Inspiration
As a team of individuals with immigrant parents, we can empathize with the challenges non-native speakers of English face with pronunciation. In order to interact with others, get job opportunities, and solve various problems, clear communication is essential. But to those who grew up conversing in languages other than English, the irregular spellings and the phonetic complexity of words make conversing with others difficult. This is what inspired us to create TalkTutor, a website that can revolutionize pronunciation learning for speakers looking to perfect their verbal expression in English. What makes us different from other services is our ability to listen to the speaking of the user and being able to identify which part of the word they pronounced incorrectly. This allows TalkTutor to act as a mentor and actively help the student learn to enunciate words.
What it does
TalkTutor is a website that helps the user learn how to pronounce specific words. A button on the screen can be pressed to start recording the audio. This is when the user should say the word out loud into the microphone of their device. After they end the recording, our program identifies which part of the word the user pronounced incorrectly. This is done by comparing the frequency of the user’s speech to models of the frequency of the correct pronunciation. Through the repetition of this process; with the user saying the word and the website correcting them, anyone struggling with enunciation can quickly and accurately learn to say words with confidence.
How we built it
We built TalkTutor using Flask for the backend, HTML, CSS, and JS for the front end, and various Python modules for the audio processing component of our project, like Pydub and Librosa.
Challenges we ran into
A major challenge our team encountered was using Javascript to start and stop the audio recording on the website. Due to few of our team members knowing JS, creating this user interface and having the buttons actually work was a barrier that we had to work hard to overcome. Members of our team had to dedicate time to learning and understanding the ins and outs of Javascript before tackling the issue. Many hours have been spent on the debugging of the program.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Something we are proud of is successfully being able to complete a functional website that works and instructs the user as intended. All the features that we planned on adding have been implemented in time.
What we learned
Throughout our journey of creating TalkTutor, each team member has learned new skills and gained new knowledge. Specifically, some of us learned how to use Javascript. Some of us learned how to create a web application using Flask. Whether it was something completely new or even the smallest bit of new knowledge, every member of our team will be returning home with newfound information and skills.
What's next for TalkTutor
In the future of TalkTutor, our team plans on adding a calibration test that allows the program to more thoroughly accommodate people with different kinds of voices. The user would read out a phrase into the microphone and the program would be able to calibrate accordingly. Additionally, we wish to add a more diverse selection of languages. That way, whether the language you are trying to perfect is English, French, or Chinese, TalkTutor can help you speak with assurance and clarity. This can make the website even more helpful to those who are multilingual.
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