Building the foundations for automatic assessment of verbal and nonverbal aspects of spoken interaction in Finnish as a second language
Riikka Ullakonoja, University of Jyväskylä, Finland; Ilona Lähteenmäki, University of Helsinki, Finland; Nora Raud, Aalto University, Finland; Nhan Phan, Aalto University, Finland; Tamás Grósz, Aalto University, Finland; Henna Suuronen, University of Helsinki, Finland; Raili Hilden, University of Helsinki, Finland; Mikko Kurimo, Aalto University, Finland; Mikko Kuronen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland; Anna von Zansen, University of Helsinki, Finland; Maria Kautonen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
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https://doi.org/10.58379/FFNO9141
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Volume 14, Issue 2, 2025
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Abstract: In the paper we describe the theoretical and methodological basis of a multidisciplinary project, Aasis, focusing on automatic assessment of spoken interaction in L2 Finnish. The aim is to describe the project corpora that have been built for developing ASA (Automatic Speaking Assessment), not to study detailed empirical research questions as such even though we present some preliminary results from the data. The goals of the project are novel in three ways. Firstly, we aim to develop an ASA (Automatic Speaking Assessment) system to assess oral proficiency in dialogic rather than monologic speech. Secondly, our approach includes automatic assessment of nonverbal features in interaction, extending beyond the more conventionally used ASA tools. Thirdly, the language to be assessed is Finnish, a language with scarce previous studies on ASA.
Keywords: automatic speaking assessment, nonverbal features, interaction, Finnish