Colpaert Jozef :: Universiteit Antwerpen 
Cucchiarini Catia :: Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen 
Strik Helmer :: Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen 
Oberhofer Margret :: Universiteit Antwerpen - Linguapolis 

The role of personal goals in designing ASR-based courseware for speaking proficiency (#92)

The DISCO project, which is part of the STEVIN programme funded by the Dutch and Flemish Governments (http://taalunieversum.org/taal/technologie/stevin/), focuses on the implementation of speech recognition routines in systems for practicing speaking proficiency. The project requirements, set out from the beginning, included a.o. that a/ speaking proficiency should address pronunciation, morphology and syntax in communicative situations; b/ the learning process of Dutch as a second language should be embedded - or at least linked to - the integration process of immigrants, and c/ that the design of the prototype should not be limited to testing technological feasibility, but that it should include real-world use. After a brief introduction on computer assisted training of oral proficiency based on automatic speech recognition (ASR), we will report on the project results. We will focus on the design process, and show how the Distributed Language Learning, a methodological and conceptual framework for designing language learning environments, has been applied. We will detail our analysis of personal goals and their progressive impact on the final design.