English accent test: how strong is your accent?
Read eight sentences aloud. The test counts how many of your words a recognizer trained on native speech understands and turns that into a 0–100 score. Each sentence is loaded with one group of sounds, so the result also tells you which group to fix first.
Start the accent test
Press Say it next to a sentence and read it once at your normal speed. Do all eight for a full result.
- I think these three things are worth thinking through
- Laura really likes the light rain in early April
- We were very wet when we visited the village
- Please sit in this seat and fill the green bin
- The man sat on a bad bed and read a sad letter
- I asked for a bag of cold drinks and fried eggs
- He is hoping to bring something long and thin
- Photography is a comfortable hobby for an interesting person
Runs in your browser with its built-in speech recognition (Chrome, Edge, Safari). Nothing is installed and no account is needed.
What this accent test measures
The score is intelligibility: the share of your words that arrive as the words you meant. That is the part of an accent that costs you in meetings and interviews. It is not a measure of how “foreign” you sound, and an accent that is fully understood is not a problem to solve.
| Score | Level | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 90–100 | Near-native clarity | Almost every word understood on the first try. |
| 75–89 | Light accent | Easy to follow; a few sounds slip. |
| 55–74 | Noticeable accent | Understood, but listeners work for some words. |
| 0–54 | Strong accent | Many words are heard as other words. |
What it cannot tell you
It does not detect which country your accent comes from and it does not score single sounds. It works from the recognizer’s text, so a noisy room, a weak microphone or very fast reading lowers the score. Take the test twice in a quiet place and use the higher result.
How to raise your score
- Find the sentences that scored worst. Each one targets a single sound group, named in your result.
- Open the guide for that group and practise the word list there.
- Come back and read the same sentence again. One sound group fixed usually adds 5 to 10 points.
- Slow down. Speed hides nothing from a recognizer and it removes the final consonants.
Questions people ask
Can an online test tell how strong my accent is?
It can tell how much of your speech is understood, which is the useful part. A number for “how foreign you sound” would need human raters.
Is a strong accent bad?
No. Research on intelligibility shows that many speakers with a clearly non-native accent are understood perfectly. What matters is the few sounds that turn one word into another.
Does it work for British English?
The recognizer is set to American English but understands standard British pronunciation well. Your score should be close either way.
Does the page record me?
No audio is stored by this page. Your browser’s speech recognition produces text and only that text is compared.
Related
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- What is my accent? (quiz)12 questions about how you say everyday words: American, British, Australian or Canadian?
- Improve your accentWhat to fix first, what to ignore, and a 4-week plan of 15 minutes a day.
- Pronunciation checkerPaste any text, read it aloud and see which words were not understood.