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ISCA International Workshop on Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLaTE 2009)Wroxall Abbey Estate, Warwickshire, England |
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ISCA International Workshop on Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLaTE 2009)Wroxall Abbey Estate, Warwickshire, England |
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Current E-Learning software presents texts, pictures, audio sounds and videos to the
learner, but in many
cases the user interface only allows writing or clicking on items. Some more elaborate systems for
foreign-language learning allow the user to interact via speech, but only provide reading
or repeating
pre-specified sentences.
We present a spoken-dialog system for learners of English, which is
designed for
conversational training. The research prototype will demonstrate a hotel-reception
scenario. The system
plays the role of the receptionist and the user, the hotel guest at check-in. With a
system like this,
learners of English can prepare themselves for real-life situations before actually
travelling to Britain
or the US.
Current speech dialog systems (e.g. for telephone banking or flight
information)
are tailored to perform a task very efficiently, using a fixed policy that guides the user
along a strict
path through the task. In foreign language learning this approach works well only for beginners. Our
system is targeted towards more advanced learners and implements a different dialog
strategy. In each
system state the dialog manager randomly selects one of many plausible, but different
system actions.
This keeps the task variable and interesting for the learner, even when repeated several times.
Bibliographic reference. Weilhammer, Karl / Oertel, Catharine / Siegemund, Robin / Sá, Ricardo / Batliner, Anton / Hönig, Florian / Nöth, Elmar (2009): "A spoken dialog system for learners of English", In SLaTE-2009 (abstract).