Patent ID: 9652999
Date: 2017-05-16
CPC Classifications: G09B,G10L

Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method of scoring non-native, spontaneous speech, comprising: receiving a spontaneous speech sample, wherein the sample is of spontaneous speech spoken by a non-native speaker; performing automatic speech recognition on the sample using an automatic speech recognition system to generate a transcript of the spontaneous speech sample; determining an internal speech recognizer metric with the automatic speech recognition system, the internal speech recognizer metric being based on a quality measure of an aspect of the automatic speech recognition in the form of one or more confidence scores; determining a speech recognizer output metric with the automatic speech recognition system, the speech recognizer output metric including measurements based on timing characteristics corresponding to hypothesized words in the generated transcript; determining, using a classifier built on a multiple regression model or a support vector machine model, a word accuracy rate estimate for the transcript generated by the automatic speech recognition system, wherein features of the multiple regression model or the support vector machine model include the speech recognizer output metric and the internal speech recognizer metric; determining a proficiency of the spontaneous speech using a preferred scoring model of an automated speech scoring system when the word accuracy rate estimate satisfies a threshold; and determining the proficiency of the spontaneous speech using an alternate scoring model of the automated speech scoring system when the word accuracy rate estimate fails to satisfy the threshold.