19. The system of claim 18 wherein the segmentation hardware component comprises: means for identifying silence regions separating speech segments within the initial utterance; means for extracting statistical characteristics of the silence regions using an endpoint detection process; means for computing a zero-crossing rate threshold for the silence regions means for computing an energy threshold for the speech segments; means for determining if the length of a speech segment is less than a defined length threshold; and means for saving a speech segment as a reference pattern if its length is less than the defined length threshold, or dividing the speech segment into two or more sub-segments if its length is greater than the defined length threshold.
19. The system of claim 18 wherein the segmentation hardware component comprises: means for identifying silence regions separating speech segments within the initial utterance; means for extracting statistical characteristics of the silence regions using an endpoint detection process; means for computing a zero-crossing rate threshold for the silence regions means for computing an energy threshold for the speech segments; means for determining if the length of a speech segment is less than a defined length threshold; and means for saving a speech segment as a reference pattern if its length is less than the defined length threshold, or dividing the speech segment into two or more sub-segments if its length is greater than the defined length threshold. 20. The system of claim 19 wherein the initial utterance and correction utterance are each defined by a set of feature parameters.