Mobile speech recognition software: A tool for teaching second language pronunciation

Abstract

This study examines the impact of the pedagogical use of mobile automatic speech recognition software (ASR) on the acquisition of the French vowel /y/ in production and perception. The participants were 42 beginner French students with no previous training in French phonetics and exposure to speech recognition software. They were divided into three experimental groups: (1) the ASR Group used an ASR application installed on their mobile devices to complete weekly pronunciation activities, with immediate written visual (textual) feedback provided by the software; (2) the Non-ASR Group completed the same weekly pronunciation activities in individual weekly sessions with a teacher, who provided immediate oral feedback using recast and repetitions; finally, (3) the Control Group participated in weekly individual meetings “to practice their conversation skills” with a teacher, who provided no pronunciation feedback. Following a pre-test/post-test design, our findings indicate that the ASR Group outperformed the other groups in French /y/ production, but not in perception.