IIIT Hyderabad Develops English Learning Tool for Rural Students
Hyderabad: Researchers at the Raj Reddy Centre for Technology and Society (RCTS) at IIIT Hyderabad said they had developed an English learning tool for students, particularly in rural areas. This tool functions as a comprehensive teaching assistant, providing crucial feedback on speech pronunciation and sentence formation, the institution said.
The tool leverages a speech assessment model crafted by Prof. Chiranjeevi Yarra at the Language Technology Research Centre of IIITH. It address the challenges in teaching English pronunciation and comprehension, especially in classrooms where teachers may lack fluency in English. The model provides feedback at various levels including phoneme emphasis, tonal variations, and syllable stress, although the current version focuses primarily on syllable stress, IIIT said
Since its pilot launch in March at a government school in Moinabad village, Rangareddy district, the tool has received positive feedback from students and educators alike, the professors said. The technology's success has encouraged the RCTS team to consider open sourcing it, which would make it accessible to a broader audience.
The RCTS team plans to integrate this tool into the AskAgastya project, an AI-driven initiative that currently provides feedback in English. The proposed enhancement will allow feedback to be available in multiple languages, starting with Telugu, thereby aiding students whose first language is not English.