocabulary is sufficient and they’ve more or less mastered the grammar. But the moment they need to speak, they freeze up. Whether it’s a meeting with foreign colleagues, a client call, an English interview, or traveling abroad, they have the ideas in their heads but just can’t get the words out. The real problem is simply that they don’t practice speaking enough, plus the psychological pressure of being afraid of making mistakes.
If you have the same problem, “Speak” is an excellent AI English speaking app. My team and I recently tried it out, and we genuinely love it!
Difficulty ranges from super beginner to advanced, and each lesson practices speaking on various topics. It also incorporates AI technology—when you make a mistake, AI immediately corrects you and provides the correct phrasing. It even creates customized practice lessons based on your personal situation, so you can really apply what you learn in everyday life. This is really practical. I’ll share it with everyone below.
What kind of AI English speaking app is Speak
Speak is an AI learning app designed specifically for speaking English, giving people outside English-speaking environments access to near real-conversation speaking practice through AI technology. Just 5 minutes a day, and you can easily improve your speaking ability.
More importantly, Speak has also received investment from OpenAI, which speaks volumes about its AI capabilities. The app has amassed over 45 million users worldwide and was named Google’s Best App of 2024.
Here are Speak’s AI technology advantages—the things that set it apart from typical language learning apps.
- Speak – A speech recognition system optimized for non-native speakers: Rather than using off-the-shelf speech recognition engines, Speak trains its own speech models using voice samples from over 1 million non-native learners, with special optimization for common pronunciation errors, grammatical mistakes, and intonation issues—especially for Asian learners—achieving over 93% recognition accuracy.For more information, please visit our official website.）
- Not just passively answering questions, but actively guiding your learning: Most AI tools operate on a “you ask, it answers” model, but Speak’s AI is more like an AI coach—it tracks your learning progress, records your common mistakes, proactively schedules review content, and even designs personalized practice scenarios based on your lifestyle.
Through Speak’s Silicon Valley elite team of linguists and professional content creators, they spent ten years perfecting this speaking learning product and creating Speak’s unique “systematic learning method.” With four steps—from “learning” to “practice” to “application” and finally “review”—it forms a complete learning cycle. No need to worry about course planning, making English speaking learning more efficient, which is something I really appreciate.
Another great thing is that Speak doesn’t just throw you into talking with an AI right away. Instead, it first helps you learn new speaking vocabulary or sentences. Each lesson starts with a themed video that explains how to use these expressions in your daily life. Then the AI uses situational dialogues to simulate various real-life and workplace scenarios, giving you plenty of opportunities to practice speaking repeatedly.
After learning, use AI to create conversation topics for practical practice. When you make mistakes, AI will correct you in real time and show you the correct way to say it. Finally, based on your learning records, you’ll get a personalized review designed just for you to strengthen your learning.
Speak – AI English Speaking App Review: Three of My Favorite Features
No need to plan your own lessons—automatically arranged based on your level, with AI-powered smart review.
Many people who want to learn speaking get stuck at the first hurdle: not knowing how to organize their study material. Unlike building vocabulary or studying grammar, speaking practice isn’t so straightforward—so which sentences are actually worth practicing? And what if you encounter unfamiliar words while practicing? When these thoughts keep cycling through your mind, you might end up wanting to give up.
With Speak, this AI English speaking app, you don’t have to worry about this at all!
For different users, Speak offers multiple levels of courses to meet learners of all levels, as well as practical topic-based courses to choose from (for example: travel English, interview English, etc.). For each unit’s learning content, you simply follow the app’s list and learn step by step day by day—your speaking ability will gradually improve without you even noticing, and it’s truly so much easier.
Moreover, Speak’s courses are more than just regular classes. As I mentioned earlier, they use a “systematic learning method,” from input to output, with particular focus on “personalized review” – and it really works. From my experience, there are many sentences I memorized after going through the course just once. For instance, when I need to analyze the pros and cons of something, I immediately think of “On one hand” and “On the other hand,” which I learned a few days ago.
The video introduction at the start of the course is something I really like. Compared to jumping straight into learning, demonstrating sentence usage through scenarios makes it much easier to remember—you quickly know in what situations it can be used. While demonstrating, it also asks you to follow along and read aloud.
The video can be played with English, Chinese, or no subtitles (tap the screen and you’ll see the settings in the bottom left corner). For those with a certain level of proficiency, it’s recommended to use no subtitles or English subtitles to strengthen your listening skills. You can also adjust the video playback speed:
Then you move on to extensive speaking practice. After the exercises, most lessons also include “role-play” sections where you can freely converse with AI and use the sentences you just learned. This means after learning each new sentence, you can jump straight into real-world practice to reinforce your memory.
If your sentence isn’t completely correct, tap the star icon on the left, and AI will instantly correct it for you, showing you the right way to say it and explaining why.
Some people might think improving speaking requires knowing a lot of vocabulary, but that’s actually not the case at all. The sentences you learn in Speak barely contain any difficult words, yet they’re extremely practical in daily life. Take “On the fence,” for example — these three words are ones you definitely already know, but combined together, they express “unable to make a decision.”
These sentences are all commonly used by native speakers in everyday life. Once you master them, you’ll not only speak English more fluently, but also use it just like native speakers do.
While practicing, if you do encounter unfamiliar words, Speak also supports a “tap to look up” feature—tap on the word, and the Chinese meaning and pronunciation will appear below.
For a more detailed explanation, tap the icon in the upper right to expand the dictionary. You can view the word’s definition, similar words, and example sentences:
Additionally, in the practice menu, there’s a “Smart Review” feature that creates review sessions based on your mastery score. Simply put, the AI analyzes which sentences you’re not yet familiar with and schedules extra practice until you reach 100% mastery. Each review session lets you set how long you want it to be, which is quite flexible—when you have more time, you can review more.
Speak uses AI to help me truly identify my speaking weaknesses, strengthen my learning through customized review, and better master unfamiliar sentences.
2. Use the “AI Conversation Creator” to access real-world practice conversations anytime you want
This is one of my favorite features — even if you’re not abroad or don’t have foreign friends, you can still create an AI virtual conversation environment through this feature to practice English speaking anytime, which is really convenient.
Once you enter the conversation practice, you’ll find the “Create AI Conversation” feature. There are three virtual characters, each with a different personality. In the topic section, you can set your role and the AI’s role, along with a scenario description. Once configured, the AI will start creating the conversation.
As you practice, if there are any mistakes in what you say, the AI assistant on the right will correct them in real time. Tap to see what the correct phrasing is and why it should be changed. Through this learn-by-doing, instant-correction approach, your speaking skills will become increasingly accurate, even without a teacher by your side:
This feature must be used regularly, as it’s very helpful for improving speaking skills.
3. A variety of pre-built dialogue scenarios to meet everyone’s learning needs
Beyond the AI creation feature, there are also many pre-built scenarios in the conversation practice that you can use directly, so you don’t have to worry about setup. For those just starting out with Speak or who aren’t sure where to begin, I’d highly recommend starting with these.
There are many scenarios related to travel abroad and shopping that many people want to improve, including “going through customs,” “how to take the subway?” “taking an Uber to the airport,” “shopping for summer/winter clothes,” “ordering pizza delivery,” and more—all situations you frequently encounter in real life.
There are even professional IELTS preparation speaking exercises, so don’t miss out if you’re planning to take the IELTS exam.
Since you’re talking to an AI, there’s no need to worry about embarrassing mistakes. You can speak freely and say whatever comes to mind without any pressure. Even if you make mistakes, the AI will correct you right away, so practicing speaking this way really helps you improve faster.
How to use Speak, this AI English speaking app
Speak AI’s English speaking app interface, like other well-known language learning apps, has multiple lessons in each unit. You can simply follow the sequence and learn in order without worrying about what content to study.
Before you begin, remember to set your level using the button in the top left corner. There are five levels available: “Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, and Advanced.” There are also “Elective Topic Courses” and “Special Courses” available. If you’re not sure which level to choose, just pick one that seems right for you—you can switch to a different level anytime:
You can then start learning. Each lesson teaches you several common sentences, which you can preview in the “…” menu in the upper right corner. The learning process involves speaking—no typing required.
When learning, if you’re too lazy to keep manually tapping “continue,” there’s a hands-free mode in the top right corner. Once you turn it on, it automatically advances to the next sentence after finishing each one, which is much more convenient.
Experience points from your learning accumulate weekly. Reach a certain ranking or higher to advance to the next level. You can check your ranking in the “Challenge” menu:
For those who always tend to get lazy after learning halfway, Speak also offers various “challenges,” including the “20 Lesson Challenge,” “Streak Challenge,” “1,000 Sentence Challenge,” and more, to keep you motivated. This is highly recommended.
Why should we still improve our English speaking skills in this AI era?
Now AI translation has become incredibly powerful, even offering real-time speech translation. So many people might wonder: if that’s the case, why do we still need to improve our speaking abilities?
The answer is definitely yes, for three reasons.
First off: “AI real-time interpretation is limited by hardware requirements.” Both parties need to have the devices for AI translation to work—so you can understand what they’re saying and they can understand what you’re saying. This alone makes it hard to pull off. It’s not like you can walk around with two earbuds on hand whenever you’re traveling abroad, and then ask strangers to put them on when you need AI translation (lol).
Additionally, AI translation has a time lag — even if it’s fast, you’d still need to wait 1-3 seconds after the other person finishes speaking, unlike in real conversations where you can respond immediately. Not to mention, AI can also fail or make translation errors.
Last but not least, and what I believe is most important: building connections and reducing the distance.
When you can actually hold a conversation in English with someone, that sense of understanding and closeness is something AI translation simply can’t match. Whether it’s building trust with overseas clients, developing rapport with foreign colleagues, or chatting with locals while traveling, speaking for yourself and having AI speak for you produce completely different results.
The differences between Speak and other AI tools
With so many AI tools available now, ChatGPT can do voice conversations and Duolingo has AI voice features too, so you might be wondering what makes Speak stand out.
First, let’s look at the differences between Speak and ChatGPT.
While ChatGPT can also be used for English practice, it’s fundamentally a general-purpose AI tool rather than a product designed for language learning, so the differences in learning content will be quite noticeable when you have conversations with it.
The interaction model of something like ChatGPT follows a “you ask, it answers” pattern. Each conversation is independent, meaning it doesn’t remember your previous mistakes, which sentence patterns you haven’t mastered yet, or what you should practice next. You’re responsible for planning your own curriculum, brainstorming topics, setting up scenarios, and identifying areas that need improvement.
This may not be an issue for those who have more time or experience with language course planning, but for people who want to build speaking habits, simply not knowing how to start or what to talk about is already a barrier.
Speak’s team includes linguists and content experts, and “systematic learning” designs a complete learning cycle from a language teaching perspective—from course scheduling and scenario simulations to error tracking and review scheduling, the system handles everything for you.
Moreover, the quality of ChatGPT’s real-time corrections also doesn’t come close to Speak’s. In ChatGPT’s voice mode, it typically won’t proactively point out your pronunciation or grammar errors—it just keeps telling you that you’re doing great, making no effort to help you improve.
Speak’s self-training speech recognition model is specifically optimized for non-native speakers, accurately detecting pronunciation errors and unnatural expressions—this level of precision is completely different from generic speech recognition. Speak’s AI provides real-time corrections, instantly identifying errors and offering immediate suggestions for improving your speaking.
Simply put, ChatGPT is like a friend who speaks good English—you can chat with it, but it won’t proactively teach you. Speak, on the other hand, is like a personal AI English tutor. It doesn’t just practice conversations with you, but also tracks your progress, records your weaknesses, and proactively schedules what you need to review.
Both Duolingo and Speak are language learning apps that use gamification to make learning fun and less intimidating, but they actually focus on quite different things.
Duolingo’s core is building vocabulary and grammar foundations through gamified multiple choice, matching, and translation exercises, with speaking practice making up a relatively small portion of the overall course. While Duolingo Max does feature AI roleplay and answer explanations, speaking still isn’t the main focus.
Speak’s entire product is centered around getting you to “speak up” — from video lessons and speaking practice to AI situational dialogues, every feature is designed around speaking training.
Also, anyone who’s used Duolingo probably knows that sometimes you encounter content you wouldn’t really use in real life. It’s fun to learn, but it may not necessarily be applicable to everyday situations.
If your goal is to improve your ability to speak English in real life rather than learn more vocabulary, Speaks product design logic would be better suited to your needs.
Premium version offer
Speak is free to use, but with limited features and daily learning caps, so for those who truly want to improve their English speaking skills, upgrading to the paid version is highly recommended—the price is quite affordable.
Currently, two paid versions are eligible for the discount:
- Premium annual: NT$3,191 (only ~NT$266/month)
- Premium Plus – NT$5,691/year (approx. NT$475/month)
At less than 300 yuan per month for Speak Premium’s annual membership, it offers significantly better value than typical online one-on-one English tutors costing 1,000-3,000 yuan per month. Plus, you can practice anytime without coordinating schedules with a tutor.
Speak is now offering an exclusive deal for Computer King Ada readers. Upgrade to an annual membership through the link in this article and get a $299 discount. New users can also enjoy a 7-day free trial.
Ada’s Exclusive: Subscribe annually and enjoy 299 off (New users also get 7 days free trial)
Both Premium and Premium Plus include the following features:
- Systematic courses (video and audio instruction, speaking practice, rapid-fire Q&A, role-play)
- AI Scenario Conversations
- quick practice
- Smart Review
- Speak Tutor Instant Q&A
- Pronunciation Coach
The main difference is that Premium Plus offers unlimited AI correction and personalized course features, while Premium has a daily limit.
| Features | Premium | Premium Plus |
| Speak Systematic Course(audio-visual courses, speaking practice, quick Q&A, role-play) | ✔ | ✔ |
| AI Scenario Dialogue(Custom Themes / Default Tasks and Topics) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Quick Practice(Short-Time Fill-in-the-Blank Vocabulary and Phrase Practice) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Smart ReviewReview content arranged based on individual proficiency | ✔ | ✔ |
| Speak Tutor Instant Q&A(AI instant responses to learning questions) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Pronunciation CoachTap any word for instant pronunciation | ✔ | ✔ |
| Real-time AI conversation correction | Daily usage limit | Unlimited uses |
| Speak Tutor Course DesignCourses designed to meet individual needs | Daily limit: 10 times | Unlimited times |
| Courses tailored for youPractice exercises tailored to common mistakes | Daily limit: 3 times | Unlimited times |
Who is Premium suitable for?
- For light learners who practice 2–4 times per week, daily lessons and situational dialogues are already sufficient for you.
- Budget is limited, but I want to steadily improve my English speaking, and I don’t need unlimited sessions either.
- Practice for 15–30 minutes daily, aiming to build a speaking habit.
- Beginner to intermediate learners who are still getting used to the course pace
- Focusing on overseas travel, hobby learning, and everyday conversation
Who might consider Premium Plus?
- High-frequency practitioners: those who practice over an hour a day and want to keep chatting with AI
- For those with clear short-term goals: business English interview prep, English presentations, and study abroad exams
- Advanced learners seeking to perfect their expression: hoping that every pronunciation and grammar error can be corrected by AI
- Highly customized training programs: intensive training for specific industries and workplace scenarios (e.g., business negotiations, technical meetings)
- Short-term intensive learners: those who need concentrated study 1-2 months before going abroad and prefer not to be restricted by class limits
Summary
For people living in Taiwan, Speak is really a great app for improving English speaking skills. Its systematic learning method lets you feel real progress, and even after just a few weeks of use, you can noticeably feel your English speaking getting stronger.
The “AI conversation creation feature” is also a huge bonus—with it, even without any foreign friends around to chat with, you can create any scenario you want and practice with AI anytime. Through continuous real-world practice and output, your progress becomes incredibly significant. During the process, AI also acts like a teacher, correcting mistakes in real time—something other English learning apps simply don’t offer.
Anyway, subscribing to the annual plan now gets a 299 discount, and new users also get a free 7-day trial — it’s highly recommended to give it a try.
Ada Exclusive: Subscribe annually and enjoy 299 off (New users also get 7 days free trial)
Source: KOCPC Chinese