Title : 
Applying Speech Techniques to Practice Listening and Speaking Skills for EFL Learners: An Exploratory Study
         
        
            Author : 
Tsai, Ming-Kuan ; Young, Shelley Shwu-Ching
         
        
            Author_Institution : 
Inst. of Inf. Syst. & Applic., Nat. Tsing-Hua Univ., Hsinchu, Taiwan
         
        
        
        
        
        
            Abstract : 
This study applies speech techniques to assist English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) learners to practice listening and speaking skills. In Taiwan, although EFL learners started learning English when young, they had a few opportunities for practicing English during the daily oral conversation. Integrating Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) programs and the Internet seems to be a solution to improving this condition. In a case study, an approach was proposed. Several EFL learners applied the developed CALL program to perform self-practice. Based on the evaluation, the participating learners benefited from this speech-enabled program.
         
        
            Keywords : 
Internet; computer aided instruction; speech processing; CALL program; EFL learning; English-as-a-foreign-language; Internet; computer-assisted language learning; listening skill; speaking skill; speech techniques; Application software; Automatic speech recognition; Education; Information systems; Internet; Natural languages; Speech analysis; Speech enhancement; Speech synthesis; Vocabulary; CALL; EFL; Learner-centered learning; Speech;
         
        
        
        
            Conference_Titel : 
Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning (DIGITEL), 2010 Third IEEE International Conference on
         
        
            Conference_Location : 
Kaohsiung
         
        
            Print_ISBN : 
978-1-4244-6433-3
         
        
            Electronic_ISBN : 
978-1-4244-6434-0
         
        
        
            DOI : 
10.1109/DIGITEL.2010.15