12. A computer-implemented system for assessing speech pronunciation, comprising: a processor; a non-transitory computer-readable memory comprising instructions for causing the processor to perform steps including: receiving speech for analysis via a computer-readable storage medium; performing automatic speech recognition on speech using a processor to generate word hypotheses for the speech, the word hypotheses identifying a set words recognized by an automated speech recognizer in the speech using one or more data processors; performing time alignment between the speech and the word hypotheses using the automatic speech recognizer to associate the word hypotheses with corresponding sounds of the speech; calculating statistics regarding individual words and phonemes of the word hypotheses using the processor based on said alignment; calculating a plurality of features for use in assessing pronunciation of the speech based on the statistics using the processor; and calculating an assessment score based on one or more of the calculated features.
20. The system of claim 12 , wherein one or more of the features are utilized with related stress, intonation, vocabulary, or grammar to generate the assessment score indicating communicative competence or other construct of speaking proficiency that includes pronunciation proficiency.