Blog: Ever heard about “ArtiKulate”?

[menotu]

cordlandwehr - February 27, 2013

Hey people! I want to write some lines about a very new Edu application that I recently started.

Disclaimer: everything that follows is work-in-progress and if you are one of the braves who try to compile the code and test it: The program will eat all data that you put in for sure :-)

The project I am talking about is named “ArtiKulate” and is a new kind of language learning application. It shall help students, adults, professionals, etc. to improve their foreign language pronunciation skills. This shall be done as follows: A user gets a text phrase and a corresponding sound file that is recorded by a native speaker. Then the user can play the sound (or if she/he feels lucky, this step can be omitted) and tries to speak that phrase by herself/himself. This trial is recorded by the application and the user can then compare both recordings (for now I only plan to implement a comparison done by the user by listening to both sound files, but surely an automatic highscore that states how similar both recordings are would be nice in the future…)

Full blog below

https://cordlandwehr.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/ever-heard-about-artikulate/#comments

[rm]

menotu,

I haven't had a chance to look at your app, but it sounds like a great idea!  A while back I did some language teaching my self.  There have been some studies done to understand how the brain works in regards to language.  You may want to see if you can get your hands on some of that.  Maybe you have already. 

But any way, one thing I remember reading is how one can increase the alertness of the brain in order to improve the way it listens to the nuances of pronunciation.  Alertness can be improved by providing a mechanical, or coordination, challenge to the brain at the moment of listening to the pronounced word(s).  So, for example, you could provide some quick moving ball that the user needs to try to click while listening to the words, or something like that.  Just a thought.