English Conversation Research Articles

Investigating the Impacts of Peer Conversations on Students' Speaking Ability at Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry and Trade

The facts that teachers asked some questions in English speaking classes, and students knew the answers but didn’t respond because they didn’t know how to express their opinions and experiences in English and students kept discussing some topics together in Vietnamese made the author concerned about major English students’ speaking skills. The purpose of this study is to find out how students perceive about speaking English with peers and their attitudes towards this method. This research employed forty English majors from integrated-skill-2 classes at Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry and Trade (HUIT). A closed-ended questionnaire and Likert scale were used to gather the data, and a quantitative research method was used to analyze it. Speaking practice daily with peers is a highly useful approach to improving speaking skills, according to the data gathered. The study also indicates that students have positive attitudes toward English conversation practice. Additionally, peer interaction gives students confidence and meets their need to speak in front of an audience. Besides, the study demonstrates that through peer conversations, students’ vocabulary increases significantly, and they find it much easier to articulate their thoughts and feelings more effectively.

Analysing the Easing Language in Business English General Language Talks under the Perspective of Relationship Management Theory

With the rapid development of globalisation, business communication has become more and more frequent in the international arena. In business English conversation, moderating language plays an important role as a communication strategy. Based on the perspective of relationship management theory, this paper explores the functions and strategies of de-escalation in business English talks. The results of the study show that de-escalation helps to establish and maintain good business relationships in business scenarios, and also positively affects the outcome of the talks. Finally, the paper puts forward some suggestions for the use of moderated language in business English talks to help business people communicate better across cultures.

Need Analysis of English Conversation for Hawkers in Mandalika Special Economic Zone, West Nusa Tenggara

The research aimed to investigate the English proficiency level, what English conversation materials are needed, and what obstacles hawkers face in Mandalika Special Economy Zone when communicating with foreign tourists. This study utilizes a qualitative research paradigm with a descriptive approach; this study paints a comprehensive picture of the language abilities of Mandalika's hawkers, the materials of English conversation needed by hawkers, and the hawkers' obstacles when communicating with foreign tourists. Methods of collecting data consist of interviews, documentation, and observation. Some steps to analyze the data collected are data condensation, data display, verification, concluding, and data validity. Findings reveal a diverse spectrum of English proficiency levels among hawkers, ranging in primary and intermediate proficiency levels. Specifically, from 20 hawkers as research subjects, 13 hawkers exhibit a basic level of proficiency, while seven hawkers demonstrate intermediate-level skills. The assessment of English proficiency level is based on three crucial aspects that the hawkers always use namely understanding of English communication, non-verbal communication strategies employed by the hawkers, and vocabulary usage. These materials vary depending on the type of goods hawkers sell, highlighting the importance of tailored language resources. This research found 4 (four) crucial materials or topics to be mastered when communicating with foreign tourists: greetings and welcoming, describing specialties, providing personal/additional information, and discussing prices and payment. Additionally, the research uncovers obstacles faced by hawkers in their communication with foreign tourists. These challenges encompass hawkers' difficulty in explaining products, the low English proficiency of most Hawkers, and also language and vocabulary constraints of hawkers.

Classification patterns in conversational English fricatives: Between- and within- speaker analyses

This study examines between- and within- speaker patterns in random forest classification models for fricatives in conversational English. Prior investigations on the categorization of fricatives have mostly focused on group-level analyses and careful speech. We use a corpus of sociolinguistic interview speech from Western Canadian English, which represents a more casual speech style, and we compare group-level results to the findings of classification models on individual speakers’ productions. The models use 23 different spectral, temporal, and amplitudinal measures to predict phonetic labels of the fricatives. Our results reveal that certain top-ranked predictors at the group level (e.g., spectral peak frequency, segment duration) are also important for fricative classification in the individual models. Other measures (e.g., midpoint kurtosis, RMS) show substantial variability in their relative prominence and play greater roles in individual- versus group-level modeling. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of individual variation in connected speech and what the findings may imply about models of production and perception.

Diabetes care in the pandemic era in the Midwestern USA: a semi-structured interview study of the patient perspective

ObjectivesTo understand patients’ experiences with diabetes care during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an emphasis on rural, medically underserved, and/or minoritised racial and ethnic groups in the Midwestern USA.DesignCommunity-engaged, semi-structured interviews...

Analysis of forced aligner performance on L2 English speech

There is growing interest in how speech technologies perform on L2 speech. Largely omitted from this discussion are tools used in the early data processing steps, such as forced aligners, that can introduce errors and biases. This study adds to the conversation and tests how well a model pre-trained for the alignment of L1 American English speech performs on L2 English speech. We test and discuss the impact of language variety, demographic factors, and segment type on the performance of the forced aligner. We also examine systematic errors encountered.Forty-five speakers representing nine L2 varieties were selected from the Speech Accent Archive and force aligned using the Montreal Forced Aligner. The phoneme-level boundary placements were manually corrected in order to assess differences between the automatic and manual alignments. Results show marked variation in the performance across language groups and segment types for the two metrics used to assess accuracy: Onset Boundary Displacement, a distance metric between the automatic and manual boundary placements, and Overlap Rate, which indicates to what extent the automatically aligned segment overlaps with the manually aligned segment. The highest accuracy on both measures was obtained for German and French, and lowest accuracy for Russian. The aligner's performance on all varieties was comparable to that on conversational American English and non-standard varieties of English. Furthermore, the percentage of boundary placements within 10 and 20 ms of the corrected boundary was similar to that observed between transcribers. Apart from errors due to variety mismatch, most issues encountered in the alignment were due to issues not exclusive to L2 speech such as inaccurate orthographic transcriptions, hesitations, specific voice qualities, and background noise.The results of this study can inform the use of automatic aligners on L2 English speech and provide a baseline of potential errors and information to help the development of more robust alignment tools for further development of automatic systems using L2 English.

Unleashing the Power of Quizizz Paper Mode to Refine Senior High School Students' Islamic Vocabulary Mastery

The present study is purposed to refine the mastery of Islamic vocabulary of 40 students in the English Conversation Club at MAN Kota Blitar through the implementation of Quizizz paper mode. Utilizing a classroom action research design, the study followed structured procedures, encompassing planning, acting, observing, evaluating, and reflecting. The finding revealed a substantial improvement in students' Islamic vocabulary proficiency, with average scores increasing from 60.65 to 85.00 after one cycle of action. The positive outcome underscores the efficacy of Quizizz paper mode as a valuable tool in language learning. As a recommendation, English teachers are encouraged to incorporate interactive platforms like Quizizz paper mode to enrich vocabulary learning outcomes and foster an engaging and effective learning environment that caters to the diverse needs of students. This study contributes insights into the practical implementation of technology-enhanced language instruction, emphasizing its potential to facilitate English language skills or sub-skills.

The Effect of Teacher’s Corrective Feedback Through Online Conferencing on Elementary Students’ English-Speaking Confidence – A Secondary Publication

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of teacher’s corrective feedback through online conferencingon elementary students‘ English-speaking confidence. This study was conducted for 4 months from August to DecemberThere were 6 participants, aged 8 to 13 enrolled in a private education institute where they attended English classesusing mobile devices. During this case study, the students were asked to use English, the learners’ target language, wheninteracting with their teacher. When learners struggled to understand the teacher’s English instructions, the teacher guidedthem in Korean. All the classes were video-recorded and transcribed by the teacher. Data were analyzed to examine theprogress of participants’ voluntary English production stimulated by having conversational interactions with the teacher.The findings were as follows. Initially, participants’ anxiety levels were high in the beginning. Subsequently, they wereable to speak English words, give their opinions in English, and join the conversation in English with the teacher. Finally,feedback from the teacher through conversational interactions helped learners understand how to speak in English betterand build up confidence. As a result, it is necessary to interact with the teachers and peers using learners’ target language toimprove English communication skills.

On Cataphora in English Conversations From the Perspective of Relevance Theory

On Cataphora in English Conversations From the Perspective of Relevance Theory

Acoustic and language-specific sources for phonemic abstraction from speech

Spoken language comprehension requires abstraction of linguistic information from speech, but the interaction between auditory and linguistic processing of speech remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate the nature of this abstraction using neural responses recorded intracranially while participants listened to conversational English speech. Capitalizing on multiple, language-specific patterns where phonological and acoustic information diverge, we demonstrate the causal efficacy of the phoneme as a unit of analysis and dissociate the unique contributions of phonemic and spectrographic information to neural responses. Quantitive higher-order response models also reveal that unique contributions of phonological information are carried in the covariance structure of the stimulus-response relationship. This suggests that linguistic abstraction is shaped by neurobiological mechanisms that involve integration across multiple spectro-temporal features and prior phonological information. These results link speech acoustics to phonology and morphosyntax, substantiating predictions about abstractness in linguistic theory and providing evidence for the acoustic features that support that abstraction.

Komunikasi Fatik pada Film Good Doctor dalam Kaitannya dengan Tachiba

Phatic Communication or Phatic Communion has started to be widely practiced recently with several theories and forms, especially in relation to Indonesian and English, but in Japanese, it is very limited. Researchers here want to conduct research on phatic communication in relation to the Japanese language. In Japanese, a similar concept to phatic communication has existed for a long time, it is even said that the Japanese language is hyperphatic or a society that is very strong in applying the concept of phatic communication in its daily life, although with a different name, shakou jirei (社交辞令). This research discusses phatic sentences in Japanese conversation found in the film Good Doctor which will be examined regarding their function and relationship in relation to tachiba or the relationship between the speaker and the interlocutor in a conversational situation which according to Haugh and Obana (2016) is divided into 2 relevant classification (1) chi’i 地位(social status) and (2) yakuwari 役割 (role, responsibility). The function of phatic sentences in Japanese was classified according to Jumanto (2014) with 12 functions in English conversation, while in this study the researchers examined phatic sentences that appeared in Japanese conversation in relation to the concept of tachiba in Japanese society. The research regarding phatic communication in Japanese is still very limited, even though it is very often found in the daily conversation, thus considered very interesting to research, especially in relation to the social values that very commonly known in Japanese society. This research is a qualitative descriptive study using the free-involved listening method and note-taking method to analyze the fatic expression in relation to the concept of tachiba in Japanese society.

Insurance Discourse Analysis: Identifying Register Variables and Generic Stages in English Cross-border Complaint Calls

Interpersonal meaning-making resources are construed by customer service representatives (CSRs) and customers in call center telephone conversations. The purpose of the present study is to explore the contextual features—specifically, register variables and generic stages—that American customers and Filipino CSRs employ to create meaning potentials in cross-border insurance calls. The results of this study reveal that register variables, specific generic stages, and various lexicogrammatical choices play significant roles in call center negotiation. The theoretical framework used in this research is Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which provides valuable insights into the study of text at the register level, including field, mode, and tenor, as well as semantically, in terms of metafunctions. A data set of over 2000 English conversations from an insurance call center in the Philippines was examined, and 20 longer complaint calls involving complex negotiations were carefully selected for transcription. These calls amounted to approximately four hours of talk, resulting in a total of 39,440 words, and the findings highlight the register variables and common generic stages observed in the analyzed calls. It is observed that customers frequently use the recount strategy in call center encounters. Recounts are typically used by the customer in the Objection stage and are associated with delayed refusal in generic stages, contributing to the formation of experiential meanings. It is hoped that the present study provides insights into call center discourse in the insurance industry by identifying the register and generic features of cross-border complaint calls.

Investigating Vocational High School Instructors' Views on Mobile Learning in the "Tourism English Conversation" Course

This research delved into the perspectives of English teachers in vocational high schools towards mobile learning (m-learning) in the "Tourism English Conversation" course. It involved interviews with eleven teachers from public vocational high schools in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. These interviews explored various facets of m-learning, such as teachers' knowledge of mobile devices and apps, the widespread use of the Internet and mobile devices, instructional materials, and its impact on students' learning duration and concentration. The study focused on three aspects of mobile learning: its acceptance, teachers' readiness to adopt it, and the challenges they face in shifting from traditional to mobile teaching methods. Findings revealed a positive reception towards m-learning, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when traditional classroom teaching was impossible. Nonetheless, the effective implementation of m-learning was influenced by teachers' familiarity with the technology, student motivation, the availability of relevant instructional materials, and the pressures associated with teaching in this new format.

English Phonological Operations: A Study of Rule Interactions

This study focuses on English phonological operations with emphasis on rule interaction, rule ordering, bleeding, and feeding. It is a study in rule-governed phonological description. The method adopted for analysis is the descriptive survey approach. The theoretical framework adopted is Noam Chomsky’s generative phonology. The finding is that phonological descriptive generalization is best done by rules rather than by phonemic analysis. This study recommends that the study of phonetics and phonology in Nigerian universities should focus more on practical exposure using laboratory instruments; laboratory exercises in conversational English using relevant phonological materials (tapes, records, video films, among others.), distinctive features, and rule writing approach for the advanced students are recommended.

Ирония и контраст как способы выявления специфики национального характера в романе Д. Сатпаева и Е. Жумагулова «Легенда о “NOMENCLATURA”»

This study is the first to present a cross-cultural comparison of the specifics of the Kazakh and English national characters through comic perception. Kindness, observance of national traditions, humor, a certain strictness in behavior are integral qualities in the character of both the Kazakhs and Englishmen. The novel under study shows the modern life of the nomenklatura workers of Kazakhstan and a search for the ancient treatise NOMENCLATURA by the British, both depicted satirically in terms of the national and cultural specifics. The study employs the comparative method to analyze irony, the ironic, and the laughter contrast in the novel. These techniques highlight negative qualities such as greed, thirst for profit obtained through every possible means, the desire to deceive as an inherent part in the nature of the key characters – modern ministry workers such as B. Sumelekov, his uncle B. Arakbaev, B. Piyazov, and others. As to the British – Mr. Black and Mr. White – they strive to achieve results one way or another: experiencing ‘survival’ in an unfamiliar, exotic and deserted area (evening steppe), a trip to Almaty by train and, finally, a flight to Astana. And yet, despite all their adventures, they always try to save face, which allows the authors to make play with the stereotypes that appear among the British. The paper shows that the techniques of irony and contrast were used to create the work in a satirical-comic manner, which, in turn, demonstrates the difference between the national traditions of the Kazakhs and the British. The Kazakh national character is represented by an old shepherd who knows how to hold philosophical conversations in English, while the English are shown as the descendants of the valiant Templars. However, there is something in common between the former and the latter – this is the desire to adhere to the traditions of their people, a penchant for humor, joking at oneself, and tolerance.

Voices of the Linguistically Curious: English Majors' Language Learning Journey

This inquiry applied the principles of phenomenology to capture the English majors’ lived experiences in English language learning. Six BSED English students (English majors) enrolled during the school year 2020-2021 were selected as the study’s participants. An in-depth and semi-structured interview with open-ended questions was then conducted to collect data. Due to the pandemic restrictions, the interviews were performed via Zoom Meetings instead of face-to-face. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. For data analysis, Colaizzi’s method was utilized wherein significant statements (SS) were extracted from the transcriptions, and formulated meanings (FMs) were created based on the SS. The SS and FMs were then used to identify one emergent theme “Eclectic Influences to Entry,” which consists of the following six subthemes: 1) Positive Family Clout; 2) Noteworthy Childhood Exposure; 3) Meritorious Church Involvement; 4) Favorable Encounters with Learning Materials; 5) Interesting Personal Reasons; and 6) Cogent Teacher Forces. The findings of the study revealed that the English majors had intrinsic motivation to learn the English language and held a positive attitude towards the language, the speakers of the language, and the learning process itself. Moreover, factors such as family involvement, teacher support, technology and media, and exposure to native speakers played a significant role in the English majors’ passion for learning. The study concluded that strong family support, reading books, watching online videos and television, and using English in daily conversations had a positive impact on the English majors' competency in the language.

Construction and Evaluation of a Machine Learning-Based Conversation Model for English Spoken Tourism Conversation

Abstract The development of language macromodeling has led to the widespread adoption of spoken English conversation systems in various industries. Similarly, it has had an impact on the tourism industry, where the involvement of machine learning has taken a big step forward. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of machine learning methods in spoken dialog systems to construct a dialog model that is suitable for the tourism industry. Speech, map image, and tourism information text data are collected first, which form the database of the dialog model through processing, storage, and application. A bag-of-words model and word vectors represent the text, while speech activity and an English conversation system construct the speech and intention recognition model. On the test set, the best speech recognition rate using double-threshold endpoint detection is up to 98.73%, and the corresponding sentence recognition rate is also up to 93.67%. This paper’s model achieves the highest intention recognition accuracy, scoring 0.943 and 0.955 on the CCKS2018 and SMP2018 datasets, respectively. This paper proposes a machine-learning conversation model that provides technical support for conversational AI development in the tourism industry.

The Implementation of English Conversation Program in Elementary School at Rural Area

This article discusses how to participate in Teaching campus programs and implementing English conversation programs in rural areas. Because English is one of the subjects considered difficult by elementary school students, especially in rural areas, teachers need to be active and communicative in giving instruction. This research was conducted in an elementary school at rural areas, This study used the self-study method, in which data are taken from observations and interviews with and English teacher in the school to find out the difficulties or challenges in teaching and learning in rural areas at Tulungagung East Java, Therefore, the self-study researcher is not the self who does the research, but rather the self being studied, not that the self is the only focus. This progression in self-study characterizes teaching as well. So after that, the author compiled this conversation program. The method used in the implementation of this conversation program was the appropriate TPR (Total Physical Response) method to support challenges or difficulties in teaching and learning. This program was carried out once every 2 weeks and was only attended by class 5. And to find out the improvement of students after joining this program, the researcher give assessment. When this activity was carried out the students were very enthusiastic and understood the lessons that I given, many improvements were obtained by them such as word pronunciation, word spelling, vocabulary knowledge, and word composition. This study strongly recommended that TPR is needed to learn English in rural area.

Effectiveness of peer-assisted teaching of medical English skills to non-native English-speaking medical students.

Peer-assisted learning has been shown to be constructive in numerous aspects of undergraduate medical education. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of peer-assisted teaching of medical English skills to non-native English-speaking students. A medical English conversation course was conducted at Damascus University by a group of students. Targeted participants were intermediate level fellow students from the same program. A longitudinal study was carried out between 1 st to 31 st March 2019 to assess changes in self-assessment of English language skills among course participants. Pre- and post-course appraisal involved a review of previous experience with medical English language, a self-assessment of five English language skills, and an objective measurement of medical English knowledge. In addition, participants were requested to respond to a set of statements related to the importance and the usefulness of peer-assisted teaching of medical English skills. Paired-sample Student t-test was used to compare pre- and post-course appraisal results. 42 students attended the course and completed pre- and post-course appraisals in full. Data analyses showed a statistically significant increase in participants' confidence in speaking medical English in public ( p<0.001) and using English in various medical settings (presenting and discussing cases, writing clinical reports, interviewing patients and reading English medical texts). Objective measurements of medical English knowledge confirmed a significant increase in participants' knowledge of methods of administration of therapeutics, knowledge of human body parts in English and familiarity with English medical abbreviations. Most participants agreed that peer-education was effective in teaching medical English skills to non-native English-speaking students and in increasing their confidence when using English in real-life medical scenarios. The present study highlights the effectiveness of peer-assisted teaching of medical English skills to non-native English-speaking medical students. Further validation is required and should compare the effectiveness of traditional versus peer-assisted teaching approaches.

It’s Nice to Meet You: Contextual Configuration on Formal and Informal Introductions

The discourse of introduction is a discourse exploiting full of contextual meanings. By means of two approaches, viz. situational context and contextual configuration, this paper aims to delve deeper into the discourse of formal and informal introductions in everyday English conversation. Both discourses are taken from the book Everyday Conversation. The data were analyzed from two paradigmatic approaches, i.e., situational context with the components of field, tenor, and mode, and contextual configuration with the three main maxims of OOI (obligatory, optional, and iteration). Based on the careful analysis, the findings demonstrate that both introduction discourses, whether formal or informal ones, are built on the foundation of two types of elements, namely obligatory and optional, which are interwoven within a potential common structure of the following contextual configuration: (OE). [IR^IG1^IG2]. (IE)(context-dependent) &gt; [(R)^(RC)]. Ultimately, through this paradigmatic approach to the discourse of introduction, it arrives at an understanding that the relationship between language and its contextual use is that of mutuality; shall language need context in the process of interpretation, the context ipso facto needs language to manifest per se.