Seeing how people hear you: French learners experiencing intelligibility through automatic speech recognition

Abstract

Many language practitioners feel ill equipped to address learners’ pronunciation or have difficulties doing so because of limited class time, opportunities for individualized feedback, and approaches to evaluating intelligibility. However, it is crucial that students become understandable to native speakers who are unaccustomed to dealing with second language learners. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) offers one potentially practical way to answer these needs. Contributing to research on mobile‐assisted learning, this study investigated how two groups of college‐level second language French learners developed greater awareness of their own intelligibility using ASR in Gmail. Using an ecological approach (van Lier, ) and an experiential learning model (Kolb, ), while following up on Liakin, Cardoso, and Liakina (2017), as well as McCrocklin (), this study found that ASR could credibly simulate understanding by a native speaker, allowing learners to close the intelligibility gap and develop a sense of what successful interpersonal communication entails. Pedagogical implications are offered.