Conference article

Talebob - an Interactive Speech Trainer for Danish

Peter Juel Henrichsen
DanCAST - Danish Center for Applied Speech Technology, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

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Published in: Proceedings of the 20th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics, NODALIDA 2015, May 11-13, 2015, Vilnius, Lithuania

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 109:12, p. 79-86

NEALT Proceedings Series 23:12, p. 79-86

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Published: 2015-05-06

ISBN: 978-91-7519-098-3

ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)

Abstract

Talebob ("Speech Bob") is an interactive language learning tool for pupils (10+ years) helping them practice their pronunciation of simple, highly frequent phrases in Danish. Talebob’s feedback is based on acoustic measurements (for pitch and intensity), presented to the user as helpful instructions for improvement. Talebob is currently being tested in schools in Nuuk, Hafnarfjörður and Tórshavn where Danish is taught as a second language (L2); we present some preliminary results. We conclude with a discussion of the didactic relevance of Talebob and computer-assisted language learning in general, exploiting the IT-curiosity of modern pupils.

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