The Prosodic Conditions in Robot's TTS for Children as Beginners in English Learning

Abstract

A robot’s recognition and diagnosis of pronunciation and its speech are the most important interactions in RALL. This paper analyzes para verbal characteristics, F0 range and speaking rate, in English TTS engine speech which falls in the category of robot speech for Korean learners as beginners. In the actual result of this research, beginners did not change before and after repeating robot TTS, however it was confirmed that the speaking rate as the other prosodic variable increased close to the robot TTS’s speaking speed. Therefore robot TTS can be a suitable educational means to correct errors and train for speaking rate of English learners. However, it is still inadequate for the average F0 range of native speakers.