Pronunciation verification of English letter-sounds in preliterate children
نویسندگان
چکیده
Correctly reading letter-sounds is an essential first step towards reading words and sentences. Pronunciation assessment of letter-sounds is an important component of preliterate children’s education, and automating this process can have several advantages. We propose a method to automatically verify the pronunciations of a letter-sound task administered to kindergarteners and first graders in realistic noisy classrooms. We compare different acoustic models, decoding grammars, and dictionaries to help differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable pronunciations. Our final system achieved 88.0 percent agreement (0.702 kappa agreement) with expert human evaluators, who agree themselves 94.9 percent of the time (0.886 kappa agreement). Terms: children’s speech, pronunciation verification, automatic reading assessment, letter-sounds
منابع مشابه
On the Efficacy of a Communicative Framework in Teaching English Phonological Features Absent in Persian to Iranian EFL Learners
Although Persian and English share many common phonemes, there are some phonological features that are present in English but absent in Persian which tend to lead to mispronunciation on the part of Persian learners of English, mostly through negative transfer. The present research assesses the efficacy of a communicative framework in improving Iranian adult EFL learners’ pronunciation of five E...
متن کاملThe effects of teaching English alphabet with and without initial introduction of letter names on Iranian grade seven students' reading speed
One of the most important steps in teaching English is teaching its alphabet to the learners. Implementing the best method will highly help teachers to achieve acceptable results in helping students to read better and faster. Two basic methods are frequently used by Iranian educators. Some start by the name of the letters and introduce the sounds that they symbolize later, while others are thos...
متن کاملPronunciation Barriers and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL): Coping the Demands of 21st Century in Second Language Learning Classroom in Pakistan
Pronunciation of English language is a very important sub-skill of speaking module in second language learning process. However, it is ignored, neglected, and even never gotten least attention by the teachers, administrators, and stakeholders especially in Pakistan. Grammar, vocabulary, and the other linguistic skills such as reading and writing are emphasized whereas pronunciation has never be...
متن کاملInstruction Matters: Spelling of Vowels by Children in England and the US.
Letter names are stressed in informal and formal literacy instruction with young children in the US, whereas letters sounds are stressed in England. We examined the impact of these differences on English children of about 5 and 6 years of age (in reception year and Year 1, respectively) and US 6 year olds (in kindergarten). Children in both countries spelled short vowels, as in bag, more accura...
متن کاملMaterials Development for Persian Intermediate EFL Learners: English Pronunciation Pros
Mispronunciation is still among the frailties of language learners the world over. The present study reports an all-out investigation into pronunciation training for the Persian-speaking EFL learners at the intermediate level of language proficiency. More specifically, the present study investigated (a) the underlying causes of mispronunciation at the level of segmental features, (b) the crucia...
متن کامل