Effective computer‐assisted pronunciation training based on phone‐sensitive word recommendation

Summary Owing to their autonomous nature, computer‐aided pronunciation training systems are regarded as a useful tool for pronunciation training for beginner‐level students, particularly those who feel uncomfortable having their pronunciation corrected in front of other students or who have difficulty with face‐to‐face training for other reasons. In this study, we propose a computer‐assisted pronunciation training system targeting unacceptable pronunciation due to confusion among contextual allophones, a problem that often emerges from phoneme‐based feedback provided during pronunciation training. To consider the different pronunciation of phonemes according to position, the proposed system is implemented to recommend a set of words focusing on phoneme pairs. Experimental results show that the proposed system results in the improvement of pronunciation skills through training sessions that use recommended words containing phoneme pairs that were initially pronounced incorrectly.