Enhancing Learner Listening Skills with AI

Dr. Kateryna Derkach

Listening skills are known to pose a great challenge for many language learners, as their development requires a lot of exposure to spoken language, which is in many ways less accessible than written language. Authentic spoken language is often considerably above learners’ comprehension level and, compared to written language, is more difficult to adapt. In addition, learners (and often teachers) have little awareness of the building blocks of successful listening, such as the ability to recognise specific phonemic contrasts or to segment continuous speech stream into words. If these abilities are not well developed, this becomes a bottleneck in accessing any top-down listening strategies, such as using contextual information or speakers’ intonation, which is very important to infer speaker’s intentions and attitudes.

Another major issue is that successful listening comprehension depends largely on learners’ vocabulary knowledge and, crucially, learners’ ability to recognise the words they know in continuous speech. However, most vocabulary learning occurs in written mode, and even when listening to word pronunciation is included, words are usually presented in isolation and pronounced very clearly.

Until recently, these issues have been difficult to resolve, because finding listening resources at the right level or adapting them is very time-consuming, while using authentic resources requires a lot of individual support from teachers. Honing listening skills and improving individual word recognition in speech stream is also very tedious, requires a lot of individual practice, and learners will inevitably vary in their needs and problem areas.

This project focuses on harnessing AI and digital tools to support teachers and learners in listening skills development. Using our expertise in language teaching, listening skills training, and technology-assisted learning, we aim to create an intelligent adaptive tutoring system to provide plentiful and effective listening training focusing on learners’ individual goals and weaknesses, which would complement classroom teaching.