Measuring and Improving Children’s Reading Aloud Attributes by Computers

Abstract In this paper, method of an automated measuring reading aloud attributes is presented. The forced alignment as a part of speech recognition technique is used. The recorded reading aloud is forced aligned to the known text and the attributes are computed from it. The tempo and fluency of children are monitored and used for an individual motivation. The length of the read text is chosen according to readers’ skills so that children end up reading at about the same time and poor readers are not frustrated. This approach has been tested and improved at the elementary school for five years and brought positive results.