We present SingaKids-Mandarin, a speech corpus of 255 Singaporean children aged 7 to 12 reading Mandarin Chinese, for a total of 125 hours of data (75 hours of speech) and 79,843 utterances. This corpus is phonetically balanced and detailed in human annotations, including phonetic transcriptions, lexical tone markings, and proficiency scoring at the utterance level. The reading scripts span a d...

We examined the benefits of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) as a supplement to a phonics-based reading curriculum for kindergartners in an urban public school system. The CAI program provides systematic exercises in phonological awareness and letter–sound correspondences. Comparisons were made between children in classes receiving a sufficient amount of CAI support and children in matched c...

In this paper, we give an overview of our research in Computer-Assisted Language Learning for European Portuguese, to show how our long-time experience in spoken language processing allowed to propose multimedia documents as learning material. Web-based serious game were also introduced to cover aspects of listening, reading, and writing skills. One fundamental aspect of all our tools remains i...

This article reports the use of a karaoke technique to drive the visual attention span (VAS) of subjects reading a text while listening to the text spelled aloud by a reading tutor. We tested the impact of computer-assisted synchronous reading (S+) that emphasizes words when they are uttered, vs. non-synchronous reading (S-) in a reading while listening (RWL) task. Thirty-five 6th grade pupils ...

This paper introduces an Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Learning system designed to provide reading input for language learners based on the syntactic complexity of their language production. The system analyzes the linguistic complexity of texts produced by the user and of texts in a pedagogic target language corpus to identify texts that are well-suited to foster acquisition. These te...

This paper outlines the analysis, design, development, deployment and evaluation stages of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software aimed at dyslexic learners. CALL is traditionally aimed at second language acquisition. The research presented here is different because the target group are students with first language difficulties. Dyslexia is a specific learning disorder, which affec...