SpeakEasy Nihongo: mobile application for Japanese beginner learners

Studying a new language may bring in a lot of surprises and new opportunities, yet it also entails a number of difficulties. To achieve fluency, most learners do not only need to memorise new vocabularies and learn grammar. Words are not everything but sounds and rhythms are a part of the language that needs to be mastered to communicate. Nonetheless, most learners have problems in enhancing their language abilities particularly in the aspects that extend to reading and writing. In this project, the proposed development involves a mobile application to learn Japanese language named SpeakEasy Nihongo. The primary goal of the application is to assist the novice learners to learn and enhance their pronunciation skills in Japanese with the help of interactive quizzes and lessons with the help of the mobile platform. This app stands out of the crowd of other applications of language because it heavily focuses on the feedback and engagement received through the combination of Artificial Intelligence, speech recognition, and gamification features. The app enables the users to train Hiragana and Katakana, as well as number and other simple words. The app utilizes the Speech API of the Microsoft Azure to grade pronunciation of users and give real-time review thus allowing the learners to diagnose the errors and rectify them easily. This study adopted development-based approach that included requirement analysis, interface design, system development with Flutter and user testing. The interface and app features were measured with the help of a User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ). The findings indicated positive feedback on all six UEQ scales, particularly on such areas as Perspicuity and Stimulation. In accordance with these results, the suggested areas of improvement might be the inclusion of additional lessons in the future and the development of more chatbot features and enhanced voice input to more natural learning.