Word stress assessment for computer aided language learning

In this paper an automatic word stress assessment system is proposed based on a top-to-bottom scheme. The method presented is text and language independent. The utterance pronounced by the student is directly compared with a reference one. The trend similarity of F0 and energy contours are compared frame-byframe by using DTW alignment. The stress assessment evaluation system gives an EER equal to 21.5%, which in turn is similar to the error observed in phonetic quality evaluation schemes. These results suggest that the proposed system can be employed in real applications and applicable to any language.

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