ELSA - Innovation in Education or Training Apps

Name of Organization / Company: ELSA, Palo Alto, CA USA
Category: Award for Innovation in Education or Training Apps

Entry Title: ELSA

Essay

Founded in 2015, ELSA is a mobile app for language learners that helps them improve pronunciation and reduce accents, utiliz ing in-house speech recognition, automated feedback and deep learning technology. Based in SF, ELSA raised $12 million in capital and is backed by VCs in Silicon Valley & Asia and Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused fund.

ELSA’s vision is to enable everyone to speak foreign languages with confidence. ELSA has experienced exponential growth in 2018 of 3.5 times in paid subscriptions compared to 2017. ELSA (English Language Speech Assistant) helps 1.5 billion English language learners across the globe with an easy way to improve their English speaking ability. We built our own proprietary speech technology using deep learning and AI to detect people's pronunciation mistakes with 95%+ accuracy. ELSA listens to the way language learners pronounce words, sentences or conversations to pinpoint exact errors and provide real-time, accurate feedback on their pronunciation mistakes with specific suggestions on how to improve.

The innovative aspect of our app is our state-of-the-art proprietary speech recognition technology, ranked among Top 5 Best Artificial Intelligence Apps, together with Microsoft Cortana and Google Alo. Unlike other traditional speech recognitions in the market, like Siri, Google Voice or Alexa, ELSA is unique in that traditional technology has much lower accuracy in recognizing speakers’ errors when they speak English with strong accents. Traditional voice technology is built with the intention to be very forgiving to speakers’ errors, and try to understand what they say. So these ‘giant’ technologies might know users don’t speak certain words correctly, but they can’t pinpoint to users why or how to fix those errors.

ELSA’s technology is built with a different algorithm that detects the exact errors users are making, depending on which accents they are from, and then give them real-time tailored feedback of how they can move their tongue or lips in different positions to fix errors. Our technology is built with voice data of people speaking English with accents around the world, so we’re achieving a better accuracy when it comes to understand these non-native English speakers (for countries where we have many users), compared to the traditional voice recognition technologies on the market.

Our free assessment test is the most accurate you can take to discover your English speaking proficiency. Then we provide a Score ranging from 0% -100%, with most native speakers scoring around 95% and above. ELSA identifies your top pronunciation challenges for each sound, like 'schwa' and 'dipthong'. The assessment test result is used to personalize user’s learning paths, highlighting which sounds they already do well, and which sound they should focus on more. Under the Skills tab of the app, each planet represents a skill; planets with “conquered” flags mean the user has mastered that skill when the user scores 80% or more on that particular sound. When they master that skill, a “conquered” flag appears and they move on. Their weakest skill is the last planet to practice.

ELSA provides guided learning meaning that students are guided to specific lessons best suited for their skill level. We offer 22 of the most practical topics and 800+ fun lessons since the app incorporates Games. ELSA teaches you how to pronounce common idioms, expressions, daily conversation in English.

After a successful pilot program of its educational platform in Vietnam, ELSA will open the teacher platform offering to a global market to allow English teachers and schools to integrate ELSA into their curriculum. ELSA gives employees or students the fluency to succeed in English and is now available for businesses and schools.

Employees or students can learn anytime, anywhere using the app and you can track their learning progress in real-time from your organization’s dashboard.

LINKS:
URL 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDqVjYncXY&t=21s
URL 2: https://elsaspeak.com/home