JustSpeak: Automated, User-Configurable, Interactive Agents for Speech Tutoring

Abstract

Conversational agents are widely used in many situations, especially for speech tutoring. However, their contents and functions are often pre-defined and not customizable for people without technical backgrounds, thus significantly limiting their flexibility and usability. Besides, conventional agents often cannot provide feedback in the middle of training sessions because they lack technical approaches to evaluate users' speech dynamically. We propose JustSpeak: automated and interactive speech tutoring agents with various configurable feedback mechanisms, using any speech recordings with its transcription text as the template for speech training. In JustSpeak, we developed an automated procedure to generate customized tutoring agents from user-inputted templates. Moreover, we created a set of methods to dynamically synchronize speech recognizers' behavior with the agent's tutoring progress, making it possible to detect various speech mistakes dynamically such as being stuck, mispronunciation, and rhythm deviations. Furthermore, we identified the design primitives in JustSpeak to create different novel feedback mechanisms, such as adaptive playback, follow-on training, and passive adaptation. They can be combined to create customized tutoring agents, which we demonstrate with an example for language learning. We believe JustSpeak can create more personalized speech learning opportunities by enabling tutoring agents that are customizable, always available, and easy-to-use.