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The Spoken Language Instructional Content development System will allow anyone with a microphone and Flash-enabled web browser, Android, Apple, or OLPC device to easily use and create new pronunciation assessment and reading tutoring systems utilizing speech recognition for any language-independent practice texts. As reading or spoken language learners attempt to read phrases out loud to work through their assignments, their speech and associated pronunciation fluency will be measured by phonemes, diphones, words, phrases and aggregated phrase scores to track and chart their progress. The entire system will be published as open source and made available for free using a freemium web hosting model, initially for the world's English language learners.
To understand how useful and important this technology is for teaching reading as well as spoken language pronunciation, please see: Aist, Mostow, et al. (2001) "Computer-assisted oral reading helps third graders learn vocabulary better than a classroom control — about as well as one-on-one human-assisted oral reading," in Moore, et al. (eds.) Artificial Intelligence in Education: AI-ED in the Wired and Wireless Future, pp. 267-277 (Amsterdam: IOS Press.) I've been working on similar projects for almost fifteen years. Demonstration videos may be viewed at talknicer.com/demo, along with a working online demonstration.
The most important immediate benefit will be that instructors (including teachers, parents, and self studying adults) will be able to use any text with any vocabulary as the basis of a self-contained reading and pronunciation practice assessment exercise. For example, professors will be able to use text with the jargon specific to their field of research in order to train second language learning students in the field they are working in. Likewise, parents and grade school teachers will be able to select texts with a student's most troubling vocabulary for practicing reading and pronunciation, and observe the score progress as the student repeats attempts to correctly read and pronounce that vocabulary. Those capabilities do not yet exist and they will substantially improve basic through graduate level reading, and spoken language instruction.
Donate $20 or more:
Acknowledgment as above, plus a bumper/laptop sticker with the project
name and motto ("SLICS: Spoken Language Instructional Content development
System — Teaching everyone in the world to read and speak any
language.")
Donate $50 or more:
Acknowledgment and three stickers as above, and a DVD-ROM with the
source code, text and speech database, and default web site installer.
Donate $100 or more:
Acknowledgment, three stickers, and the DVD-ROM as above, plus a t-shirt
with the project name and motto.
Donate $500 or more:
Acknowledgment, three stickers, the DVD-ROM, and the t-shirt as above,
plus up to six hours of installation and customization work on your
school, business, or agency's site. This does not include the crowdsource
fees necessary to enable additional practice text but does include arranging
to collect the necessary pronunciation exemplars and phoneme coding.
 James Salsmanemail: james@talknicer.com February 19, 2012 |
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