The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication (한국인터넷방송통신학회논문지)

The Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication (한국인터넷방송통신학회)
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An automatic pronunciation evaluation system using non-native teacher's speech model

비원어민 교수자 음성모델을 이용한 자동발음평가 시스템

  • Received : 2016.01.27
  • Accepted : 2016.04.08
  • Published : 2016.04.30
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Abstract

An appropriate evaluation on learner's pronunciation has been an important part of foreign language education. The learners should be evaluated and receive proper feedback for pronunciation improvement. Due to the cost and consistency problem of human evaluation, automatic pronunciation evaluation system has been studied. The most of the current automatic evaluation systems utilizes underlying Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology. We suggest in this work to evaluate learner's pronunciation accuracy and fluency in word-level using the ASR and non-native teacher's speech model. Through the performance evaluation on our system, we confirm the overall evaluation result of pronunciation accuracy and fluency actually represents the learner's English skill level quite accurately.

외국어 학습에서 발음학습은 가장 중요한 부분 중 하나이다. 발음학습 과정은 학습자의 발음에 대해 정확한 평가와 잘못된 발음이 있을 경우 적절한 피드백을 주어 이를 개선시키는 작업을 포함한다. 숙련된 평가자의 평가는 비용에서, 비숙련 원어민들의 평가는 일관성에서 문제가 있기 때문에 이를 보완할 수 있는 자동발음평가 시스템에 대한 연구가 진행되고 있으며 자동음성인식 기술의 활용이 각광받고 있다. 본 연구에서는 자동음성인식 기술과 비원어민 교수자의 음성 모델을 기반으로 단어 수준에서 학습자의 발음 정확성과 유창성을 평가하는 시스템을 구축하였고, 이를 통해 학습자들이 자신의 발음을 정확히 평가받고 평가결과에 따라 적절한 피드백을 받을 수 있도록 하였다. 또한 시스템의 성능평가를 통해 발음 정확성과 유창성에 대한 자동평가결과가 전반적으로 학습자의 실제 영어실력을 정확히 구분한다는 것을 확인하였다.

Keywords

References

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