Speech Technology to Support Phonics Learning for Kindergarten Children at Risk of Dyslexia

Abstract

We present the AiRO learning environment for kindergarten children at risk of developing dyslexia. The AiRO frontend, easy to use for pupils down to 5 years old, introduces each spelling task with pictural and auditive cues. AiRO responds to spelling attempts with phonetic renderings (synthetic voice). Below, we introduce the didactic and technical principles behind AiRO before presenting our first experiment with 49 kindergarten pupils. Our subjects were pre- and post-tested on reading an spelling. After four weeks of AiRO-based training the experimental group significantly out-performed the control group, suggesting that a new CALL-based pedagogical approach to prevent dyslexia for some children may be within reach.