Lark Trills for Language Drills: Text-to-speech technology for language learners

This paper reports on the development and the initial evaluation of a dictation&spelling prototype exercise for second language (L2) learners of Swedish based on text-to-speech (TTS) technology. Implemented on an already existing Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) platform, the exercise has not only served as a test case for TTS in L2 environment, but has also shown a potential to train listening and orthographic skills, as well as has become a way of collecting learner-specific spelling errors into a database. Exercise generation re-uses well-annotated corpora, lexical resources, and text-to-speech technology with an accompanying talking head.

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