Research project

C-AuDiT

C-AuDiT (Computer-Assisted Pronunciation and Dialogue Training) is a research project focusing on the development of a technology that helps language students to train their spoken language skills while interacting with an e-learning computer system. The emphasis is on pronunciation training and dialogue exercises.

E-Learning allows students to improve their language skills wherever they want and whenever they want. The only requirement is a PC or a laptop computer. Currently, commercial e-learning focuses on teaching written language. Although speech is an essential part of our communication, it is often neglected in e-learning. Exercises that involve listening to audio recordings or watching video films only train passive speech understanding skills. The design of e-learning exercises where students can actively interact with a computer via speech involves using and improving cutting edge speech technology.

digital publishing and the Institute of Pattern Recognition (Lehrstuhl für Mustererkennung, LME) of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg founded a research cooperation to take on this chanllenge. The main goals of the C-AuDiT are imroving current pronunciation scoring techniques and developing exercises for natural language dialogue training.

C-Audit is funded within the program "KMU-Innovativ" by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Project manager:
Dr. Karl Weilhammer

Project participants:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Elmar Nöth, Dr. phil. Anton Batliner, Dipl.-Inf. Florian Hönig

Keywords:
Pronunciation Assessment; Dialog Training; Computer-Assisted Language Learning; E-Learning

Duration: 1.1.2008 - 31.12.2009

Sponsored by:
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung

Mitwirkende Institutionen:
digital publishing

Contact:
Nöth, Elmar
Phone +49 9131 85 27888, Fax +49 9131 85 27270, E-Mail: elmar.noeth@fau.de

Publications

Hönig, Florian ; Batliner, Anton ; Weilhammer, Karl ; Nöth, Elmar: Automatic Assessment of Non-Native Prosody for English as L2. In: Hasegawa-Johnson, Marc (Ed.) : Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2010 (Speech Prosody 2010 Chicago). 2010, pp no pagination.

Hönig, Florian ; Batliner, Anton ; Weilhammer, Karl ; Nöth, Elmar: Islands of Failure: Employing word accent information for pronunciation quality assessment of English L2 learners. In: Russell, Martin (Ed.) : Proceedings of the ISCA Special Interest Group on Speech and Language Technology in Education (Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLaTE) Wroxall Abbey Estate, Warwickshire, England 03.-05.09.2009). Birmingham : University of Birmingham, 2009, pp -. - ISBN 9780704427297

Hönig, Florian ; Batliner, Anton ; Weilhammer, Karl ; Nöth, Elmar: How Many Labellers? Modelling Inter-Labeller Agreement and System Performance for the Automatic Assessment of Non-Native Prosody. In: AESOP, SLaTE, NICT & LASS (Ed.) : Proceedings of the INTERSPEECH 2010 Satellite Workshop on Second Language Studies: Acquisition, Learning, Education and Technology (L2WS)/Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLaTE) (INTERSPEECH 2010 Satellite Workshop on Second Language Studies: Acquisition, Learning, Education and Technology/Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLaTE) Tokyo, Japan 22.-24. September 2010). 2010, pp -.