A freely-available system for browser-based Q&A practice in English, with speech recognition

A browser-based system to facilitate practice in asking and answering simple questions in English was developed. The user may ask or answer by speaking or typing and the computer’s output is in the form of speech and / or text. The types of questions handled and the permitted vocabulary are limited, though the vocabulary items may be edited freely. The system was well received in a small pilot study among Japanese students. It is freely available for download, and requires no technical expertise to deploy, just the facilities and ability to edit text files and upload to the internet.