In this paper we report on the development of a spoken dialogue system for computer aided language learning (CALL), and explore some of the issues involved in the incorporation of a corrective feedback module. We initially developed a small prototype system, and tested it for usability with visiting students of English as a foreign language. In the light of the positive results we obtained for ...

The optimization of dialogue policies using reinforcement learning (RL) is now an accepted part of the state of the art in spoken dialogue systems (SDS). Yet, it is still the case that the commonly used training algorithms for SDS require a large number of dialogues and hence most systems still rely on artificial data generated by a user simulator. Optimization is therefore performed off-line b...

We describe a framework for deep linguistic processing for natural language understanding in task-oriented spoken dialogue systems. The goal is to create domaingeneral processing techniques that can be shared across all domains and dialogue tasks, combined with domain-specific optimization based on an ontology mapping from the generic LF to the application ontology. This framework has been test...

In this paper we present a multimodal dialogue system designed as a learning tool for air traffic control officer trainees (ATCO). It was developed using our discrete-event simulation dialogue management framework with cloud-based speech recognition and text-to-speech systems. Our system mimics pilots in an air traffic communication, allowing the ATCOs to practice a control of a virtual airspac...

In this work, we study the effectiveness of state-of-the-art, sophisticated supervised learning algorithms for dialogue act modeling across a comprehensive set of different spoken and written conversations including: emails, forums, meetings, and phone conversations. To this aim, we compare the results of SVM-multiclass and two structured predictors namely SVMhmm and CRF algorithms. Extensive e...

We describe our work in building a spoken language interface for a tutorial dialogue system. Our goal is to allow natural, unrestricted student interaction with the computer tutor, which has been shown to improve the student’s learning gain, but presents challenges for speech recognition and spoken language understanding. We discuss the choice of system components and present the results of dev...

The ability to lead collaborative discussions and appropriately scaffold learning has been identified as one of the central advantages of human tutorial interaction [6]. In order to reproduce the effectiveness of human tutors, many developers of tutorial dialogue systems have taken the approach of identifying human tutorial tactics and then incorporating them into their systems. Equally importa...

We present a demo of our conversational system POLLy (POliteness in Language Learning) which uses a common planning representation to generate actions to be performed by embodied agents in a virtual environment and to generate spoken utterances for dialogues about the steps involved in completing the task. In order to generate socially appropriate dialogue, Brown and Levinson’s theory of polite...

What would you say if your refrigerator told you, " You're having some friends round for hot chocolate later. Maybe you should order two cartons of milk " ? Of course, in Spoken Dialogue Technology, Michael McTear will not give an answer to the question of whether talking to domestic appliances makes sense, but he indicates that even a normal household, for instance, may offer a wide field of a...