Pronunciation Scaffolder (ver. 3.0): Development and evaluation
2023-06-04, 09:20–09:50 (Asia/Tokyo), A3 back
Language: English

Presenting in an additional language can be daunting for language learners. Students often alleviate the challenge of the task by reading a script. However, this can be problematic as scripts often exacerbate problems with delivery, such as monotonic intonation, staccato speech, errors with stress, and pronunciation errors with bound morphemes when inflecting nouns and verbs. Due to script reading being accepted practice in many disciplines, prohibiting their usage is not necessarily an ideal solution. This presentation presents Pronunciation Scaffolder (ver 3.0)—an online tool which automatically annotates scripts using size, colour and symbols. We first describe the development of the tool and describe its main features: pausing, intonation, content word, word stress, and annotation of “ed”, “s” and “th” sound variations. We then present the findings of an exploratory case study in which first year computer-science major university students use the tool to practice a short text. Data were collected from video recordings, screencasts, and retrospective interviews. Multiple sources of data enabled triangulation of which features of the tool were considered most useful and identify areas of further development for subsequent versions of the tool.


This presentation describes an online tool which automatically annotates scripts to assist learners with presentations. We then report on an exploratory case study investigating students’ experiences with using the tool.