1. A computerized method of detecting a target word in a speech signal, the method comprising: providing a speech recognition engine and a previously constructed phoneme model; inputting the speech signal into the speech recognition engine; based on the phoneme model, indexing the input speech signal, thereby storing a time-ordered list representing n-best phoneme candidates of the input speech signal and phonemes in a plurality of phoneme frames, wherein n is an integer between two and eight; transcribing the target word into a transcription of target phonemes; searching through said time-ordered list of n-best phoneme candidates for a locus of said target phonemes; while said searching, scoring based on the ranking of the phoneme candidates among the n-best phoneme candidates and based on the number of said target phonemes found, thereby producing a composite score of the probability of an occurrence of the target word; when said composite score is higher than a threshold, outputting start and finish times bounding said locus; inputting said start and finish times into an algorithm adapted for sequence alignment based on dynamic programming; and using said algorithm aligning a first sequence with a second sequence, wherein said first sequence is a portion of said phoneme frames, wherein said portion is based on said start and finish times and wherein said second sequence is said target phonemes.