This paper describes the treatment of consonants within SPELL, a computer-aided system for teaching pronunciation to foreign language learners. The system concentrates on those consonant features which have the greatest potential to disrupt the speakers' intelligibility. Errors by learners of English, French and Italian have been identified and ranked in terms of their effects on intelligibility. Consonant errors selected for teaching are analysed with a Hidden Markov Model segmenter. The design of suitable diagnostic and corrective feedback to students is currently being investigated.
Keywords: Pronunciation Training, Phonetics, Consonant, Teaching Aids, Speech Technology