Suprasegmentals affecting fluency levels in elementary students’ read-speech: Focusing on pause numbers and pause duration, speech rate, and pitch range

Abstract

The purpose of this study was two-fold: 1) to rate the unrated Korean elementary students read-speech (from K-SEC) 2) which and to what extend suprasegmentals—pause numbers and duration, speed rate, and pitch range—would affect the degrees of fluency. To do, 5 raters evaluated 3069 read-speech data into 5 proficiency levels and 500 data were randomly selected for analyzing pause numbers and duration, speed rate, and pitch rage with Praat. The result showed the speech rate is the most influential factor. It means the most fluent readers (5 levels) tend to have the highest speech rate. The next factor is pause duration; the more fluent, the less pause duration one has. Also, statistical regression analysis shows pause numbers and pitch range are not statistically meaningful factors to rate the fluency levels in Korean elementary students read-speech. At the end of this study, some suggestions of the pronunciation drills for Korean elementary students were discussed based on the result of the study. The purpose of this study was two-fold: 1) to rate the unrated Korean elementary students read-speech (from K-SEC) 2) which and to what extend suprasegmentals—pause numbers and duration, speed rate, and pitch range—would affect the degrees of fluency. To do, 5 raters evaluated 3069 read-speech data into 5 proficiency levels and 500 data were randomly selected for analyzing pause numbers and duration, speed rate, and pitch rage with Praat. The result showed the speech rate is the most influential factor. It means the most fluent readers (5 levels) tend to have the highest speech rate. The next factor is pause duration; the more fluent, the less pause duration one has. Also, statistical regression analysis shows pause numbers and pitch range are not statistically meaningful factors to rate the fluency levels in Korean elementary students read-speech. At the end of this study, some suggestions of the pronunciation drills for Korean elementary students were discussed based on the result of the study.