AudioPen is one of the better tools for giving learners feedback on their speaking

I was listening to this Podcast yesterday and picked up on one thing in particular. (It's also available on YouTube )

Like me, Luke, quickly latched on to the idea of students using AudioPen to get feedback on their speaking. I've been experimenting with 15 systems that offer to do the same thing, using the same recording made by one of my students with all of them, with a view to writing up a comparison. Meanwhile, here is the data for AudioPen, which is one of the better ones. Here is what it did:

Original Transcript AudioPen	AudioPen polished version
Dolphins save swimmers from a shark attack. A lakeward rope lives when he is with his daughter and with daughter's friends and they were swimming in front of the beach and seven dolphins appear and start to swim with us around them but there are two dolphins that push Bob and far away there are two girls swimming with the rest of dolphins suddenly he could see another huge fish 3 meters long it was a shark and it feels nervous but he decided don't tell anything to two girls but he realized that the dolphins push the two girls together and start to swim around them 40 minutes at the end the shark swam away and all the people were safe Bob said that he swam with dolphins 3 or 4 times but he couldn't see this behaviour in dolphins and an expert told him that there are other things that in other seas happen this expert explained that when the dolphins feel that the humans are in danger have the sense of protecting them (176 words. errors not included in the polished version	Dolphins Shield Swimmers from Shark Dolphins save swimmers from a shark attack. A man named Bob was swimming with his daughter, her friends, and seven dolphins at the beach. Two of the dolphins pushed Bob away while two girls continued to swim with the remaining dolphins. Suddenly, Bob saw a big 3-meter-long shark nearby. He felt scared but did not tell the girls about it. The dolphins brought the two girls closer together and swam around them for 40 minutes until the shark left. Bob had swum with dolphins before but never saw this kind of behaviour from them. An expert told him that when humans are in danger, some friendly sea creatures like these intelligent animals will try to protect people by keeping any threats away. (127 words B2+ 54%) corrections suggested improvements
An interested student might learn quite a lot from the corrections and the suggested improvements. For example, in this corrected and improved sentence,  "Two of the dolphins pushed Bob away while two girls continued to swim with the remaining dolphins.”  a student could learn the items listed below. All of these would be useful for the B1 student who made the original recording and if they use the Edge browser they can use Read Aloud to listen to the improved version, as can you. ·         Two of the dolphins ·         pushed ·         pushed Bob away ·         while ·         continued to swim ·         the remaining dolphins

Some of the other 14 systems offer improved versions of this student's transcript that are too sophisticated for this student, who was at level B1 on the CEFR scale. AudioPen produced a version that Text Inspector rated at B2+ 54%. This is more likely to be of use to this student than all the ones producing versions at C1 or C1+.