Since 1989, the Spoken Language Systems group has developed an array of applications that allow users to interact with computers using natural spoken language. A recent project of interest is to develop an interactive conversational system to assist students in mastering a foreign language. The Spoken Language Learning System (SLLS), the first such system developed in SLS, has many impressive capabilities and shows great potential to be used as a model for language learning. This thesis further develops and expands on SLLS towards the goal of a more sophisticated conversational system. We make extensive use of Genesis, a language generation tool, to complete a variety of natural language generation and translation tasks. We aim to generate natural, well-formed, grammatically correct sentences and produce high quality synthesized waveforms for language students to emulate. We hope to develop a system that will engage the user in a natural and realistic way, and our goal is to mimic human-to-human conversant interactions as closely as possible.
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