The Effect of Real-time Score Feedback on L2 English Learners’ Pronunciation and Motivation in an ASR-based CAPT System

Abstract

This study examines the effect of real-time pronunciation score feedback in an automatic speech recognition (ASR) based computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) system on L2 English learners' pronunciation and motivation. The CAPT system used in this study provides real-time phoneme-level pronunciation scores on the learner's read-speech of a given English sentence. In the experiment, the L2 English learners practiced English pronunciation repeatedly using the CAPT system. The effect of score feedback of the CAPT system was analyzed both objectively and subjectively. In the objective analysis, pronunciation quality was measured with the pronunciation score trend along the repeated practices, and the learners' motivation was measured with the number of practices. In the subjective analysis, the learners' responses on survey questions about how the system helped to improve pronuniation and motivation were analyzed. The results proved that the use of CAPT system helped Korean L2 English learners improve their pronunciation and motivation.