Improving Japanese English pronunciation with speech recognition and feed-back system

CLR Phonetics Lab, University of Aizu, Tsuruga, Ikki-machi, Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima-ken, Japan

^* e-mail: s1240221@u-aizu.ac.jp
^** e-mail: wilson@u-aizu.ac.jp

Abstract

For Japanese people, communicating with English speakers from abroad has become more common because of internationalization, and there are many people who want to improve their English-speaking skills. However, there are few environments where we can speak English outside of the classroom, so Japanese students rarely have a chance to study English pronunciation. Even if students do have a chance to take an English pronunciation class, teachers do not have enough time to individually teach each student pronunciation in a big class. Because of that, computers and smartphones may be one good type of tool to solve this problem. In this research, we develop a web-based application to help Japanese learners with their English pronunciation.