Frequently asked questions
What is PracticeAloud?
An AI voice tutor for English. You speak out loud with a consistent AI teacher who remembers you, maintains your study plan, builds homework from your mistakes, and sends honest progress reports.
Do I need a card for the intake lesson?
No. The intake lesson (~15 minutes) is free and requires no card. Afterwards you receive a level estimate and a personal study plan — and only then decide whether to subscribe.
What does a regular lesson look like?
30 minutes of spoken conversation guided by your plan: real-life scenarios, new structures, gentle corrections. When something is unclear, your AI teacher explains it in your native language, out loud. Lessons cap at 45 minutes.
What if my connection drops?
A lesson only counts after 10 minutes of practice — if the connection drops earlier, the lesson is refunded automatically. Rejoin within 5 minutes and you continue the same lesson from the same place.
Do unused lessons expire?
They roll over to the next month (up to your plan’s monthly allotment), then expire. This is also stated on the pricing page — no fine print.
Can I cancel my subscription?
Yes, any time from your account — no emails or phone calls required. Access and remaining lessons stay until the end of the paid period. Details are in the refund & cancellation policy.
Can I get my money back?
Your first subscription payment comes with a 7-day money-back guarantee — no hoops. An Exam Pass or Retest Pass is refunded in full within 7 days of purchase if you have used no more than one of its mock interviews. Purchases in the iOS app are refunded by Apple. Details are in the refund & cancellation policy.
Which languages are supported?
We teach English. Your lessons can be supported in your own language — Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Hindi, German, Japanese, or Chinese — and if your first language is English, or one we cannot speak yet, lessons run in English alone. The architecture takes the language pair as a parameter, so more pairs are a matter of voices, not rewrites.
How is this different from AI chat apps?
Both use AI; the difference is structure. Chat apps give you an endless conversation and a streak. PracticeAloud works like lessons with a tutor: one AI teacher who remembers you across sessions, a study plan built on a fixed CEFR curriculum, homework built from your own mistakes, and a report card after every lesson you speak in. The right comparison is human tutoring — a lesson here costs $1.15–1.58 instead of $10–40 an hour.
Do you help with the US citizenship test?
Yes. The naturalization interview is spoken — an officer asks the civics questions out loud and you answer out loud, in English — so you practice it the same way here. Details are on the citizenship test page. We are not affiliated with USCIS or any government agency.
Which set of civics questions will I be asked?
There are two, and the published rule goes by when the application was filed. Filed before October 20, 2025 — the 2008 test: 100 questions in the bank, 10 asked, 6 correct to pass. Filed on or after that date — the 2025 test: 128 questions, 20 asked, 12 correct to pass. Both stop early: the 2025 test at 12 correct or 9 wrong, the 2008 test at 6 correct or 5 wrong. We publish the rule and you choose which set to practice — we do not ask when you filed, and we do not tell you which test is yours.
How good does my English have to be?
The English part is judged on whether you are understood, not on speaking perfectly. Noticeable errors in pronunciation and grammar are explicitly acceptable — what counts is that the officer can follow you.
Can I ask the officer to repeat a question?
Yes, and it costs you nothing. You may ask for a question to be repeated or rephrased, and officers are expected to keep rephrasing until it is clear whether you understood. Freezing on a question you actually knew is common and avoidable, so we rehearse it with you.
What does citizenship practice cost?
Drilling the questions is free and unlimited, in both banks, and so is one spoken practice test: the civics questions asked out loud and scored against the real pass mark, once per account. After that, the spoken mock interview — saying the answers out loud under a little pressure and being told whether they would have counted — is a one-time $29 with 90 days of access from the day you buy it. Both passes and what each one includes are on the pricing page.
Can you tell me whether I qualify, or help with my N-400?
No. We are not immigration lawyers and we do not give legal advice about your case — for that, speak to a licensed immigration attorney or an accredited representative. And nobody can promise you a result on a test they do not administer; what we can do is make sure the first time you say these answers out loud is not in the interview room.
How do I contact support?
Email support@practicealoud.com for anything — your account, a lesson, billing, or a technical problem such as your microphone not working in the intake. We read every message. Using the iOS app? It has its own help page.
What about privacy?
No advertising trackers and no cookies of our own on this site. Visits here and in the app are counted by Cloudflare Web Analytics, a cookieless script. In the app, the registration and password-reset forms use Cloudflare Turnstile for bot protection. The AI teacher runs on Anthropic’s AI model. It receives what you say in lessons, Speaking practice and the Whole interview as text while you talk, and the session’s transcript afterwards, with recognisable personal details removed; from the Drill and the practice tests where your browser recognises your speech or you type, it receives only the answers that need a second look. Lesson audio becomes text, and personal data is automatically redacted from what we store (card numbers, phone numbers, addresses). You can export your data or delete your account entirely at any time. Details, including every company that processes data for us, are in the privacy policy.