Improving Speech Recognition by Enhancing Accent Discrimination

With globalization, English has become an increasingly important global lingua franca. However, the diversity of English accents-shaped by native languages, regions, and cultures-presents significant challenges for speech recognition systems. This paper proposes a method to enhance the recognition of accented English by improving accent discrimination. We introduce a technique that integrates accent classification into the speech recognition model, allowing for better identification of various accents. Our results demonstrate that this approach reduces error rates and provides a detailed analysis of accent features across the model's layers, thereby improving the recognition of diverse accents.