Abstract:
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is implemented and tested in a system to offer first-level, computer-based exercises in the Japanese language for beginning high school students. The paper describes a development project designed to identify the strengths and limitations of current ASR technology in the development of materials for computer-assisted interactive spoken language education. With current ASR technology, several kinds of pedagogically useful exercises can be constructed that should aid spoken language acquisition in a non-native student. A system design is presented, along with some example exercises and a description of methods that are used to evaluate its effectiveness with students at different levels of proficiency. At the present time, there is no agreed-upon set of ASR functions that is adequate to support many common types of teacher--student interactions. The project has begun to address such issues in the course of developing and field testing a representative set of exercises. [Work supported by the U.S. Department of Education.]