English Language Institute
Technology Tip of the Month

June 1998: Pronunciation Software

by Deborah Healey

The Tech Tip for May 1998 dealt with setting the stage for pronunciation work--some vocabulary and ways to get started. This month we'll look at some of the pronunciation products currently available. The comments here come from our experience at the ELI and what others have said at conferences. Special thanks to Janet Anderson-Hsieh for information presented at the TCIS Colloquium on the Uses and Limitations of Pronunciation Technology at TESOL '98.

Keep in mind some of my basic premises about pronunciation: that it is a state of mind, that having fun helps, and that multiple media can enhance learning when used effectively.

Vocabulary

Formant grid: This sample formant grid comes from TEAM, but the formant displays in Accent Lab and Visipitch are quite similar. Click on the image to view it in a larger size (17K).

Waveform: This sample waveform comes from Pronunciation Power. It's representative of all of them. The target is on top and my pronunciation of the target sound is represented on the bottom. The waveform tends not to match well, even when a native speaker is pronouncing the words, as was the case here. The programs do not control for intensity when showing the waveform. Click the image to view it in a larger size (11K).

Pictoral cues: These are pictures with some sort of animation. The types of images tend to appeal to children, but adults can benefit as well from having a real-time interaction that helps the learner approximate the correct phoneme. These images are typically dynamic. The one shown here is from Speech Viewer III. Click the image to view it in a larger size (110K).

Overview

These are programs designed for pronunciation. There are many other programs that incorporate record and playback features; those are not listed here. All of the programs below give students the ability to record their voices and play back what they've said to compare with a model. All offer some kind of minimal pair and word-level practice, as well as at least limited sentence-level practice. The information below points out elements that we've found to distinguish among the programs.

Accent Lab from Accent Technologies (Windows); www.accentlab.com

Comment: Designed for ESL, this is an inexpensive program that is easily authorable and offers a spectrogram and formant display. A number of sounds are provided. Unfortunately, it requires the monitor to be set at 1040x760, and does not provide a way to switch resolution on the fly. It can be hard for students to interpret the formant displays without teacher help.

Approx. cost: $40

Adventures in Pronunciation from Heinle and Heinle (Macintosh/Windows CD-ROM); www.thomson.com/heinle/adventin.html

Comment: This uses an adventure game format with a story line that students can find interesting, and the cost is reasonable. Students practice different aspects of pronunciation as they navigate around an island, looking for their lost friend. The main drawback is that actions have no consequences, so the game can feel unrealistic.

Approx. cost: $50

American Accent Program from Ford Language Institute (Macintosh or Windows CD-ROM); www.fordlanguage.com

Comment: This has an easy-to-use, consistent interface, and offers substantial intonation practice as well as consonant and vowel drills. There are no graphical displays to help students visualize what they should be doing with their mouths.

Approx. cost: $300

American SpeechSounds from Speech Communication; www.speechcom.com

Comment: This has an attractive opening screen and easy navigation, but no graphical displays to help students visualize what they should be doing with their mouths. Additional sounds, words, and phrases can be added.

Approx. cost: $90 individual, $300 Professional Edition

Articulation Practice from Hanson-Smith/CELIA (Macintosh); www.latrobe.edu.au/www/education/celia/celia.html

Comment: A small, free program that helps students learn parts of the mouth and practice a few sounds.

Freeware

Ellis from CALI (Windows CD-ROM); www.cali.com

Comment: Special features include both video and cutaway views of a person speaking a sound, tongue twisters, and conversational phrases ("Social Interactions," "Dealing with Language Problems," "Getting Things Done," "Conversing"). The "Master Tutor" provides native-language explanations in a wide range of languages. The record-keeping system requires teachers either to add each student with a unique ID number or to have several students using the same ID number, reducing the utility of record-keeping.

Approx. cost: $380

MultiSpeech from Kay Elemetrics (Windows CD-ROM); www.kayelemetrics.com/

Comment: Designed for speech clinicians, this has sound spectrogram, pitch, and energy displays. This is a smaller version of the VisiPitch and does not require additional hardware. Sounds are not included, but a database of sounds is available as an add-on. Students will need help in interpreting the sound spectrogram display in particular.
Approx. cost: $1000 plus add-on database of sounds for $400- $600

Pronunciation Power from English Computerized Learning (Macintosh/Windows CD-ROM); www.englishlearning.com/

Comment: This has an attractive, easy to use interface and waveforms. The waveforms may be difficult for students to interpret on their own.

Approx. cost: $85

Speech Viewer from IBM (Windows); www.austin.ibm.com/sns/snsspv3.html

Comment: This program, designed for speech clinicians, offers practice in several different areas with a variety of pictoral cues to accuracy. For example, matching a target phoneme can result in putting apples into a truck or liquid moving up a straw. Aspiration, loudness, and pitch are also graphically cued. The graphics are somewhat child-oriented, but very easy to interpret. Sounds must be added by the teacher, and authoring is definitely non-intuitive for those who are not speech clinicians. I'm still learning how to author and use this effectively.
Approx. cost: $840

Speech Works from Trinity Software (Macintosh CD-ROM); www.trinitysoftware.com/

Comment: In addition to a series of lessons related to individual sounds, this includes academic discipline-specific vocabulary and workplace vocabulary, with suggestions for practice outside of the lab. The student must click on a numbered square to bring up the topic of each unit rather than seeing the topics together on the screen; this is inconvenient. There are no graphical displays to help learners visualize what to do with their mouths. Approx. cost: $200

TEAM (Technology Enhanced Accent Modification) from Cleveland State University (Windows CD-ROM); Tel: (216) 687-3804, Fax: (216) 687-9331

Comment: This is designed to be used by a tutor working with a student, not by students in self-access mode. It offers extensive help for the tutor (which could be used by students, as well), formant and waveform displays, authorable exercises, and a record-keeping function.

Contact publisher for cost

VideoVoice from MicroVideo (Macintosh, Windows); www.videovoice.com

Comment: Like SpeechViewer, this has graphical displays with exercises that are easy to use and interpret. This is a hardware-software combination designed for speech clinicians that does not include a database of sounds, assuming that the clinician will input the target sounds. We had trouble installing this product on an AV Mac in our networked lab, and so were not able to use it.

Approx. cost: $3000

VisiPitch II from Kay Elemetrics (Windows CD-ROM); www.kayelemetrics.com

Comment: This is another hardware-software combination designed for speech clinicians. It has extensive displays--sound spectrogram, waveform, pitch and intensity, formant matrix, and spectrum slices--but students will have trouble interpreting most of them on their own. Best used with a tutor.

Approx. cost: $3000 for full program and hardware, $1900 for ESL version

This is not an exhaustive list, and intended to be a starting point for those looking for software to improve their students' pronunciation. I'd be delighted to add comments from others who've used these programs, as well as hear from people about pronunciation programs not mentioned here.

Feel free to email me with questions and comments at Deborah.Healey@orst.edu

Tip to remember: the part of the body most important to pronunciation is the mind.

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