Voice recognition software accuracy with second language speakers of English  

Oleh:

Coniam, David

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: SYSTEM: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics (Full Text) vol. 27 no. 1 (Mar. 1999), page 49-64.
Topik: Voice recognition software; Reading aloud; Assessment; English language
Fulltext: Coniam_D.pdf (115.37KB)

Isi artikel

This paper explores the potential of the use of voice recognition technology with second language speakers of English. The study is a development of an earlier study conducted with a small group of native speakers (Coniam, 1998a, TEXT Technology 8.). The current study involves the analysis of the output produced by a small group of very competent second lan- guage subjects reading a text into the voice recognition software Dragon Systems `Dragon NaturallySpeaking'. As the program is speaker-dependent and has to be trained to recognise each person's voice, subjects ®rst spent about 45 minutes reading a training text of some 3800 words. As the test text, they then read a second text consisting of 1050 words. The output produced by the software was analysed in terms of words, sub-clausal units, clauses and t-units. In terms of accuracy, the second language speakers' output on each category of analysis was signi®cantly lower than that achieved by the native speakers. Nonetheless, the results were consistent in line with the native speakers' scores; i.e. that the highest accuracy scores were achieved at the lowest (and most discrete) level of analysis, the word level, and the lowest scores at the t-unit, or sentence level of analysis. The paper concludes that voice recognition technology is still an at early stage of development in terms of accuracy and single- speaker dependency. Nonetheless, the fact that consistent results have emerged suggests that the development of an assessment tool, such as a reading aloud test via voice recognition technology and determining a score through an analysis of the output, may be a testing procedure with potential.

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