Amount of ASR practice (days per week, session length) showed no observable difference in pronunciation improvement¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 2 studies · 1 causal r2, 1 quant-synthesis r2 · q2–q3 · i2 medium · n=15 studies (38 effect sizes)
Currency · newest study 2024 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Self-reported practice frequency and session length were not associated with observable improvement in pronunciation. → Dillon 2023 q3 i2 Across ASR studies, programme length did matter: one to four weeks pooled to g = 0.07, five to eight weeks to g = 1.01 and nine weeks or more to g = 0.72; this is total duration, not the days per week or session length this claim concerns. → Ngo et al. 2024

Evidence¶

Dillon 2023¶

Dillon, Thomas, & Wells, Donald. (2023). Effects of pronunciation training using automatic speech recognition on pronunciation accuracy of Korean English language learners. English Teaching, 78(1), 3-23. https://doi.org/10.15858/engtea.78.1.202303.3

q2 · i? · causal · r2

Questionnaire-based analysis of the treatment group (27 respondents, of whom 15 claimed to study 1 or 2 days per week and 20 claimed 5 to 10 minutes per session) found "no observable difference in improvement according to days studied per week or session time."

"There was no observable difference in improvement according to days studied per week or session time."

Ngo et al. 2024¶

Ngo, T. T.-N., Chen, H. H.-J., & Lai, K. K.-W. (2024). The effectiveness of automatic speech recognition in ESL/EFL pronunciation: A meta-analysis. ReCALL, 36(1), 4–21. doi:10.1017/S0958344023000113

q3 · meta-analysis (three-level, random effects) · i2 · medium effect, g=0.69 · n=15 studies (38 effect sizes) · quant-synthesis · r2

A meta-analysis of 15 studies (2008–2021, 38 effect sizes) comparing ESL/EFL learners who practised pronunciation with automatic speech recognition (ASR) against a non-ASR condition. The pooled effect was g = 0.69 (95% CI 0.31 to 1.08), with substantial heterogeneity (Q = 227.70; I² 56.56% between studies). The authors did not test for publication bias, and name the small number of primary studies as the main limitation. Read from the publisher's open-access full text; the article was published online in 2023. By treatment duration, short programmes (one to four weeks) gave g = 0.07 (3 studies, 95% CI −1.02 to 1.15), medium ones (five to eight weeks) g = 1.01 (4 studies, 95% CI 0.12 to 1.89) and long ones (nine weeks or more) g = 0.72 (8 studies, 95% CI 0.23 to 1.21). The synthesis codes total programme length, not practice frequency or session length.

"The pooled effect size was medium (g = 0.69), and the confidence interval was not across zero (95% CI = [0.31, 1.08])."

Discussion¶

Ngo et al. (2024) qualify this claim. The claim concerns practice frequency and session length within one four-week programme; the synthesis compares programmes of different total length across studies and finds that one to four weeks produced a negligible pooled effect while longer programmes produced medium to large ones. So the absence of a dose-response within a short programme is consistent with the pooled evidence, but it should not be read as evidence that the amount of ASR practice does not matter.

Related Claims¶

• Simulation Based Education With Deliberate Practice Improves Clinical Outcomes — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• CAPT software shows promising results for segmental pronunciation, while prosodic features and fluency still require further research and development — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• ASR transcription serves as a diagnostic tool identifying individual learners' pronunciation errors, with function words most commonly mispronounced — related
• Guided ASR practice improves overall pronunciation accuracy of Korean EFL learners more than ordinary classroom pronunciation practice alone — related
• Guided ASR practice did not produce statistically significant improvement in any specific pronunciation error type, with some errors unimproved or regressed — related
• Students responded positively to ASR pronunciation training and the Rainbow passage, but were mixed on technical aspects of recording and voice typing — related
• Teachers attribute students' lack of pronunciation progress mainly to instruction and practice factors rather than learner factors — related
• No association between amount of teacher training coursework and classroom effectiveness — related
• Interaction volume during AI-supported practice sessions did not differ significantly across conditions, supporting comparability of practice exposure — related
• Profy practice shows larger observed pronunciation-intelligibility improvement than elicited imitation, with non-overlapping pre/post confidence intervals — related