Elsa Speak Application as an Innovation to Improve English Pronunciations of Speaking Skills: Student’s Perception

Abstract

For EFL (English as Foreign Language) students, pronunciation is the most common problem in learning English. Native English speakers have different accents from the accents students use in everyday life. Therefore, students must be able to adjust the accents of foreign speakers with the local accents they often use. In this era of Society 5.0, learning resources are through not only teachers and books. We can also access the internet as a learning resource, one of which is the use of learning applications. This study aims to determine students' perceptions in learning English pronunciation using the ELSA Speak application. ELSA stands for English Language Speech Assistant. This application is used to train students' pronunciation to match the pronunciation of foreign speakers. To analyze the data, researchers used qualitative descriptive methods. The subjects in this study consisted of six high school students. The research instrument used was a questionnaire consisting of 15 questions. Based on our findings, students stated that the ELSA Speak application has a good influence on learning English pronunciation.