Hi everyone,
As users of The Fix know, one of the things we’ve been focusing on over the last while is improving the tools we have to help people practice oral Chinese. We’re all studying Chinese, it helps to have more opportunities to speak it.
With this in mind, we’ve been in touch with a Chinese software vendor that markets speech recognition software with a pedagogical twist. Much like the open source SpeakGoodChinese project, their software seems to use pitch and tone analysis to grade and correct student tones. Since it’s a robot doing the grading, we assume it’s also less picky about conversation topics than a real teacher might be. The company has also done some interesting work with Chinese speech synthesis. While we think their tools are interesting, we aren’t sure exactly how they might fit into YOUR study methods and habits.
Which is where you come in. If you’re interested in helping us test out the tools these guys are offering, we’d be pleased to give you the access they’ve given us. What we’d like in return is feedback on how useful these tools are for you. In short:
- Useful? Usable? Non-threatening?
- Is the software better than free software alternatives?
- Minimal student exposure to deadly laser beams?
- Is this the sort of thing you’d be interested in having integrated into ChinesePod as a premium feature? What would you consider these service worth given your study habits?
That’s about it. If you’d be interested in helping us test this out, please send an email to Eileen at chinesepod[at]gmail[dot]com. We’ll fire you off a working login and password, and then you can check things out at your leisure. That being said, if you can get your feedback back to us sometime later this week (ideally before Friday) we’d appreciate it.
Cheers,
中文 Chinese
Henning Says:
August 13th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Integrating a voice recognition engine sounds really powerful - way beyond simple singe-word pronounciation drills.
Just imagine a voice based dictionary lookup.
Or The Fix versions with voice based translation tasks.
Or a voice based Chinese interface that lets you train vocab and pronounciation while using the site.
Or a voice version of Memory Island.
AuntySue Says:
August 13th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
What platforms can it be tested on? The open source one only seems to support Microsoft and Linux, no Macintosh, and no mention of FreeBSD (unix), so that squashes my interest right away. What about the commercial one?
Phil in Tianjin Says:
August 13th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I received the log on thanks and have just spent a couple of hours playing with the software and have the following comments:
1) I guess the feature, if developed, would be primarily aimed at Newbie/Elementary levels to support those who have little opportunity to practice their spoken Chinese? In this regard it could provide an invaluable additional feature. Those of us who have had the opportunity to put our learning to the test in the real world know all too well the problems of incorrect pronunciation…the perplexed taxi driver who doesn’t seem to even understand what we thought was a perfectly rendered zuo3 guai3.
2) I tried the Chinese Characters and the Chinese Words sections. Am I right to assume that the Chinese Characters analyses tone and pronunciation whilst the Chinese Words only analyses pronunciation?
3) The tone check appeared to work very well.
4) The pronunciation check advises whether the problem was with the initial or the final. This is fine but the next step is to correct it. Each test has 20 words and the words where there were errors are highlighted in red when the analysis is complete. This is also fine but it would then be great to be able to focus on those words with errors and repeat until a pass is achieved. At the moment the only option is to repeat the complete test (which does take a few minutes)
5. In order to improve the pronunciation it could be useful to go one step back and have a level for the initials and finals. It is not always obvious what was wrong with the initial or the final and for newbies this may be clearer if they first practice with initials and finals. However the frequency graph of the standard voice compared with your own effort is also helpful.
6. Is there any user information available? It seemed to be all trial and error to find out how to use it.
7. At some point in language learning (assuming you want to use the language) then communication is going to have to be confronted. This is better done sooner rather than later otherwise bad habits become ingrained if there is no feedback and correction cycle. There may be other views on this but my personal view is that pronunciation is a particular issue for learning Chinese and it is currently a shortcoming of relying solely on CP. This tool could contribute towards resolving this. However, once correct pronunciation is achieved (say during the newbie and elementary levels) there is not much further value to higher levels. There are not too many sounds in Chinese and once its done, its done.
8. Having said that, there must be potential for such software, along with speech recognition, to support many other e-language learning features…need to think on.
Henning Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Phil in Tianjin,
I would disagree with this statement: “However, once correct pronunciation is achieved (say during the newbie and elementary levels) there is not much further value to higher levels.”
I find that there is a good chance of becoming sloppy and losing grip on pronounciation again even in Intermediate levels - especially if you are outside of a Chinese environment. You need constant correction.
This especially affects new vocab with unfamiliar tone comnbinations.
leviathan Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 1:06 am
I’m interested on how this works.
Sound recognition via spectral analysis ?
I also agree It’s a newbie Ele thing.
but it will make a big difference to their pronunciation
Henning Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Wow,
this machine is even more picky than my wife when it comes to Mandarin pronounciation in general and tones in particular…
Lantian Says:
August 16th, 2007 at 1:35 am
I think travelyan has been in China a long time. Personally, my main focus is on learning spoken Chinese. ;p
Stefan de Konink Says:
September 6th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
@AuntySue
The code compiles on all platforms Praat and GTK are available this includes FreeBSD and MacOSX. Since all request for help came from WinXP/WinVista/Ubuntu users there is not much demand for other OS.
And I hope you are not saying that binaries are the most important for you
John B Says:
September 6th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
We got this response from one of the creators of the software, who was having problems with leaving the comment:
Hi,
I’m one of the authors of speakgoodchinese and would like to reply to the posting about it. But it seems the Capcha isn’t loaded.
Basically what I want to point out that what AuntySue assumes is not true. The software will be able to compile on any platform supporting GTK and Praat. *this includes MacOSX and FreeBSD*
Never the less the support requests came only for Vista, XP and Ubuntu.
We see SGC as a great tool to *start* to learn chinese tones and get a feeling for them by hyperarticulated training. The teachers we worked with had much problems in class (too many students) to train these things individually. Basically it gives an opportunity for students to practise at home and was not intended to replace teachers.
Stefan de Konink