A software development method and apparatus is provided for the simultaneous creation of software applications that operate on a variety of client devices and include text-to-speech and speech recognition capabilities. A software development system and related method use a graphical user interface that provides a software developer with an intuitive drag and drop technique for building software applications. program elements, accessible with the drag and drop technique, include corresponding markup code that is adapted to operate on the plurality of different client devices. The software developer can generate a natural language grammar by providing typical or example spoken responses. The grammar is automatically enhanced to increase the number of recognizable words or phrases. The example responses provided by the software developer are further used to automatically build application-specific help. At application runtime, a help interface can be triggered to present these illustrative spoken prompts to guide the end user in responding.
