Skip to main content

Improvement in Text-Dependent Mispronunciation Detection for English Learners

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Information Technology and Intelligent Transportation Systems

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 455))

  • 1306 Accesses

Abstract

This paper put forth two novel approaches to effectively improve the performance of mispronunciations detection in English learners speech. On one hand, a distance measure called Kullback–Leibler Divergence (KLD) between Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) is introduced to optimize the probability space of a posteriori probability; On the other hand, back end processing of normalization based on the variants of speakers is introduced to improve the performance of the system. Experiments on a database of 6360 syllables pronounced by 50 speakers with varied pronunciation proficiency indicate the promising effects of these methods by decreasing the FRR from 58 to 44 % at 20 % FAR.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Franco H, Neumeyer L, Kim Y, Ronen O (1997) Automatic pronunciation scoring for language instruction. In: IEEE international conference on acoustics, speech, and signal processing (ICASSP), vol 2, pp 1471–1474

    Google Scholar 

  2. Neumeyer L, Franco H, Weintraub M, Price P (1996) Automatic text-independent pronunci-ation scoring of foreign language student speech. In: Proceedings of the international conference on spoken language processing, vol 3, pp 1457–1460

    Google Scholar 

  3. Strik H, Truong K, Wet FD, Cucchiarini C (2009) Comparing different approaches for automatic pronunciation error detection. Speech Commun 51(10):845–852

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Truong K (2006) Automatic pronunciation error detection in Dutch as a second language: an acoustic-phonetic approach

    Google Scholar 

  5. Dong B, Zhao QW, Yan YH (2006) Automatic scoring of flat tongue and raised tongue in computer-assisted Mandarin learning. Chin Spok Lang Process 580–591

    Google Scholar 

  6. An LL, Wu YN, Liu Z, Liu RS (2012) An application of mispronunciation detecting network for computer assisted language learning system. J Electron Inf Technol 34(9):2085–2090

    Google Scholar 

  7. Ge Z, Sharma SR, Smith, MJ (2013) Improving mispronunciation detection using adaptive frequency scale. Comput Electr Eng 39(5):1464–1472

    Google Scholar 

  8. Huang C, Zhang F, Soong FK, Chu M (2008) Mispronunciation detection for mandarin Chinese. In: Ninth annual conference of the international speech communication association

    Google Scholar 

  9. Goldberger J, Aronowitz H (2005) A distance measure between GMMs based on the un-scented transform and its application to speaker recognition. In: INTERSPEECH, pp 1985–1988

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the Foundation of Key Laboratory of Cognitive Radio and Information Processing, Ministry of Education (Guilin University of Electronic Technology, No. CRKL150105). This work is also supported by the Innovation Project of GUET Graduate Education, No. YJCXS201543.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Guimin Huang or Changxiu Qin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Huang, G., Qin, C., Shen, Y., Zhou, Y. (2017). Improvement in Text-Dependent Mispronunciation Detection for English Learners. In: Balas, V., Jain, L., Zhao, X. (eds) Information Technology and Intelligent Transportation Systems. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 455. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38771-0_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38771-0_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-38769-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-38771-0

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics