One Whisper to Grade Them All
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Abstract (arXiv)
We present an efficient end-to-end approach for holistic Automatic Speaking Assessment (ASA) of multi-part second-language tests, developed for the 2025 Speak & Improve Challenge. Our system's main novelty is the ability to process all four spoken responses with a single Whisper-small encoder, combine all information via a lightweight aggregator, and predict the final score. This architecture removes the need for transcription and per-part models, cuts inference time, and makes ASA practical for large-scale Computer-Assisted Language Learning systems. Our system achieved a Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 0.384, outperforming the text-based baseline (0.44) while using at most 168M parameters (about 70% of Whisper-small). Furthermore, we propose a data sampling strategy, allowing the model to train on only 44.8% of the speakers in the corpus and still reach 0.383 RMSE, demonstrating improved performance on imbalanced classes and strong data efficiency.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 6 of its 24 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Jul 2025.
Builds on
6 of 24 references.
References · 6
- 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
- 2022Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervisioncited by 4,057
- 2017Mixed Precision Trainingcited by 1,156
- 2022Proficiency assessment of L2 spoken English using wav2vec 2.0cited by 20
- 2024Speak & Improve Corpus 2025: an L2 English Speech Corpus for Language Assessment and Feedbackcited by 14
- 2024Speak & Improve Challenge 2025: Tasks and Baseline Systemscited by 13
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
2 papers.