What is Lorre?

The tool Lorre has been developed at Leiden University to provide students with the possibility to practice pronunciation in foreign and second language learning. It is a plugin for the program Praat of the University of Amsterdam, which is an open source phonetics software package used in phonetic and phonological research all over the world.

With Lorre it is possible to:

1. Practice with the perception of different sounds and accents. See part 3 of the User Manual, available as a separate PDF-file in the sub-directory Manual of Lorre;

2. Practice with pronouncing different words or sentences by following the example of a model speaker. See part 4 of the User Manual.

In the second case, the tool records the utterance produced by the student and compares it with the example. Lorre then produces visual feedback that shows the similarities and differences between the students and the model speech sample. You can focus on either phoneme, word and/or sentence level because the program can be made sensitive to phrasing (temporal structure), intonation (pitch) and/or the correct articulation of vowels and fricatives (the latter is work in progress).

Links to this page

• Lorre - A tool to Practice your Pronunciation