EVALUATING SPOKEN SKILLS

• US 20100185435A1
• Filed: 01/16/2009
• Published: 07/22/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 01/16/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Deshmukh, Om D., Verma, Ashish
• Granted Patent: US 8,775,184 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/8
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 19/04 Speaking with audible presentation of the material to be studied G09B5/04
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 19/06 Foreign languages with audible presentation of material to be studied G09B5/04
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1807 using prosody or stress
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence

Abstract

Techniques for evaluating one or more spoken language skills of a speaker are provided. The techniques include identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker, computing one or more acoustic parameters, wherein the one or more acoustic parameters capture one or more properties of one or more acoustic-phonetic features of the one or more locations of interest, and combining the one or more acoustic parameters with an output of an automatic speech recognizer to modify an output of a spoken language skill evaluation.

Claims

1. A method for evaluating one or more spoken language skills of a speaker, comprising the steps of:

identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker;

computing one or more acoustic parameters, wherein the one or more acoustic parameters capture one or more properties of one or more acoustic-phonetic features of the one or more locations of interest; and

combining the one or more acoustic parameters with an output of an automatic speech recognizer to modify an output of a spoken language skill evaluation.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker comprises locating one or more phones of interest.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker comprises locating one or more acoustic dissimilarities between a sample speech passage and the speech passage spoken by the speaker.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker comprises identifying a spoken utterance from a set of one or more acoustically similar options.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein combining the one or more acoustic parameters with an output of an automatic speech recognizer comprises combining information about an acoustic identity of a speech region obtained from the one or more acoustic parameters with an acoustic identity obtained from a speech recognition system.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein computing one or more acoustic parameters comprises computing an acoustic parameter to determine one or more spectral differences between the onset of a fricative, a vowel and a stop burst.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more spoken language skills of a speaker comprise at least one of grammatical skill of the speaker and pronunciation skill of the speaker.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising using time alignment information from an automatic speech recognition system to improve recognition accuracy.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising allowing certain bi-directional temporal tolerance to the time alignment information from an automatic speech recognition system.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker comprises one or more regions corresponding to a pre-defined set of one or more impact sounds.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker comprises one or more regions where one or more acoustic dissimilarities are prominent.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising phonetic profiling of a speaker with a speech disability.

13. A computer program product comprising a computer readable medium having computer readable program code for evaluating one or more spoken language skills of a speaker, said computer program product including:

computer readable program code for identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker;

computer readable program code for computing one or more acoustic parameters, wherein the one or more acoustic parameters capture one or more properties of one or more acoustic-phonetic features of the one or more locations of interest; and

computer readable program code for combining the one or more acoustic parameters with an output of an automatic speech recognizer to modify an output of a spoken language skill evaluation.

14. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the computer readable program code for identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker comprises computer readable program code for locating one or more phones of interest.

15. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the computer readable program code for identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker comprises computer readable program code for locating one or more acoustic dissimilarities between a sample speech passage and the speech passage spoken by the speaker.

16. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the computer readable program code for computing one or more acoustic parameters comprises computer readable program code for computing an acoustic parameter to determine one or more spectral differences between the onset of a fricative, a vowel and a stop burst.

17. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein the one or more spoken language skills of a speaker comprise at least one of grammatical skill of the speaker and pronunciation skill of the speaker.

18. The computer program product of claim 13, further comprising computer readable program code for using time alignment information from an automatic speech recognition system to improve recognition accuracy.

19. A system for evaluating one or more spoken language skills of a speaker, comprising:

a memory; and

at least one processor coupled to said memory and operative to;

identify one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker;

compute one or more acoustic parameters, wherein the one or more acoustic parameters capture one or more properties of one or more acoustic-phonetic features of the one or more locations of interest; and

combine the one or more acoustic parameters with an output of an automatic speech recognizer to modify an output of a spoken language skill evaluation.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein in identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker the at least one processor coupled to said memory is further operative to locate one or more phones of interest.

21. The system of claim 19, wherein in identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker the at least one processor coupled to said IN920080133US123 memory is further operative to locate one or more acoustic dissimilarities between a sample speech passage and the speech passage spoken by the speaker.

22. The system of claim 19, wherein in computing one or more acoustic parameters the at least one processor coupled to said memory is further operative to compute an acoustic parameter to determine one or more spectral differences between the onset of a fricative, a vowel and a stop burst.

23. The system of claim 19, wherein the one or more spoken language skills of a speaker comprise at least one of grammatical skill of the speaker and pronunciation skill of the speaker.

24. The system of claim 19, wherein the at least one processor coupled to said memory is further operative to use time alignment information from an automatic speech recognition system to improve recognition accuracy.

25. An apparatus for evaluating one or more spoken language skills of a speaker, said apparatus comprising:

means for identifying one or more temporal locations of interest in a speech passage spoken by a speaker;

means for computing one or more acoustic parameters, wherein the one or more acoustic parameters capture one or more properties of one or more acoustic-phonetic features of the one or more locations of interest; and

means for combining the one or more acoustic parameters with an output of an automatic speech recognizer to modify an output of a spoken language skill evaluation.