Interactive Computer Aids for Acquiring Proficiency in Mandarin

It is widely recognized that one of the best ways to learn a foreign language is through spoken dialogue with a native speaker. However, this is not a practical method in the classroom due to the one-to-one student/teacher ratio it implies. A potential solution to this problem is to rely on computer spoken dialogue systems to role play a conversational partner. This paper describes several multilingual dialogue systems specifically designed to address this need. Students can engage in dialogue with the computer either over the telephone or through audio/typed input at a Web page. Several different domains are being developed, in which a student’s conversational interaction is assisted by a software agent functioning as a “tutor” which can provide them with translation assistance at any time. Thus, two recognizers are running in parallel, one for English and one for Chinese. Some of the research issues surrounding high-quality spoken language translation and dialogue interaction with a non-native speaker are discussed.

[1]  Stephanie Seneff,et al.  Towards Automatic Tone Correction in Non-native Mandarin , 2006, ISCSLP.

[2]  Farzad Ehsani,et al.  Speech Technology in Computer-Assisted Language Learning: Strengths and Limitations of a New CALL Paradigm. , 1998 .

[3]  Brooke A. Cowan.  PLUTO : a preprocessor for multilingual spoken language generation , 2004 .

[4]  S. Seneff,et al.  Spoken Conversational Interaction for Language Learning , 2004 .

[5]  Maxine Eskenazi,et al.  USING AUTOMATIC SPEECH PROCESSING FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE PRONUNCIATION TUTORING: SOME ISSUES AND A PROTOTYPE , 1999 .

[6]  Stephanie Seneff,et al.  Response planning and generation in the MERCURY flight reservation system , 2002, Comput. Speech Lang..

[7]  Pak-Chung Ching,et al.  ISIS: an adaptive, trilingual conversational system with interleaving interaction and delegation dialogs , 2004, TCHI.

[8]  V. Melissa Holland,et al.  Preliminary Tests of Language Learning in a Speech-Interactive Graphics Microworld. , 1999 .

[9]  Stacy Marsella,et al.  The DARWARS Tactical Language Training System , 2004 .

[10]  Stephanie Seneff,et al.  High-quality Speech Translation for Language Learning , 2004 .

[11]  James R. Glass.  A probabilistic framework for segment-based speech recognition , 2003, Comput. Speech Lang..

[12]  Daniel Marcu,et al.  Statistical Phrase-Based Translation , 2003, NAACL.

[13]  Stephanie Seneff,et al.  TINA: A Natural Language System for Spoken Language Applications , 1992, Comput. Linguistics.

[14]  Jiyou Jia,et al.  The Study of the Application of a Web-Based Chatbot System on the Teaching of Foreign Languages , 2004 .

[15]  Stephanie Seneff,et al.  GENESIS-II: a versatile system for language generation in conversational system applications , 2000, INTERSPEECH.

[16]  R. Stephenson.  A and V , 1962, The British journal of ophthalmology.

[17]  Yonghong Yan,et al.  Automatic assessment of pronunciation quality , 2004, 2004 International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing.

[18]  Stephanie Seneff,et al.  Combining Linguistic and Statistical Methods for Bi-directional English Chinese Translation in the Flight Domain , 2006 .

[19]  Victor Zue,et al.  GALAXY-II: a reference architecture for conversational system development , 1998, ICSLP.

[20]  Victor Zue,et al.  Conversational interfaces: advances and challenges , 1997, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[21]  Stephanie Seneff,et al.  An interactive English pronunciation dictionary for Korean learners , 2004, INTERSPEECH.

[23]  Stephanie Seneff,et al.  Automatic grammar correction for second-language learners , 2006, INTERSPEECH.

[24]  Jiyou Jia,et al.  CSIEC (computer simulator in educational communication): a virtual context-adaptive chatting partner for foreign language learners , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, 2004. Proceedings..

[25]  Victor Zue,et al.  JUPlTER: a telephone-based conversational interface for weather information , 2000, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process..

[26]  Satoshi Sato,et al.  CTM: An Example-Based Translation Aid System , 1992, COLING.

[27]  Victor Zue,et al.  Second language acquisition through human computer dialogue , 2004, 2004 International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing.

[28]  Helmer Strik,et al.  Feedback in computer assisted pronunciation training: technology push or demand pull? , 2002, INTERSPEECH.

[29]  John Cocke,et al.  A Statistical Approach to Machine Translation , 1990, CL.