ABSTRACT
We propose an Arabic talking face called Badr to teach the language vocabulary for young students under COVID-19 pandemic. Badr is built on the previous talking face Baldi (e.g., an American English talking face) with many enhancements in interaction and words pronunciation. It can complement the work of instructors who can get tired and bored when teaching online for long hours. It can pronounce standard Arabic vocabulary accurately and interact with learners in natural manner. Listening and observing Badr improve the learners' ability to understand speech in a noisy background. We tested Badr with Qatar University students, and we show its effectiveness and usefulness in introducing smoothly new vocabulary. Badr can act as an independent tutor for different categories of learners including those with learning difficulties, slow learners, and non-Arabic speaking learners. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 imposed a new paradigm in education especially in elementary schools. Children are no longer able to go regularly to schools as normal. They should then rely mainly on themselves to learn and acquire knowledge. The Understand My World app is a new technological solution that allows children to learn new Arabic vocabularies interactively and independently using their smart phones or tablets (i.e., iPad, iPhone). They can use the devices' camera and microphone to explore the world, understand spoken words, and read written language properly. Images captured by the camera are recognized, labeled, and defined in both speech and writing. Children can also speak into their device to record their speech and listen to it. They can address questions and receive answers. The app then presents the dictated words in both spoken and written form. Using the required Internet connection, the interface automatically provides exceedingly accurate image and speech recognition, all while preserving the participants' anonymity. We use two AI platforms namely Clarifai and Houndify. The application is designed to be intuitive and seamless to use, which makes it very attractive to children to learn through multimedia. © 2021 IEEE.