Instantaneous estimation of prosodic pronunciation habits for interactive instructions to learn English pronunciation

More and more efforts have been recently made to apply speech technologies to language learning and develop CALL systems[1]–[4]. The authors have been focusing on Japanese manners of generating English word stress. This is because pronunciation habits which are inevitable to Japanese learners can be easily found in the stress generation. In our previous study, a stressed syllable detector and a pronunciation habit estimator were developed[5], where the estimated habits of individual learners accorded well with their English pronunciation proficiency rated by English teachers. However, the habit could be estimated only after a learner pronounced several dozens of words because the habit estimator referred to stressed syllable detection rates. In this paper, using another criterion, a method of instantaneous estimation was proposed which required only a single word utterance. Results showed that an average pattern of the instantaneously estimated habits accorded well with the habits obtained in our previous study. 1