The ultimate aim of our research project was to use the Google Web Speech API to automate scoring of elicited imitation (EI) tests. However, in order to achieve this goal, we had to take a number of preparatory steps. We needed to assess how accurate this speech recognition tool is in recognizing native speakers' production of the test items; we…

As online automatic speech recognition (ASR) engines become more accurate and more widely implemented with call software, it becomes important to evaluate the effectiveness and the accuracy of these recognition engines using authentic speech samples. This study investigates two of the most prominent cloud-based speech recognition engines--Apple's…

This paper reports on the experimental use of a recently developed musical looping app with a class of Japanese university students of English during 2014. Working in groups using shared hand-held devices, students created compositions based on lexical chunks or formulaic sequences selected freely from a fixed text. A scored example of one such…