Method and apparatus for reading education

1. A method for recognizing an utterance spoken by a reader, the method comprising:

receiving text comprising one or more words to be read by the reader;

generating a grammar for speech recognition, in accordance with the text;

inserting at least one reading learner grammar feature into the grammar, wherein the at least one reading learner grammar feature comprises a recognition of at least one reading learner mistake;

receiving the utterance;

interpreting the utterance in accordance with the grammar; and

outputting feedback indicative of reader performance.

2. Apparatus for recognizing an utterance spoken by a reader, the apparatus comprising:

means for receiving text comprising one or more words to be read by the reader;

means for generating a grammar for speech recognition, in accordance with the text;

means for inserting at least one reading learner grammar feature into the grammar, wherein the at least one reading learner grammar feature comprises a recognition of at least one reading learner mistake;

means for receiving the utterance; and

means for interpreting the utterance in accordance with the grammar; and

means for outputting feedback indicative of reader performance.

3. A non-transitory computer readable medium containing an executable program for recognizing an utterance spoken by a reader, where the program performs the steps of:

receiving text comprising one or more words to be read by the reader;

generating a grammar for speech recognition, in accordance with the text;

inserting at least one reading learner grammar feature into the grammar, wherein the at least one reading learner grammar feature comprises a recognition of at least one reading learner mistake;

receiving the utterance;

interpreting the utterance in accordance with the grammar; and

outputting feedback indicative of reader performance.

4. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises a structural restart.

5. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises a jump-ahead.

6. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises at least one pronunciation mistake.

7. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises a word insertion error or a word deletion error.

8. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises a mistake in directionality.

9. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises, for at least one of the one or more words, skipping the next word.

10. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises, for at least one of the one or more words, repeating a current word.

11. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises, for at least one of the one or more words, uttering an immediately preceding word.

12. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises, for at least one of the one or more words, uttering a beginning of a current phrase of which the current word is a part.

13. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises, for at least one of the one or more words that is a line-ending word, repeating a current line.

14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner mistake comprises, for at least one of the one or more words that is a line-ending word, uttering an immediately preceding line.

15. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the at least one reading learner grammar feature further comprises a reject grammar for at least one of the one or more words.

16. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , further comprising:

displaying the text to the reader prior to receiving the utterance.

17. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 16 , wherein the displaying, the receiving of the utterance, and the interpreting are performed substantially simultaneously.

18. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 16 , wherein the displaying comprises:

formatting the text for display.

19. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 18 , wherein the text further comprises a formatting markup for guiding the formatting.

20. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 19 , wherein the formatting comprises:

calculating a position of at least one text format feature in accordance with at least one characteristic of a device on which the text is to be displayed.

21. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the text further comprises metadata comprising semantic data.

22. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the feedback comprises at least partial results of the interpreting.

23. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the feedback comprises a score indicative of an accuracy of the utterance relative to the text.

24. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 23 , wherein the score comprises at least one of: a number of words uttered by the reader in a given period of time, an amount of time taken by the reader to complete utterance of at least a portion of the text, a confidence score relating to a word uttered by the reader, a confidence score relating to a sentence uttered by the reader, a confidence score relating to a phrase uttered by the reader, or a percentage of words correctly uttered by the reader.

25. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 23 , wherein the score is at least one of: a dialog act score, a duration score, a fluency score, a score related to a path taken through the grammar, or a pronunciation score.

26. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the feedback comprises at least one of: poorly uttered portions of the text, correctly uttered portions of the text, skipped portion of the text, or repeated portions of the text.

27. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , further comprising:

storing the feedback.

28. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the inserting comprises:

generating transitions representing a correct utterance of the text; and

generating transitions representing the at least one reading learner grammar feature.

29. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 28 , wherein the transitions representing the correct utterance and the transitions representing the at least one reading learner feature are assigned probabilities.

30. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 28 , wherein at least one word in at least one of the correct utterance and the transitions representing the at least one reading learner grammar feature is represented by a multi-word sub-grammar, the multi-word sub-grammar comprising:

the at least one word;

a reject grammar; and

a pause grammar.

31. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the text is received from local storage.

32. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the text is received from a remote computing device.

33. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the receiving text comprises:

performing optical character recognition on a piece of printed text.