You should write a lab report about this speech recognition practical. Keep it concise and to the point, but make sure you detail your findings using HTK, including both the theory and how it is implemented in practice. You should also report your experimental work, clearly explaining your experimental design and your results. Use tables and graphs to present the results. Do not cut and paste Terminal output!
What exactly is meant by “lab report”?
It is not a discursive essay. It is not merely documentation of commands that you ran and what output you got. It is a factual report of what you did in the lab that demonstrates what you learnt and how you can relate that to the theory from lectures. You will get marks for:
- completing all parts of the practical, and demonstrating this in the report
- a clear demonstration that you understand what each HTK tool used does, and that you can link that to the underlying theory
- clear and concise writing, and effective use of diagrams, tables and graphs
How much background material should there be?
Do not spend too long simply restating material from lectures or textbooks without telling the reader why you are doing this. Do provide enough background to demonstrate your understanding of the theory, and to support your explanations of how HTK works and your experiments. Use specific and carefully chosen citations. Cite textbooks and papers. You will get more marks if you cite better and more varied sources (e.g., going beyond the essential course readings). If you only cite from the main textbook, this will not get you top marks. Avoid citing lecture slides or videos, unless you really cannot find any other source (which is unlikely). Make sure everything you cite is correctly listed in the bibliography.
Writing style
The writing style of the report should be similar to that of a journal paper. Don’t list every command you typed! You do not need to include your shell scripts. Use diagrams to illustrate your report, and tables and/or graphs to summarise your results. Do not include any verbatim output copied from the Terminal: you will not receive any marks for this.
Additional tips
You do not need to list the individual speakers in each of your data sets, but do carefully describe the data (e.g., “20 male native speakers of Scottish English using laptop microphones”). You might use tables to present this in a compact form, and perhaps gives short names or acronyms to each set, such as “20-male-SC-laptop”.