Designing a Mobile Chinese Learning System with Speech Recognition for Foreign Students

Abstract

This study aims to design and implement a micro -learning Chinese vocabulary pronunciation practice system on mobile device for international students from a university in northern Taiwan. Learning a foreign language is difficult, yet using a foreign language to initiate social interaction with native speakers i s even harder. In this study, we propose a location -based contextual Chinese learning system which aims to aid the foreign learners to learn daily life vocabular y by repeating practicing vocabulary pronunciation with speech recognition functionality. An im mediate feedback will be shown to the learners, allowing them to check their correctness level of vocabulary pronunciation. To ensure the learning takes place in real context, the language learning will be enhanced with location -based service which is provided by Facebook. Location information will be available for the learners to access local tourist attraction information by selecting from nearby point -of-interests via Facebook ’s check -in module . An experiment will be conducted to measure students’ langua ge learning performance as well as their language learning motivation. We expect to recruit international students whose Chinese proficiency is at entry level . Participants will be selected from a northern Taiwan university.