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Overview

       

The Cambridge Institute for Automated Language Teaching and Assessment (ALTA) is a virtual institute that brings together researchers from Cambridge University Press & Assessment and the departments of Computer Science and Technology and Engineering. Using techniques from Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, ALTA's primary objective is to develop technology to enhance the experience of language learning and to develop cutting-edge approaches to automated assessment that will benefit learners and teachers worldwide. It forms part of Cambridge University's Language Sciences Interdisciplinary Research Center.

Sponsorship from Cambridge Assessment English supports a team of PhD students and post-doctoral researchers who investigate a range of topics, including:

• language assessment;
• teaching feedback;
• adaptive learning;
• content creation and calibration.

The institute comprises researchers at the Department of Computer Science and Technology (CST) and the Department of Engineering (CUED), organised into a consortium of projects. The projects and their principal investigators are:

• Spoken Language Processing Technology (SLP)
  • Prof Mark Gales: Speech and language processing (CUED)
  • Dr Kate Knill: Spoken language assessment (CUED)


• Language Technology
  • Prof Ted Briscoe (CST)
  • Prof Paula Buttery (CST)


• Adaptivity
  • Prof Paula Buttery (CST)
  • Dr Andrew Caines (CST)

The ALTA research in the CUED Speech Group is focused on spoken language assessment and learning. The group works on all aspects of this area from core speech recognition and machine learning, to spoken language assessment, to feedback and the nature of the test.

Try it out: practise speaking English with Speak&Improve

Personnel Associated with ALTA Spoken Language Processing Technology Project

• Dr Kate Knill [Project Lead]
• Prof Mark Gales [Co-Investigator]
• Simon McKnight [Research Assistant]
• Yassir Fathullah [Research Student] (Gates Scholar)
• Adian Liusie [Research Student]
• Yiting (Edie) Lu [Research Student] (part-funded)
• Rao Ma [Research Student]
• Charlie McGhee [Research Student] (DTP funded)
• Potsawee Manakul [Research student] (Cambridge University funded)
• Vatsal Raina [Research Student] (DTP funded)
• Vyas Raina [Research Student]
• Filip Cermak [UROP (50%)/UGrad Student]
• Arda Civelekoglu [UGrad Student]
• Ilora Ishaque [UGrad Student]
• Zixin (Sharice) Liu [UROP/UGrad Student]
• Chentianyi Yang [UROP/UGrad Student]
• Haifan Zhao [UGrad Student]

Collaborators:

• Stefano Bannò, FBK, Trento, Italy
• Dr Andrey Malinin, Shifts Challenge
• Dr Anton Ragni, University of Sheffield
• Dr Mengjie Qian [Research Associate]
• Dr Yu Wang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU)
• Dr Xixin Wu (CUHK)

Former members:

• Bertie Bull [UROP student/UGrad student]
• Karl Bates [UGrad student]
• Bhanu Balusu [UROP/UGrad Student]
• Dr Jeff Chen [Research Associate]
• Dr Rogier van Dalen [Research Associate]
• Qingyun Dou [Part-Time Researcher]
• Santiago Dubov [UGrad student]
• Shixiang Gu [Research Student (part funded)]
• Prof D. Littman [Visitor]
• Sanchit Gandhi [UROP student/UGrad student]
• Kostas Kyriakopoulos [Research Student]
• Shangyi Lin [UGrad student]
• Hanxu (Vicky) Lu [UROP/UGrad student]
• Justine Hong [UGrad Student]
• Bruno Mlodozeniec [UROP student]
• Zhi Chen Neo [UROP student]
• Preben Ness [UROP student]
• Junjie Pan [MPhil student]
• Sebastian Popescu [MPhil student]
• Puria Radmard [UROP/UGrad Student]
• Mohammad Rashid [MPhil student]
• Ollie Rose [UGrad student]
• Sense Sunyabhisithkul [UGrad Student]
• Marco del Vecchio [MPhil student]
• Dr Linlin Wang [Research Associate]
• Yufan Wang [MPhil student]
• Xizi Wei [Research Assistant]
• Guoxuan Xia [UGrad student]
• Yisheng (Darren) Xu [UGrad student]

• Kate Knill (2021)
  Use of Deep Learning in Free Speaking Non-native English Assessment
  Keynote at TSD 2021, Czech Republic, Sep 2021
• Kate Knill (2019)
  Applying Deep Learning in Non-native Spoken English Assessment
  Keynote at APSIPA 2019, Langzhou, China, Nov 2019
• Kate Knill (2019)
  Towards Learning Orientated Assessment for Non-native Learner Spoken English
  Speech Seminar, Sheffield University, Mar 2019
• Kate Knill and Mark Gales
  Machine Learning of Level and Progression in Spoken EAL
  Cambridge English Profile, Feb 2016
• Mark Gales
  Automatic Assessment of Spoken English - Challenges and Opportunities for Speech Technology (video)
  Cambridge English Centenary Conference, Sep 2013.

Assessment Systems and Infrastructure

• Stefano Bannò, B. Balusu, M. Gales, K. Knill, K. Kyriakopoulos (2022)
  View-Specific Assessment of L2 Spoken English
  INTERSPEECH 2022
• J. Xu, M. Brenchley, E. Jones, A. Pinnington, T. Benjamin, K. Knill, G. Seal-Coon, M. Robinson and A. Geranpaye (2020)
  Linguaskill: Building a validity argument for the Speaking test
  Linguaskill Research Reports UCLES 2020
• X. Wu, K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales, A. Malinin (2020)
  Ensemble Approaches for Uncertainty in Spoken Language Assessment
  INTERSPEECH 2020
• M. Del Vecchio, A. Malinin, M.J.F. Gales (2018)
  Improved Auto-Marking Confidence for Spoken Language Assessment
  IEEE SLT Workshop 2018
• Y. Wang, M.J.F. Gales, K.M Knill, K. Kyriakopoulos, A. Malinin, R.C. van Dalen, M. Rashid (2017)
  Towards Automatic Assessment of Spontaneous Spoken English
  Speech Communication, Sept 2018. (Final accepted)
• K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales, K. Kyriapolous, A. Ragni, Y. Wang (2017)
  Use of Graphemic Lexicons for Spoken Language Assessment
  INTERSPEECH 2017
• A. Malinin, A. Ragni, M.J.F. Gales, K.M. Knill (2017)
  Incorporating Uncertainty into Deep Learning for spoken language assessment
  ACL 2017
• D.Litman, S.Young, M. Gales, K. Knill, K. Ottewell, R. van Dalen and D. Vandyke (2016)
  Towards Using Conversations with Spoken Dialogue Systems in the Automated Assessment of Non-Native Speakers of English
  SIGDIAL 2016.
• R.C. van Dalen, K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales (2015)
  Automatically Grading Learners' English Using a Gaussian Process
  SLaTE Workshop 2015
• R.C. van Dalen, K.M. Knill, P. Tsiakoulis, M.J.F. Gales (2015)
  Improving Multiple Crowd-sourced Transcriptions Using a Speech Recogniser
  ICASSP 2015

• A. Ragni, M. Gales, O. Rose, K. Knill, A. Kastanos, Q. Li, P. Ness (2022)
  Confidence Estimation Using Recurrent and Attention-based Neural Network Approaches
  IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio Speech and Language Processing (Accepted version)
• R. Gretter, M. Matassoni, D. Falavigna, A. Misra, C.W. Leong, K. Knill, L. Wang (2021)
  ETLT 2021: Shared Task on Automatic Speech Recognition for Non-Native Children's Speech
  INTERSPEECH 2021
• K.M. Knill, L. Wang, Y. Wang, X. Wu, M.J.F. Gales (2020)
  Non-Native Children's Automatic Speech Recognition: the INTERSPEECH 2020 Shared Task ALTA Systems
  INTERSPEECH 2020
• J. H. M. Wong, M. J. F. Gales, and Y. Wang (2019)
  Learning Between Different Teacher and Student Models in ASR
  IEEE ASRU Workshop 2019
• J. H. M. Wong, M. J. F. Gales, and Y. Wang (2019)
  General sequence teacher-student learning
  IEEE/ACM Trans. Audio, Speech & Language Processing, vol. 27, no. 11, pp. 1725-1736, 2019
• X. Chen, X. Liu, Y. Wang, A. Ragni, J. H. M. Wong, and M. J. F. Gales (2019)
  Exploiting future word contexts in neural network language models for speech recognition
  IEEE/ACM Trans. Audio, Speech & Language Processing, vol. 27, no. 9, pp. 1444-1454, 2019
• Q. Li, P. M. Ness, A. Ragni, M.J.F. Gales (2019)
  Bi-directional lattice recurrent neural networks for confidence estimation
  ICASSP 2019
• Y. Wang, J.H.M. Wong, M.J.F.Gales, K.M. Knill, A. Ragni (2018)
  Sequence Teacher-Student Training of Acoustic Models for Automatic Free Speaking Language Assessment
  IEEE SLT Workshop 2018
• A. Ragni, Q. Li, M.J.F. Gales, Y. Wang (2018)
  Confidence Estimation and Deletion Prediction Using Bidirectional Recurrent Neural Networks
  IEEE SLT Workshop 2018
• Y. Wang, C. Zhang, M. J. F. Gales, P. C. Woodland (2018)
  Speaker Adaptation and Adaptive Training for Jointly Optimised Tandem Systems
  INTERSPEECH 2018
• Y. Wang, X. Chen, M. J. F. Gales, A. Ragni and J. H. M. Wong (2018)
  Phonetic and graphemic systems for multi-genre broadcast trancription
  ICASSP 2018
• X. Chen, X.Liu, A. Ragni, Y. Wang, M.J.F. Gales (2017)
  Future Word Contexts in Neural Network Language Models
  IEEE ASRU Workshop 2017
• X. Chen, A. Ragni, X. Liu, M.J.F. Gales (2017)
  Investigating Bidirectional Recurrent Neural Network Language Models for Speech Recognition
  INTERSPEECH 2017

• Q. Dou, X. Wu, M. Wan, Y. Lu and M J.F. Gales (2021)
  Deliberation-Based Multi-Pass Speech Synthesis
  Interspeech 2021

• Vyas Raina, M. Gales (2022)
  Gender Bias and Universal Substitution Adversarial Attacks on Grammatical Error Correction Systems for Automated Assessment
  UK Speech 2022 (Abstract)
• Vyas Raina, M.J.F. Gales (2022)
  Residue-Based Natural Language Adversarial Attack Detection
  NAACL 2022
• X. Wei, M.Gales, K.Knill (2020)
  Analysing Bias in Spoken Language Assessment using Concept Activation Vectors
  ICASSP 2021
• Vyas Raina, M.J.F. Gales, K.M. Knill (2020)
  Universal Adversarial Attacks On Spoken Language Assessment Systems
  INTERSPEECH 2020
• L.Wang, Y. Wang, M.J.F. Gales (2019)
  Non-native Speaker Verification for Spoken Language Assessment
  arXiv 2019

• Vatsal Raina, M. Gales (2022)
  Multiple-Choice Question Generation: Towards an Automated Assessment Framework
  arXiv 2022
• Vatsal Raina, M. Gales (2022)
  Answer Uncertainty and Unanswerability in Multiple-choice Machine Reading Comprehension
  ACL Findings 2022
• Vatsal Raina, M.J.F. Gales (2021)
  An Initial Investigation of Non-Native Spoken Question-Answering
  arXiv 2021
• Vatsal Raina, M.J.F. Gales, K. Knill (2020)
  Complementary Systems for Off-topic Spoken Response Detection
  BEA 2020 Workshop
• A. Malinin, K. M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales (2017)
  A hierarchical attention based model for off-topic spontaneous spoken response detection
  IEEE ASRU Workshop 2017
• A. Malinin, K.M. Knill, A. Ragni, Y. Wang, M.J.F. Gales (2017)
  An attention based model for off-topic spontaneous spoken response detection: An Initial Study
  SLaTE Workshop 2017 (Best Paper Shortlist)
• A. Malinin, R.C. van Dalen, Y. Wang, M.J.F. Gales, K.M. Knill (2016)
  Off-topic Response Detection for Spontaneous Spoken English Assessment
  ACL 2016

Feedback (Pronunciation, Grammar, Functional Competency)

• P. Manakul, M. Gales (2022)
  Podcast Summary Assessment: A Resource for Evaluating Summary Assessment Methods
  arXiv 2022
• Y. Lu, S. Bannò, M.J.F. Gales (2022)
  On Assessing and Developing Spoken 'Grammatical Error Correction' Systems
  BEA Workshop 2022
• P. Manakul, M.J.F. Gales (2021)
  Sparsity and Sentence Structure in Encoder-Decoder Attention of Summarization Systems
  EMNLP 2021
• P. Manakul, M.J.F. Gales (2021)
  Long-Span Dependencies in Transformer-based Summarization Systems
  ACL 2021
• Y. Lu, Y.Wang, M.J.F. Gales (2021)
  Efficient Use of End-to-end Data in Spoken Language Processing
  ICASSP 2021
• Y. Fathullah, M.J.F. Gales and A. Malinin (2021)
  Ensemble Distillation Approaches for Grammatical Error Correction
  ICASSP 2021
• P. Manakul, M.J.F. Gales (2020)
  CUED_SPEECH at TREC 2020 Podcast Summarisation Track
  TREC, 2020
• A. Caines, C. Bentz, K. Knill, M. Rei and P. Buttery(2020)
  Grammatical error detection in transcriptions of spoken English
  COLING 2020
• K. Kyriakopoulos, K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales (2020)
  Automatic detection of accent and lexical pronunciation errors in spontaneous non native English speech
  INTERSPEECH 2020
• P. Manakul, M.J.F. Gales, L. Wang (2020)
  Abstractive Spoken Document Summarization using Hierarchical Model with Multi-stage Attention Diversity Optimization
  INTERSPEECH 2020 (Best Student Paper Award Shortlist)
• Y. Lu, M.J.F. Gales, Y. Wang (2020)
  Spoken Language 'Grammatical Error Correction'
  INTERSPEECH 2020
• K. Kyriakopoulos, K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales (2019)
  A deep learning approach to automatic characterisation of rhythm in non-native English speech
  Interspeech 2019
• Y. Lu, K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales, P. Manakul, L.Wang, Y. Wang (2019)
  Impact of ASR Performance on Spoken Grammatical Error Detection
  Interspeech 2019
• Y. Lu, K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales, P. Manakul, Y. Wang (2019)
  Disfluency Detection for Spoken Learner English
  SLaTE 2019
• K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales, P. Manakul, A.P. Caines (2019)
  Automatic grammatical error detection of non-native spoken learner English
  ICASSP 2019
• K. Kyriakopoulos, K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales (2018)
  A deep learning approach to assessing non-native pronunciation of English using phone distances
  INTERSPEECH 2018
• K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales, K. Kyriakopoulos, A. Malinin, A. Ragni, Y. Wang, A.P. Caines (2018)
  Impact of ASR Performance on Free Speaking Language Assessment
  INTERSPEECH 2018
• K. Kyriakopoulos, K.M. Knill, M.J.F. Gales (2017)
  Automatic characterisation of the pronunciation of non-native English speakers using phone distance features
  SLaTE Workshop 2017

• Y.Fathullah and M.J.F. Gales (2022)
  Self-Distribution Distillation: Efficient Uncertainty Estimation
  38th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence UAI 2022
• M. Ryabinin, A. Malinin and M.J.F. Gales (2021)
  Scaling Ensemble Distribution Distillation to Many Classes with Proxy Targets
  arXiv 2021 (accepted NeurIPS 2021)
• A. Malinin, N. Band, G. Chesnokov, Y. Gal, M.J.F. Gales, A. Noskov, A. Ploskonosov, L. Prokhorenkova, I. Provilkov, Vatsal Raina, Vyas Raina, M. Shmatova, P. Tigas and B. Yangel (2021)
  Shifts: A Dataset of Real Distributional Shift Across Multiple Large-Scale Tasks
  arXiv 2021 (accepted NeurIPS 2021 Datasets and Benchmarks Track)
• X. Wu and M.J.F. Gales (2021)
  Should Ensemble Members be Calibrated?
  arXiv 2021
• A. Malinin, S. Chervontsev, I. Provilkov and M.J.F. Gales (2020)
  Regression Prior Networks
  arXiv 2020
• A. Malinin and M.J.F. Gales (2021)
  Uncertainty in Structured Prediction
  ICLR 2021
• A. Malinin, Bruno Mlodeniec and M.J.F. Gales (2020)
  Ensemble Distribution Distillation
  ICLR 2020
• A. Malinin and M.J.F. Gales (2019)
  Reverse KL-Divergence Training of Prior Networks: Improved Uncertainty and Adversarial Robustness
  NeuRIPS 2019 (arXiv Preprint 2019)
• A. Malinin, M.J.F. Gales (2018)
  Predictive Uncertainty Estimation via Prior Networks
  NeuRIPS 2018 (arXiv Preprint 2018)
• Nilesh Tripuraneni, Shixiang Gu, Hong Ge, Zoubin Ghahramani (2015)
  Particle Gibbs for Infinite Hidden Markov Models
  Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2015.
• Shixiang Gu, Zoubin Ghahramani, Richard E. Turner (2015)
  Neural Adaptive Sequential Monte Carlo
  Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2015.