What does learner speech sound like? A case study on adult learners of isiXhosa

Abstract

This paper reports on an analysis of isiXhosa speech produced by adult language learners. The learners whose speech was recorded were all acquiring isiXhosa as an additional language and the majority of the students had beginner level oral proficiency skills. The speech samples were produced and recorded during the development of a Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) application to support clinical communication skills training at Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. The aim of the application was to provide a means for students to practise their oral skills and improve their pronunciation in isiXhosa. The speech data was processed manually as well as automatically and the results reveal that 30% of the recordings do not contain suitable audio. It was also found that, on average, absolute differences between first language speakers and additional language learners are not good indicators of proficiency. However, automatically derived proficiency measures for the majority of the learners improved during the course of a semester.