The SRI EduSpeak System: Recognition and Pronunciation Scoring for Language Learning

Abstract

The EduSpeak system is a software development toolkit that enables developers of interactive language education software to use state-of-the-art speech recognition and pronunciation scoring technology. We first report results on the application of adaptation techniques to recognize both native and nonnative speech in a speaker-independent manner. We discuss our pronunciation scoring paradigm and show experimental results in the form of correlations between the pronunciation quality estimators included in the toolkit and grades given by human listeners. We review phone-level pronunciation estimation schemes and describe the phone-level mispronunciation detection functionality that we have incorporated in the toolkit. Finally, we mention some of the EduSpeak toolkit system features that facilitate the creation and deployment of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) applications.