Web-based dialogue and translation games for spoken language learning
Stephanie Seneff · 2007
It is widely recognized that one of the best ways to learn a foreign language is through spoken dialogue with a native speaker.However, this is not a practical method in the classroom due to the one-to-one student/teacher ratio it implies.A potential solution to this problem is to rely on computer spoken dialogue systems to role play a conversational partner.This paper describes several multilingual dialogue systems specifically designed to address this need.Students can engage in dialogue with the computer either over the telephone or through audio/typed input at a Web page.Several different domains are being developed, in which a student's conversational interaction is assisted by a software agent functioning as a "tutor" which can provide them with translation assistance at any time.Some of the research issues surrounding high-quality spoken language translation and dialogue modeling for language games are discussed.