Speaker normalization in a speech recognition can significantly
improve speech recognition accuracy. One such method, vocal tract
length normalization (VTLN), is especially useful when the system
has to work reliably for males, females and children. It is just
this situation with our phonological awareness teaching system,
the "SpeechMaster", which aims at real-time phoneme recognition
and feedback. As most VTLN algorithms work off-line, this poses
the additional problem of real-time operation. This paper examines
how a well-known off-line algorithm can be approximated on-line
by machine learning regression techniques. We conclude that, by
employing a real-time estimation of VTLN parameters, the recognition
error can be reduced by some 14-24 %.