Speech synthesis in CAL/CBT

Over the last 30 years computers have been used, with varying degrees of success, to assist with teaching and training people. However, it is not the purpose of the paper to try to justify whether or not Computer Aided Learning/Computer Based Training (CAL/CBT) has a viable role to play in education, but rather to discuss how the interface between the user and the computer in CAL/CBT could be improved. CAL programs can differ substantially in the amount of interaction between the user and the computer, but whatever the CAL program there can be no denying the fact that the user-machine interface is one of its most important aspects. At present communication between the user and the computer is largely achieved by means of written or computer generated text and the display of computer generated images. This means that there is one fundamental mode of communication lacking, namely speech. The paper argues that speech can provide a valuable addition to the interface and that one of the ways to achieve this is through the provision of computer generated speech. In particular, because of their inherent flexibility, text-to-speech systems are ideally suited to this purpose