1. A method of performing speech recognition, the method comprising: receiving an utterance of input speech; creating a near miss list of possible word entries for the utterance, each word entry including an associated value of probability that the utterance corresponds to the word entry; comparing the near-miss list with a stored near-miss confidence template in a collection, wherein each near-miss confidence template in the collection comprises a list of word entries and each word entry in each list includes an associated value; and performing confidence measure in a speech recognition system based on the comparison of the values in the near-miss list of possible word entries with the values of at least one of the near-miss confidence templates in the collection.