English Pronunciation Checker

How to use the pronunciation checker

1. Pick a sentence. The presets are grouped by the sounds that cause most trouble (th, r and l, v and w, short and long i, a and u, final consonants). Or type your own sentence of up to 120 characters.
2. Listen first. The Listen button plays the sentence in a natural voice at normal or slow speed. Hear it twice before you record; the slow version shows where the stress falls.
3. Record. Press Record, say the sentence once at a normal pace, then press Stop and score. The recorder stops by itself after 15 seconds.
4. Read the result. The overall percentage comes first, then every word with its grade and the letters that were off, then the sounds to work on. Record again for the same sentence, or move to the next one.

How it works

Your browser records the sentence with its built-in MediaRecorder (webm/opus where the browser supports it, mp4 otherwise) and sends the clip together with the text to Fluently’s scoring endpoint. The scorer compares what it heard with the expected pronunciation of each word and returns, for every word, a score from 0 to 1, one of three grades (which this page shows as Clear, Almost and Work on it), a grade for each letter and a transliteration of what it heard, such as “buh-na-nuh” for a mispronounced banana.

The overall score is the scorer’s sentence score multiplied by 100 and rounded. The bands are ours: 85% and above is Clear, 60–84% is Almost there, below 60% is Needs work. Letters are underlined when their grade is below the top grade. A second pass lists the sounds the scorer found weak, ordered by how far off they were; the page shows the three worst with an example word and a tip from the table below. When the second pass singles out no sound (common for very short sentences), the page points to the letter groups the scorer marked instead.

The example words in the table follow the English key of the International Phonetic Alphabet; the “often mixed up with” column lists the substitutions learners make most, each with a word pair you can test. Sounds table as of 21.10.2026.

The English sounds the checker reports

Forty sounds of General American English: 24 consonants, 11 vowels and 5 diphthongs. When the result names a sound, find its row here, say the example word, then the test pair, and record the sentence again.

What to do with your result

85% and above. The sentence is clear. Make the test harder: pick the presets with final consonants and clusters, or paste a line from a film or podcast and shadow it first with our English shadowing practice guide. The 40 difficult words to pronounce are a good source of sentences that still trip up advanced speakers.

60–84%. One or two words carry the loss. Play the sentence slowly, repeat only the marked words, then record the whole sentence at normal speed. If the same sound is marked in several words, drill it on its own with the tongue twisters for that sound, and come back to the sentence afterwards. The pronunciation practice guide has a routine for one sound per week.

Below 60%. Work on one sound at a time, not the whole sentence. Read its row in the table, check the word’s transcription in the English to IPA converter so you know which sound is expected where, and record a short preset built around that sound. Expect the number to move after a few days of five-minute sessions, not after one attempt.

Get this feedback inside real conversations

In the Fluently app the AI tutor scores pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary and grammar during a call and corrects you as you talk; pronunciation drills grade English sounds one by one. Installing the app and the spoken English assessment are free; regular practice is part of a subscription.

Download on theApp StoreGet it onGoogle Play

Limits: when the checker is not the right tool

• English only. The scorer is trained on English; a sentence in another language returns grades that mean nothing.
• Say what is on the screen. The scorer grades what it hears against the text you chose. If you say a different sentence, it still grades it as an attempt at the text, so the result will be low for the wrong reason.
• One sentence, up to 15 seconds. Paragraphs and speeches are out of scope; for pace and filler words over a longer stretch, use the speaking rate calculator.
• A quiet room helps. Background noise, a far-away laptop microphone or a very short clip produce “could not hear speech” or a low score that says more about the recording than about you. The mic test shows whether your microphone is loud and clean enough.
• It is a score, not a lesson. The checker tells you which words and sounds were off; it does not teach the mouth position. Use the table and the linked guides for that, or a tutor who can hear you.
• No accent verdict. The sounds list comes from the same pass that estimates an accent, but the checker never shows the accent guess. Some regional pronunciations can still be marked as off, so compare your own results over time rather than with other speakers.