Microsoft offers new alternatives with paid subscriptions, like Copilot Pro and its AI functions to exponentially improve the Windows experience, but it also stands out by offering free ones like Reading Coach. This application in its web version or as an application for Windows is dedicated to improving English pronunciation, so it is very useful for learning this language and in a very complicated subject: spoken English.
Especially because to learn how to improve English pronunciation we are used to need a native teacher who points out how each word is pronounced correctly. Accessing a native teacher is not easy, which is why this tool takes on even greater value due to its enormous capacity at all levels.
And best of all: It’s free via a Microsoft account to use on any PC. Reading Couch was made available as a feature of Microsoft Teams to provide learning tips and instant feedback to improve pronunciation and speaking fluency, while giving teachers feedback on their progress.
The best virtual spoken English teacher
In web version or in application, Reading Coach also offers new experiences to allow users to create their own stories generated by generative AI or Gen AI. And this in a very visual way, since characters and a story are selected in a cartoon style to finally create the text which must be read aloud.
And here comes one of your best and most valuable experiences: speech-to-text AI analysis which analyzes reading fluency, identifies words with the worst pronunciation and records accuracy, speed and time consumed.
Image of a reading coach assessing the reading of a text in English
Free Android
Reading coach from the first screen allows you to choose between these options:
- Create a story with AI to read aloud.
- Read some sample passages from Reading Coach’s own library.
- Add your own passage.
- Achievements.
- Save.
When you create a story, you will be taken to a screen to choose the character, then the story, and finally the reading level from 1 to 8 depending on the length and complexity of the texts. Artificial intelligence will generate the text by choosing the level to read aloud. Of course, you need a microphone of course and give it permission in its web version.
Image of the beginning of reading a text in English for assessment
Free Android
After you have finished reading the text aloud, Reader Coach will offer assessment results with a percentage that measures the accuracy of the pronunciation, the time taken to read it, and on another card the words that the user must practice. This last option is one of the most striking, since this tool from Microsoft not only evaluates pronunciation, but also helps improve words that can cost the user the most.
By clicking on the ‘Practice words’ button You will be taken to a new screen with the words to improve. Click on one of them to read it with the Reader Coach voice tool, then the user clicks on the microphone to repeat it with their voice. Reader Coach will re-evaluate whether it is pronounced correctly and highlight it in orange or red to recommend that the user replay it until they can pronounce it correctly.
Practicing words that have not been pronounced exactly
Free Android
In the tests carried out by EL ESPAÑOL – El Androide Libre, the truth is that it is a magnificent tool as an external resource to improve pronunciation. In reality, its value is incalculable., since it offers everyone the opportunity to improve their spoken English from a basic level to a more advanced level and thus prepare for English exams, whether B2 or the most complicated, C1 and C2. It is accessible from the following link:
- Access Microsoft’s Reader Coach on their website.
Finally, there is another point that needs to be emphasized: the responsibility taken by Microsoft for Reader Coach AIbecause it is based on respect and care for students with principles based on fairness, reliability, security, confidentiality, inclusion, accountability and transparency.
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