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Method and Tool Innovations for Speech Science Education (M.A.T.I.S.S.E.)April 16-17, 1999 |
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Method and Tool Innovations for Speech Science Education (M.A.T.I.S.S.E.)April 16-17, 1999 |
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We created an application specialized in prosodic tutoring, called the Prosodic Module(PM). The PM is composed of two different sets of Learning Activities, the first one dealing with prosodic problems at word syllabic level, the second one dealing with prosodic problems at phonological phrase and utterance level. The PM is able to detect significant deviations from a master’s word/ phrase/ utterance and offers visual aids and a written diagnosis of the problem as well as indications on how to overcome and correct the error. This is achieved by means of a comparison between the two signals, the master and the student one; elements of comparison are constituted by the acoustic correlates of well-known prosodic elements such as intonational contour, sentence accent and word stress, duration at syllable, word and sentence level.
We argue that the use of Automatic Speech Recognition as Teaching Aid should be targeted to narrowly focussed spoken exercises, for intermediate or higher level students, disallowing open-ended dialogues, in order to ensure consistency of evaluation. In addition, we support the conjoined use of ASR technology and prosodic tools to gauge Goodness of Pronunciation for linguistically consistent feedback.
We are currently engaged in the creation of a syllable database for the detection of varieties of prosodic knowledge in Italian students learning English, structured according to different levels of interlingua. The database is used in the automatic segmentation and in the assessment phase. In particular, deviations from mean acoustic values at syllable level are estimated both on the database and on master’s measurements
Bibliographic reference. Delmonte, Rodolfo (1999): "A prosodic Module for self-learning activities", In MATISSE-1999, 129-132.