My experience teaching English as a Foreign Language in South Korea, Taiwan and China
Although English is a mandatory subject (from Grade 4 to 12), almost all Korean students and adults struggle with English speaking and listening skills
Most students participate in 3 to 4 English classes per week, one of which may be a speaking and listening class. The other classes are conducted in Korean and focus on English grammar and translation.
This qualitative study was coincidentally done with public middle school students in Korea. During a regular English class at school, students were given smartphones to engage with an app called "Speaking English 60 Junior". This app is equipped with an automatic speech recognition engine and allows students to engage in self-regulated English speaking practice. The results showed the "the students, overall, had positive attitudes towards the use of the application for learning to speak. They particularly expressed great interest in the speech recognition function because it immediately demonstrated the consequence of their speech input."
Ahn, T. Y., & Lee, S. M. (2015). User experience of a mobile speaking application with automatic speech recognition for EFL learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 47(4), 778–786. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12354
A similar study was done with young learners in Cyprus. This is a quantitative study that demonstrates the educational benefits of a mobile app equipped with a speech recognition engine. The results showed that "English learning skills of young students had higher statistically significant improvements as a result of using the developed application in the experimental group."
Cavus, N., & Ibrahim, D. (2016). Learning English using children’s stories in mobile devices. British Journal of Educational Technology, 48(2), 625–641. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12427