Patent ID: 7962327
Filing Date: 2011-06-14
Classification: G10L

Abstract:
1. A pronunciation assessment system for evaluating a user's pronunciation, said pronunciation assessment system comprising: a computer; one or more distinctive feature assessors, each distinctive feature assessor including a feature extractor for extracting acoustic features specific to a corresponding distinctive feature from an input speech waveform, and a distinctive feature classifier for computing degree of inclination of the corresponding distinctive feature based on the extracted acoustic features, and each said distinctive feature assessor being realized according to specific characteristics of the corresponding distinctive feature; wherein said pronunciation assessment system uses more than one said distinctive feature assessors, an assessment controller and an integrated phone grader to construct a phone assessor and evaluate a user's pronunciation; wherein said assessment controller identifies phonemes in the input speech waveform and dynamically decides to adopt or intensify some of said distinctive feature assessors, and said integrated phone pronunciation grader outputs various types of ranking result for the phone pronunciation assessment.