摘要：Project ISLE (Interactive Spoken Language Education) aimed to exploit available
speech recognition technology to improve the performance of computerbased
English language learning systems, specifically for adult German and Italian
learners of English. The English language teaching industry is showing
increasing interest in and awareness of the relevance and potential of speech and
language technology (Atwell 1999). The project conducted a detailed survey
and analysis of prospective user requirements (Atwell et al. 2000): we sought
expert advice and opinions from a range of prospective end-users (learners of
English as a second language), as well as .meta-level experts. or professionals
and practitioners in English language teaching (ELT teachers and researchers)
and industry experts in the ELT market (publishers of ELT resources, textbooks
and multimedia). The ISLE project partners included representative users,
English language learners at all six sites in the ISLE project consortium: Dida*el
S.r.l. (Milan, Italy), Entropic Cambridge Research Laboratory Ltd. (Cambridge,
UK), Ernst Klett Verlag (Stuttgart, Germany), University of Hamburg (Germany),
University of Leeds (UK), University of Milan Bicocca (Italy). Leeds
University is a centre for English language teaching and research; Leeds University,
Hamburg University and Entropic Cambridge had ready access to overseas
students from Germany and Italy; Klett is a major German publisher of ELT
resources and textbooks; and Dida*el is a major Italian publisher of multimedia
educational systems. We developed a demonstrator English pronunciation tutor
system, including an error diagnosis module to pinpoint and flag mispronounced
words in a learner.s spoken input (Herron et al. 1999).
