Busuu Launches AI-powered ‘Speaking Practice’ to Boost Real-World Conversation Skills

Busuu, a Chegg service and language learning provider with over 120 million registered users¹, announced its new AI-powered feature, ‘speaking practice,’ to help learners practice speaking another language in their own time, in a safe, judgment-free space. The new feature combines AI-powered feedback and personalized pronunciation practice with videos of native speakers that help learners build confidence with their listening and pronunciation skills. According to a survey commissioned by Busuu and EY-Parthenon, 55% of learners are focused on improving their conversational skills and 66% of learners prefer ‘listen & repeat’ exercises.

“’Speaking practice’ is the perfect stepping stone to help language learners feel confident in using another language in real life”

‘Speaking practice’ provides an immersive experience into a language’s sounds, accents, and mouth movements, with videos featuring native speakers. It offers personalized feedback powered by AI, allowing learners to receive instant, actionable insights on how to improve their speaking skills. Using an AI speech recognition tool, ‘speaking practice’ processes the learners’ speech and then grades the learners’ sentences. It then highlights the words that need improvement and delivers personalized feedback based on which words they got wrong. Learners can practice speaking another language in their own time, in a safe, judgment-free space which helps relieve anxiety throughout their language learning journey.

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“’Speaking practice’ is the perfect stepping stone to help language learners feel confident in using another language in real life,” said Gino Micacchi, Vice President of Product at Busuu. “The combination of immersive videos using native speakers alongside personalized real-time AI-powered feedback provides learners with a life-like language learning experience.”

‘Speaking practice’ is available for anyone learning English, Spanish, French, and German across all Busuu’s 16 interface languages.² English and Spanish learners can experience the full version of AI-powered personalized feedback, which includes actionable insights on how to improve their speaking skills. Any learner can try two speaking lessons for free, while Premium subscribers will have unlimited access to the feature.

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Busuu’s courses are designed by experts and cover the four key areas needed to learn a language – listening, reading, writing and speaking. Furthermore, ‘speaking practice’ is built into Busuu’s courses, which means users get a scaffolded learning experience, learning grammar, words and phrases before they reach speaking exercises.

Language learners can try ‘speaking practice’ now by downloading Busuu on Apple’s App Store. ‘Speaking practice’ will be available on Android later this year. A web version is expected to be available in the future.