Patent Application
20160307453
Ability to communicate in more than one language has become a desirable attribute today. Technology has played an important role in connecting people from different countries and continents and making cross border interactions a reality. More and more people wish that they and their children are able to speak and communicate in more than one language. This multilingual capability adds a competitive edge in the culturally diverse business environment that exists today.
People wanting to learn a second language usually find it difficult to understand the pronunciation of phonemes and syllables of the language, resulting in either giving up learning the language mid-way or poor fluency in the language. Phonemes are considered as the smallest identifiable unit of sound in any language. The combination of these phonemes results in syllables which in turn form words of a language. People who make attempts of learning to speak a second/non-native language usually face difficulty in understanding the phonemes and syllables of the language and hence are not able to grasp the language completely or are not able to bring about fluency in speaking the second language. For example Korean language possesses both ‘r’ and ‘l’ sound where [r] occurs usually in the middle and [l] at the end of words. This means that while Korean speakers will not have difficulty producing [l] at the end of words in another languages, they will have difficulty with most European languages, which also allow [l] at the beginning of words. However, such difficulty is not faced in understanding the phonemes, syllables and other phonetic components of the native language.
Research and studies have shown that the one significant reason why a person is able to easily identify and relate to the phonemes, syllables and other phonetic components of his or her native language is because of exposure to native language at a very early age. Eric Heinz Lenneberg, a pioneering scientist on language acquisition and cognitive psychology, hypothesized that the best time of acquiring a language or at least getting used to phonemes of a language is within a critical period. If language is not learned before this time period, then an individual is not able to completely understand the phonemes and other sound components of the language at a later stage. This is because a child's auditory capabilities are sharp enough to differentiate and register multiple sounds, phonemes and syllables. An early exposure to sound elements such as phonemes and syllables from non-native languages form permanent phonological memory traces that help the adult to learn the language at a later stage.
Though a lot of different methods and systems are known in the art that relate to helping individuals, learn a second language, they are unable to bring about fluency as the individuals often find the pronunciation confusing and difficult. Other methods and systems that concentrate upon teaching a second language or teaching pronunciation to children often miss the critical aspect of exposing the children to phonemes, syllables and sounds from multiple languages for creating phonological memory traces. Yet other language acquisition methods are not able to make the environment fun and interactive enough and children become disinterested in learning. Even toys available in the market teach very basic alphabet skills with little to no exposure to phonemes or syllables.
The method provided herein relates to a method for developing auditory capability of a user to process language sounds. The method comprises introducing at least one phonetic component specific to at least one language to the user, presenting the user with an interactive environment on a device, soliciting the user's response related to processing of the phonetic component within the interactive environment through the device and evaluating the user's response. The method may further comprise of retrieving another phonetic component from a database of phonetic components based on the user's response. Another phonetic component may be retrieved from the database based on adaptive logic. In one embodiment, the method may further comprise increasing or decreasing the difficulty level of the interactive environment automatically based on the user's performance.
The method may further comprise inducing distraction sounds to increase difficulty level of the interactive environment. In one embodiment, the interactive environment may be a video game environment. The video game environment may automatically display specific game scenarios based on user-entered parameters. In another embodiment of the invention, interactive environment may be a physical toy comprising a battery unit, an audio output unit and a microphone. The physical toy may further comprise a touch capacitive video display screen. The physical toy may be further configured to provide gestural, audio or video response based on the user input.
The phonetic component corresponding to a language may be a phoneme, grapheme, allophone or a syllable. The phonetic component may be chosen from multiple languages. The interactive environment may permit the user to use the phonemes, graphemes, allophones or syllables to build words and sentences. Evaluation of the user's performance may be provided by automatic displaying of performance analytics data using a radar plot wherein percentage of sounds identified from the database are highlighted.
In one embodiment processing the phonetic components may involve distinguishing from other components, identification of components within the interactive environment, or using components to build words and sentences. The user response may be solicited using audio input means to capture user's voice as input, a touch capacitive display or an augmented reality system capturing the user's gestures.
The embodiments herein and the various features and advantageous details thereof are explained with reference to the non-limiting embodiments that are illustrated in the accompanying drawings and/or detailed in the following description. Descriptions of well-known components and processing techniques are omitted so as to not unnecessarily obscure the embodiments herein. The examples used herein are intended merely to facilitate an understanding of ways in which the embodiments herein may be practiced and to further enable those of skill in the art to practice the embodiments herein. Accordingly, the scope of this patent application and the claims contained herein should not be construed as limited to the illustrative embodiments.
The auditory capability development method for assisting a user to process language sounds, disclosed herein, provides that a phonetic component of a language is introduced to a user. This phonetic component may be a phoneme, grapheme, allophone or a syllable or any other related sounds. For the purposes of this description the term “user” may mean and include a person of any age, however, scientific studies have shown that this method is most effective for children up to the age of six years. Once the phonetic component is introduced to the user, the user is provided an interactive environment where the user is expected to identify and/or process the phonetic component within such interactive environment. The interactive environment thereafter evaluates the user input and provides appropriate response.
The interactive environment presented to the user is configured to solicit a user response related to the identification or processing of the phonetic component learnt by the user earlier. The processing may involve distinguishing the specific phonetic component from other sounds, identification of components, or using components to build words and sentences. Various ways such as employing distraction sounds, increasing number of objects to confuse the user etc. may be used to increase the difficulty level. The interactive environment may optionally be configured to increase or decrease the difficulty level automatically based on user performance. The user input may be sought using an audio input device that receives the user's voice as input. Alternatively capacitive touch screen of the device or augmented reality system that captures user's gestures may be used to receive user input. The interactive system may also be configured to permit the user to make words and sentences by utilizing the identified phonetic components.
The user response is evaluated 108 based on set parameters and the evaluation is displayed on the device to the user. In one embodiment, the evaluation is displayed in the form of automatic displaying of performance analytics data using a radar plot wherein percentage of sounds identified from a database is highlighted. Based on the user response the interactive environment may be configured to retrieve another phonetic component from a database of phonetic components 110. This database of phonetic components may either reside on a server (including cloud server) remotely connected to the device or it may be stored on local memory of the device. The additional phonetic components may be retrieved from the database based on adaptive logic. This adaptive logic may be customized based on parameters such as performance of the user, language that the user is looking to learn, language pack chosen etc. In one embodiment wherein the device is a physical toy, the toy may be configured to provide gestural, audio or video response based on said user input as evaluation.
The foregoing description of the specific embodiments will so fully reveal the general nature of the embodiments herein that others can, by applying current knowledge, readily modify and/or adapt for various applications such specific embodiments without departing from the generic concept, and, therefore, such adaptations and modifications should and are intended to be comprehended within the meaning and range of equivalents of the disclosed embodiments. It is to be understood that the phraseology or terminology employed herein is for the purpose of description and not of limitation. Therefore, while the embodiments herein have been described in terms of preferred embodiments, those skilled in the art will recognize that the embodiments herein can be practiced with modification within the spirit and scope of the embodiments as described herein.
