SPEECH RECOGNITION SOFTWARE: ITS POSSIBLE IMPACT ON THE LANGUAGE LEARNING CLASSROOM

A little girl picks up a ringing telephone and says , “Hello?” Three businessmen are seen and heard on the other end of the phoneline speaking Japanese. At the same time, the sounds coming out o f the phone the girl is holding are recognizably English. The little girl l eans away from the phone and asks her father in English the question that th e men are asking. He yells the answer from another room, she relays it in Engl ish; her answer is heard by the men in Japanese. The men happily end the con versation and hang up.