Developed by Linguaphone, an international language learning company and Lotus Learning of Mumbai, their distributor in India, along with Visual Pronunciation Software Ltd., a New Zealand-based speech recognition programme developer, the programme is used to learn English with correct pronunciation.

“The main intention of the programme is to teach global spoken English in India and not to make people emulate the foreign accent. It is rather a way to help them speak more confidently and accurately and overcome whatever accent they might have had because of the influence of their mother tongue,” explained Usha Shahane, general Manager, Lotus Learning.

According to Sahane, since English is the most widely spoken language in the world, most employers are increasingly insisting on absorbing well-qualified English speaking candidates in their organizations.

The problems regarding spoken English is especially of concern in India where accents are governed by mother tongue. As a result, a number of educational institutes, corporate houses and BPOs are looking for ways to help students and employees overcome English language problems. After installing this software in the computer, the learner can refer to language courses and hear the teacher’s voice, record his own, playback and compare, see a visual graphic representation of the speech and get an overall score. The software analyses the speech based on the pronunciation, pitch, timing and loudness and suggests which area the learner needs to work on. While the average active vocabulary of a person is 700-900 words, the software helps the learner to include 2,500 words in his day-to-day use.

Language Labs by Linguaphone 21 have already made their presence felt in 426 colleges and schools across India. The Language Labs help students overcome five main challenges — vocabulary, expression, grammar, pronunciation and translation, Shahne said. “In fact, a number of our clients are from the rural areas in India. Young students from these areas are very keen on learning the correct method of speaking English,” she said. The software uses the Linguaphone curriculum of the Linguaphone Editorial Advisory Board chaired by Lord Quirk, a renowned UK based English Literature professor.