July 29, 2009

Carnegie Speech, the global provider of software for assessing and teaching spoken-language to non-native speakers, today announced a strategic partnership and technology development agreement with In-Q-Tel, the independent strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technology solutions to support the mission of the CIA and the broader U.S. Intelligence Community.

Carnegie Speech's exclusive global license to speech recognition and artificial intelligence technologies from Carnegie Mellon University enables cost-effective, scalable and personalized spoken-language assessment and training that maximizes language learning effectiveness while minimizing training time.

"Through our relationship with In-Q-Tel, government agencies will have access to software that enables rapid learning and understanding of words and phrases," says Angela Kennedy, Carnegie Speech President & CEO. "Our language tutorials have improved spoken-language proficiency in a variety of industry sectors in countries around the world. We are confident that our software, with its pinpoint speech evaluation, targeted remediation, and personalized curriculum, will deliver similar benefits to U.S. government agencies."

Carnegie Speech software uses a combination of speech recognition and proprietary pinpointing technology that models a user's speaking characteristics to analyze speech proficiency and develop a personalized spoken-language training curriculum for each student. Carnegie Speech's technology compares each student's spoken language against a composite statistical model of native speakers' speech to pinpoint errors and give detailed and effective remediation instruction.

"There is high demand for Carnegie Speech's spoken language training software," said Troy M. Pearsall, Executive Vice President of Architecture and Engineering at In-Q-Tel. "Our strategic partnership with Carnegie Speech will provide technology capabilities that can enhance the government's efforts to quickly and accurately assess and teach spoken-language to non-native speakers."Carnegie Speech's spoken language training products operate on a variety of technical platforms, including Windows Desktop, LAN, Web and IVR. The company's product line includes:

• Carnegie Speech Assessment -- evaluates speech by analyzing student variance from native speakers' phonemes, prosody, fluency, grammar and vocabulary.

• NativeAccen -- precisely pinpoints where speech errors are made and develops personalized training curricula in English pronunciation, pace and pausing, word stress, pitch, intonation, duration, fluency, and grammar.

• SpeakIraqi-Phrasal teaches novice students to speak key Iraqi words and phrases intelligibly. SpeakIraqi Advanced teachers Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) speakers to speak Iraqi Arabic in a fluent manner.

• SpeakRussian -- improves spoken-Russian among English speakers with Advanced Beginner or Intermediate spoken-Russian skills.

• SpeakFarsi --trains English speakers in Farsi

• ClimbLevel4 -- is a web-based spoken English training solution for pilots and air traffic controllers seeking to meet International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) spoken-English standards.

About Carnegie Speech

‍Carnegie Speech is the premier developer and provider of software for assessing and teaching spoken language skills. Using state-of-the-art speech recognition and artificial intelligence technologies licensed from Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Speech provides spoken language instruction to its global clientele in the Corporate, Government, Aviation, Education and Health Care markets. For additional information, visit www.carnegiespeech.com.