Sessions /
Online speech: utilizing speech recognition in the classroom today #1

This talk will demonstrate a free online system for practicing conversation that utilizes the speech recognition and synthesis capabilities built into modern browsers. For the language learner, the ability to speak to a device that can simultaneously speak using different genders and accents will enable learners to take control of their learning process, by both time- and location-shifting their practice. This allows students to work at their own pace, providing learners with vastly more opportunities to practice speaking while receiving immediate automated feedback.

Speech Recognition’s power is that: (i) Students can practice speaking at any time and receive instant feedback. (ii) Thousands of practices can be graded instantly. (iii) Every utterance can be stored as machine-readable text in a database allowing computer analysis of student patterns to discern common errors which can then be displayed to the instructor automatically. (iv) Machine learning (artificial intelligence) techniques can analyze massive amounts of data to discover deeper spoken patterns and errors.

The talk will give a short demonstration of the system which was developed by the author, talk about future developments such as spaced learning and accent training, and show how teachers can sign up to the system and use it in their classroom.