English Utterances Research Articles

Psychological Factors that Affect English Speaking Performance among Malaysian Primary School Pupils

Speaking is considered as one of the most important skill in learning a language especially English but many language learners find it difficult and need much effort to produce acceptable utterances in English. The aim of this study is to investigate Psychological factors that become obstacles to spoken English among Malaysian primary school pupils, and suggest possible solutions from the student’s perspectives to overcome the obstacles. For conducting current research, a questionnaire was used to collect data and identify the factors that affect students speaking performance, and find out possible solution from the students’ perspectives. After the data analysed, it was noticed that majority of students were the victims of the common physiological factors such as fear in the class, shyness and anxiety. Most pupils did not have confident to speak because they felt fear to speak in English. While some other were felling shy and anxious when speaking in the class. Thus, pupils suggested solutions like interesting activities, encouraging learning atmosphere, a good rapport between teacher and students to help them to overcome these psychological factors that hinder them to speak in English.

Calibrating rhythms in L1 Japanese and Japanese accented English

Japanese and Japanese-accented English utterances produced by native Japanese speakers were classified using rhythm spectra automatically derived from the speech signals. Results of a stepwise discriminant function analysis revealed an overall classification rate of 81.9% (chance = 50%) for Japanese and 85.9% for English utterances. Two parameters extracted from the spectra emerged as the strongest predictors: normalized amplitude modulation rate above 4 Hz in the 1,000 Hz octave band frequency and normalized amplitude modulation rate between 3-6 Hz in the 4,000 Hz octave band. These results suggested that native Japanese speakers produce Japanese and English with different patterns of temporal regularities in the amplitude envelope of the speech waveform.

ELF inThailand: Variants and Coinage in Spoken ELF in Tourism Encounters

Globalisation has a great influence on the emergence of English as a lingua franca (ELF), particularly in tourism contexts. This paper reports on a piece of research that investigated variants and coinage in spoken ELF interactions between Thai locals and foreign tourists on Koh Lanta, Krabi. The nature of tourism encounters was brief and practical. That is to say, the primary focus was to exchange tourism information athough interactional encounters also occurred. In this study, the utterances in English produced by Thai locals when interacting with foreign tourists were collected and then analysed to identify distinctive features of pronunciation and lexicogrammar, including coinage which was used commonly. The findings provide that the forms of ELF in tourism contexts more or less vary from other contexts of ELF use. The findings of this study lie in the notion that the communicative practices of ELF are context-bound communication.

Code mixing by a Non-ESL content instructor: The Language Choice and Syntactic Features

A study on language alternation despite its pervasive presence in the academia, can never be exhaustive. Given the complexities of the geography in which the English language transcends many language boundaries, modern studies of code switching present various facets of this bilingualism phenomenon. Adding to this, the present study explores the employment of code switching (CS) by a non-English as Second Language (non-ESL) content instructor in a Malaysian tertiary institution that uses English as a medium. It looks at (i) the language choice and utterances, and (ii) the syntactical features of the code-switched lecture by this non-ESL content instructor. In addition, the main reasons for the instructor’s language choice are also provided. A self-taped business studies lecture with a duration of 75 minutes is used for this study. The audio transcription then is categorised into 4 types of utterances namely (i) English, (ii) Malay (iii) Arabic and (iv) Code-Mixed. Syntactical analysis later groups the code-mixed utterances into 11 syntactical categories which are pronoun, adverb, verb, conjunction, verb phrase, noun, noun phrase, adjective, determiner, tag question and interjection. The content analysis discovers Code-Mixed utterances as the most dominant feature of this lecture followed by English utterances. Descriptive analysis ranks the syntactical features of the code-switched data in which pronouns are found to be the most switched item while Malay interjections like pulak and Ya Allah are switched the least. We conclude that code-switching used by this content instructor serves some pedagogical purposes which might bring positive effects to students. The institutional rigidity in seeing English as a medium of instruction should thus be renegotiated.

Specificity and generalization in perceptual adaptation to accented speech.

The present study investigated the degree to which perceptual adaptation to foreign-accented speech is specific to the regularities in pronunciation associated with a particular accent. Across experiments, the conditions under which generalization of learning did or did not occur were evaluated. In Experiment 1, listeners trained on word-length utterances in Korean-accented English and tested with words produced by the same or different set of Korean-accented speakers. Listeners performed better than untrained controls when tested with novel words from the same or different speakers. In Experiment 2, listeners were trained with Spanish-, Korean-, or mixed-accented speech and transcribed novel words produced by unfamiliar Korean- or Spanish-accented speakers at test. The findings revealed relative specificity of learning. Listeners trained and tested on the same variety of accented speech showed better transcription at test than those trained with a different accent or untrained controls. Performance after mixed-accent training was intermediate. Patterns of errors and analysis of acoustic properties for accented vowels suggested perceptual improvement for regularities arising from each accent, with learning dependent on the relative similarity of linguistic form within and across accents.

The Impact of the Spanish-to-English Proficiency Shift on the Grammaticality of English Learners.

Purpose The general aim of this study is to enhance our understanding of the patterns of language growth in Spanish and English during the school years. In this study, we used a longitudinal retrospective approach to explore the growth of the percentage of grammatical utterances (PGU) in both Spanish and English in 2 groups of English learners (ELs): ELs attending English-only instruction and ELs attending Spanish-English bilingual instruction. Method The participants included 1,080 ELs. ELs produced at least 3 story retells in both Spanish and English between kindergarten and 2nd grade. All stories were transcribed and coded for errors, and PGU was calculated for each story. Results At the onset of the study, children showed higher PGU in Spanish and lower PGU in English. Growth curve analysis indicated that PGU in English improved over time, whereas PGU in Spanish declined in both instructional groups. However, those children who were in bilingual programs showed a slower rate of decline in Spanish PGU and a slower rate of improvement in English PGU. By the age of 9 years, children in English-only programs had approximately a Spanish PGU of 65% in Spanish, whereas children in bilingual instruction had an average Spanish PGU of 80%. The improvement in English PGU was steady with a small difference in the rate of growth benefiting children in English-only programs. Conclusion The results of this study document a shift in language proficiency from Spanish to English during the school years. This study offers evidence of a temporary period of relatively low grammaticality in both languages that seems to be the result of a shift in proficiency from Spanish to English.

Globalization and Language Hegemony

In view of the cultural aspect, the national identity of Indonesia is the manifestation of cultural values that develop in all aspects of life with unique characteristics differentiating Indonesia from other countries. As a pluralistic country, Indonesia has 34 provinces with more than 16.000 islands of varied cultures. All of which have the power to integrate or disintegrate Indonesia’s national unity. Inevitably, the world is changing in a process of globalization toward creating a new borderless big village with consequences 1) less government power; 2) liberalism; 3) free market economy; 4) western culture hegemony; and many others. Globalization is deemed catastrophic toward Indonesian traditional values. This paper argues that globalization, on the contrary, brings the opportunity to see the reality of language use in that between English and Indonesian pragmatic apology utterances, both expressive speech acts show similarity in apology features. This paper wants to see whether globalization affects local identity in the context of language use. This paper analyzed apology utterances in Friends TV Series as western representation and utterances found in Office Boy TV Series as Indonesian representation. It is a descriptive qualitative study with content analysis adopted from Spradley in Santoso (2017). The finding shows that apology utterances both English and Indonesian realized universal features of apology that is IFID, Responsibility, Explanation, Repair, Forbearance, Addressed, Phatic, and Interjection. In conclusion, there is no language hegemony. If one considers similarities rather than differences, one will get a deeper insight into languages that will broaden one’s view of language. 

Study of Auditory and Acoustic Features of English Utterances Spoken by the Major Tribal Groups Khasi, Garo and Pnar of the State of Meghalaya

Study of Auditory and Acoustic Features of English Utterances Spoken by the Major Tribal Groups Khasi, Garo and Pnar of the State of Meghalaya

The Relationship between Prosody and Reading in English Utterances

This study aims to investigate the relationship between prosody and reading tasks in Korean English learners. The main research question is whether Korean English learners benefit from the reading tasks serving as pronunciation practice in terms of speech fluency and intelligibility. Although it is controversial to define speech fluency and intelligibility respectively, this study attempts to address this question by examining speech rate and pauses. Ten Korean college students and three American college students voluntarily participated in this study and were asked to read the given script. After the first recording session, Korean speakers were provided with audio files of three English native speakers, and were directed to listen and repeat the audio files. They were asked to return and participate in the second recording session. This study examined speech rate, pause frequency, pause location, and pause duration, and compared the results collected before and after the listen-and-repeat practice. This study found that speech rate increased with practice in most of the Korean speakers. In addition, it turned out that the absolute pause frequency and duration did not correlate with speech rate. More importantly, the reading tasks seemed to help Korean speakers to recognize prosodic phrasing and to utilize phrasing and pauses more appropriately, which guarantees more fluent speech. It implies that appropriate pausing may improve speech fluency and intelligibility in L2.

Figuring Out the Intended Meaning of Intonation in Some English Conversational Utterances

The study aims at figuring out the intended meaning of intonation in some English conversational utterances together with identifying pitch variations that are determined by various syntactic constructions that impart the same illocutionary force of utterances. However, intonation is needed to delimit the communicative forces of utterances by virtue of its structure which the speakers intend to convey .This paper consists of four sections .Section one deals with phonology and its types .Section two discusses intonation in relation to style , forms and functions. Section three sheds some light on pragmatics. Section four deals in details with the intended meaning of intonation in some English conversational utterances. This paper comes up with meanings that are changed by virtue of ranges of intonation and pragmatics changes emotions from one person to another by rising or falling the voice of the speakers. In addition, the intended meaning function of intonation plays a role in determining the emotions of the speaker by ranges of intonation.

The Use of OK by Native and Non-Native Teachers in Bilingual Classrooms: Mandarin, English and Code-Switching

This study investigates the relationship between the use of OK (or okay) and language choices by two native-speaking (NS) and two non-native-speaking (NNS) high school teachers in Taiwan. Four sessions were video-recorded and transcribed to examine OK in the teachers' utterances in English, Mandarin and when switching codes. The functional categories for 286 instances of OK in the 24,754-word total are described from the bottom up and assessed for reliability to reduce the subjectivity of category judgments. We found that NS teachers use OK most in their English utterances, whereas NNS teachers do so in their Mandarin utterances. All teachers tend to use it to mark discourse boundaries in various linguistic contexts. OK also has a limited role in code-switches. It mainly appears to mark a discourse boundary or to connect English, as the students' second language, with translation into Mandarin, as their first language.

“West” or “Vest”? Pronunciation of English Consonants [w] and [v] in the Utterances of Slovak EFL Speakers

The paper investigates the pronunciation of the labiodental fricative [v] and the labial-velar approximant [w] in the word-initial position in English utterances by Slovak speakers. The objective of the study is to explore which of the two consonants appear to be more problematic for Slovak learners of English. 40 students from a Slovak university produced spontaneous monologues in English, which were recorded using a computer and a standard microphone. Afterwards, two native English speakers conducted a subjective auditory analysis in an attempt to identify errors in the subjects’ pronunciation. The results demonstrate that Slovak learners of English frequently encounter difficulties in pronouncing the two consonants, sometimes substituting [v] for [w] and vice versa. The data obtained indicate that the subjects were beset with problems mispronouncing the two sounds to almost the same degree. Possible causes of the erroneous pronunciation seem to involve native language interference, devoting extra effort to approach authentic English pronunciation, and the neglect of pronunciation instruction.

다른 발화 속도의 또렷한 음성과 대화체로 발화한 영어문장 인지

Korean students with much exposure to the relatively slow and clear speech used in most English classes in Korea can be expected to have difficulty understanding the casual style that is common in the everyday speech of English speakers. This research attempted to investigate an effective way to utilize casual speech in English education, by exploring the way different speech styles (clear vs. casual) affect Korean learners’ comprehension of spoken English. Twenty Korean university students and two native speakers of English participated in a listening session. The English utterances were produced in different speech styles (clear slow, casual slow, clear fast, and casual fast). The Korean students were divided into two groups by English proficiency level. The results showed that the Korean students achieved 69.4% comprehension accuracy, while the native speakers of English demonstrated almost perfect results. The Korean students (especially the low-proficiency group) had more problems perceiving function words than they did perceiving content words. Responding to the different speech styles, the high-proficiency group had more difficulty listening to utterances with phonological variation than they did listening to utterances produced at a faster speed. The low-proficiency group, however, struggled with utterances produced at a faster speed more than they did with utterances with phonological variation. The pedagogical implications of the results are discussed in the concluding section.

CONDITIONS OF BILINGUAL PERSONALITY FORMATION AND ENGLISH SPEECH INTONING SKILLS (SURVEY RESULTS)

The article deals with the results of research of sociolinguistic factors’ effect on English phrasal accentuation in the reading authentic English material by Mexican subjects. It features a survey data analysis of the characteristics of the Mexican testees with different levels of English language proficiency. The survey has supplied information about their age at the beginning period of English learning process and its conditions, intensity of its usage at present and subjects’ attitude to the necessity of English phonetics acquisition. The current paper introduces some results of phonetic experiment aimed at revealing Mexican subjects’ ability to intone English speech, namely to choose nucleus in the English utterance. Mexican students’ linguistic competence is proved to be the crucial factor responsible for the correctness in identifying nucleus location. The results presented can be used to contribute to the effectiveness of the English and Spanish as a foreign language teaching as well as for improvement of survey construction in sociolinguistic studies.

USING AUTHENTIC LISTENING MATERIALS IN EFL CLASSROOM: STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS IN INDONESIAN CONTEXT

Instructing listening comprehension to EFL students need good plannings. Authentic listening materials as a strategic teaching media are best utilized by English instructors to facilitate the EFL students’ listening comprehension in classrooms and language laboratory. Applying authentic listening materials as teaching media in listening practice activites are challenged to bridge EFL students and not only enhancing their listening skill but also improving and developing their knowledge of the real life, culture, and social affairs of English native speakers.The source of authentic listening materials applied in the subject class are mostly taken from youtube.com. A popular open source website which provide online videos. The aim of the study was to find out EFL students’ attitudes and perceptions when and after using the authentic videos in an EFL listening class. The participants of the study were the second semester EFL students of English Language Teaching department in Universitas Muhammadiyah Metro Indonesia. The data were gathered from a questionnaire and open interviews. It is found out that most of EFL students who were instructed by the authentic videos show positive attitudes and have good perceptions in utilizing youtube videos as one of the alternative authentic materials in comprehending English utterances.

THE ANALYSIS OF MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESS OF STUDENTS' ENGLISH UTTERANCES

The aim of this research is to know the kind of Morphological process that the students mostly use in their utterances. This research was qualitative research and the design was used is Phenomenology design and natural setting. The subject of the study was the fourth semester students who were taking Public Speaking subject in English Department of IKIP Mataram. This subject was limited only to fourth semester students in academic year 2017/ 2018. Object of the research was affixation in English lexical category based on students’ English utterances in Public Speaking class. There were 2 instruments that used; primary instrument and secondary instrument. The main instrument in this research was the researcher. Secondary instrument of this research were recording and note taking. Technique of data collection in research was direct observation with non-controlled observation. The technique of data analysis was descriptive analysis. The results were the kind of Morphological process that the students mostly used was Derivational, which was a major process that frequently showed up. Affixation that mostly used by the students was Suffixation.

АКЦЕНТНЫЙ РИСУНОК АНГЛИЙСКИХ ФРАЗ С СИНОНИМАМИ И ГИПОНИМАМИ В ИХ СОСТАВЕ (к проблеме языковых контактов и межъязыковой интерференции)

АКЦЕНТНЫЙ РИСУНОК АНГЛИЙСКИХ ФРАЗ С СИНОНИМАМИ И ГИПОНИМАМИ В ИХ СОСТАВЕ (к проблеме языковых контактов и межъязыковой интерференции)

Mobile and home english utterance enhancement system based on Iot

Mobile and home english utterance enhancement system based on Iot

Recognition of indigenous and foreign speech in a noisy classroom: A case of primary school pupils

This study examines the level of speech recognition of English and Igbo utterances by 70 grade four children. The children, whose mother tongue is Igbo and aged between 8 and 10 years, had English monosyllabic words as well as Igbo monosyllabic and disyllabic words dictated to them in noisy and quiet classrooms. The results show that in noise, their level of recognition was significantly higher for English utterances (p < 0.05) while in quiet, it was significantly higher for Igbo (p < 0.05). Thus, the findings confirm those of previous studies that the recognition of Igbo is more affected by noise. In terms of the recognition of phonemes in quiet and noise, for both languages, the ‘t’ test analyses showed significant difference (p < 0.05) in the pupils’ recognition of vowels and consonants in both languages, with vowels being more identified than consonants in both noise and quiet. Hence, though the recognition of both languages is hindered in noise, the study of Igbo requires an acoustically serene environment for maximum results.

Using Intelligent Personal Assistants for Second Language Learning: A Case Study of Alexa

The proliferation of smartphones has given rise to intelligent personal assistants (IPAs), software that helps users accomplish day‐to‐day tasks. However, little is known about IPAs in the context of second language (L2) learning. Therefore, the primary objectives of this case study were twofold: to assess the ability of Amazon's IPA, Alexa, to understand L2 English utterances and to investigate student opinions of the IPA. Four university students of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Japan participated in the study, which involved each participant interacting with Alexa in a 20‐min session. Three sets of data were collected and analyzed to achieve the study's aims: learner‐generated command performance, interactive storytelling performance, and interviews. The quantitative results showed that Alexa accurately understood only 50% of learner commands, whereas comprehensibility during the interactive storytelling skill, Earplay, was much higher (90%). Three themes were identified from the interviews based on criteria developed by Hubbard (): hindered learner efficiency due to the lack of first language (L1) support, improved learner effectiveness through indirect pronunciation feedback, and better access to conversational opportunities. These findings demonstrate that EFL learners perceive Alexa to be a potentially useful tool to enhance language learning and underscore the need for additional (L2) research of IPAs.