Effects of Speech Recognition-based Pronunciation Feedback on Second-Language Pronunciation Ability

This study’s goal was to determine whether receiving a particular type of feedback on nativeness of secondlanguage accent positively influenced pronunciation over time. Forty-five native speakers of American English of beginning to intermediate Spanish ability were randomly assigned to three groups. The first group was asked to practise Spanish using speech recognitionbased software that provided scores of nativeness of pronunciation. The second group practised with software that was identical but with no feedback indicating pronunciation scores. The third group did not practise with the software. The subjects’ speech was recorded at the beginning of the study and again after three weeks, and scores based on log posterior probabilities were calculated. The speech recognizer outputs these scores, which have been shown to correlate well with human listeners’ nonnativeness judgements [1]. The two practice groups showed a small but statistically significant improvement over the control group. The two practice groups were also compared with each other.