ASR based pronunciation evaluation with automatically generated competing vocabulary
Carlos Molina, Néstor Becerra Yoma, Jorge Wuth, Hirám Vivanco · 2009
In this paper the application of automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology in CAPT (Computer Aided Pronunciation Training) is addressed. A method to automatically generate the competitive lexicon, required by an ASR engine to compare the pronunciation of a target word with its correct and wrong phonetic realization, is presented. In order to enable the efficient deployment of CAPT applications, the generation of this competitive lexicon does not require any human assistance or a priori information of mother language dependent errors. The method presented here leads to averaged subjective-objective score correlation equal to 0.82 and 0.75 depending on the task. Index Terms: second language learning, computer aided pronunciation training, speech recognition and competing vocabulary