Mobile-based Speech Recognition for Early Reading Assistant

Abstract

In Malaysia, English language is the secondary language for most of the people and they usually rely on the education system to learn the language especially in learning how to read and pronounce the words correctly. As a multiracial country, Malaysians have many dialects according to the different states, which can affect the children's pronunciation of the language. Consequently, their own style of dialect causes the children to struggle in developing the right pronunciation during the early years of school. The children will be exposed to the proper language at school but limited to the weekdays and school hours. Therefore, the technology of computerized applications has a high potential to help young kids in reading with the correct pronunciation. This paper presents the development of a mobile application with speech implementation based on Flutter framework for early reader assistant. The project is evaluated based on the subjective satisfaction towards the application in terms of overall system and functionality of the application, ease of login into the application and the difficulty of the words provided in the application. Based on the study, an average mean score of 3.36 is obtained in which most of the users feel that the application can deliver its function and purpose to the users. In conclusion, the mobile application should be able to aid the users in improving their reading skills and pronunciation.