Pronunciation Rate Research Articles

Associating speaker variables with English pronunciation ratings in Spanish tertiary education

Although the use of English in the ever-changing context of bilingual tertiary education has been extensively studied to date, pronunciation research in the field is still scarce. This paper aims at providing empirical data regarding the hypothesised impact of bilingual education programmes on pronunciation performance operationalised through the notions of intelligibility, comprehensibility and foreign-accentedness. For this purpose, 60 advanced speakers of English from a Spanish university (enrolled both in bilingual and monolingual degree courses) were recorded and assessed by 330 international English speakers from 30 different L1s. Both the speakers and the listeners completed a basic sociodemographic questionnaire. The independent variables were related to the participants’ (1) reported exposure to bilingual instruction at the previous and current levels of education, as well as (2) their overall level in English and (3) their exposure to English abroad. The findings showed that bilingual education was in no way associated with differences in pronunciation ratings. However, the speakers’ level and their experience abroad were correlated with the comprehensibility and foreign-accentedness scores. The results are not only consequential for the understanding of the (lack of) impact of bilingual variables on pronunciation, but they also allow to examine the adequacy of the CEFR phonological descriptors.

Difficulties in Production of Voiceless Interdental Fricative // Sound for Chinese Learners of English

Chinese learners of English have long been known to have significant difficulties with the voiceless fricative // sound in English. This study focuses on the challenges and errors faced by Chinese learners of English while producing the voiceless interdental fricative sound //, and aims to find out the speakers error rate and possible reasons when pronouncing it. In this study, six Chinese adult learners of English were selected as a sample for pronunciation recordings, and the average pronunciation accuracy of // and the accuracy of each individual were calculated. Next, a short interview is conducted with each of them, containing possible reasons for the mispronunciation. The results of the study showed that the overall average correct pronunciation rate of the six Chinese English learners was only 37%. There was a positive correlation between the learners' long-term exposure to a pure, full English environment and the accuracy of their pronunciation. And the correct position of the tongue during pronunciation determines correct pronunciation.

Analyzing EFL Learners’ Factors in Affecting English Pronunciation and The Distribution of Pronunciation Rating: A Qualitative Study

Pronunciation is the production of speech sounds for communication. It is the most difficult area of English. Pronunciation teaching in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum has also been ignored for many factors. As a result, numerous EFL learners have often found it challenging to speak freely because of their weak pronunciation. This study deals with the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) of speaking skill in EFL Learners of Indonesia. The researcher used qualitative research. There were thirty-five students who filled the questionnaire and ten students read text given First, the researcher looked for the questionnaire and found the questionnaire about Willingness to communicate. Second, the findings of tense were analyzed to know what factors that affect Indonesian learners’ English pronunciation. Third, the findings were shown into tables to know the factors. Then, the researcher asked ten learners to record when they read the text given (reading passage). After that, the researcher analyzed the pronunciation rating based on the trusted rating sheets. Finally, the researcher drew a conclusion based on the findings and discussion. This study is to investigate the factors affecting Indonesian students’ pronunciation and the distribution of pronunciation rating. The study seeks to answer two research questions (RQ): (RQ1) What are the factors affecting Indonesian learners’ English Pronunciation? and (RQ2) What are the distributions of Pronunciation Rating? This study adopted a descriptive qualitative approach which used questionnaire to build this research and reading passage. In conclusion, the researcher elaborated and answered the research questions, and explained the results and discussions about the type of factors that affect EFL learners’ in English pronunciation.

Development and Construct Validation of a Diagnostic Pronunciation Rating Scale by Many-Facet Rasch Analysis

Development and Construct Validation of a Diagnostic Pronunciation Rating Scale by Many-Facet Rasch Analysis

Computer-aided teaching mode of oral English intelligent learning based on speech recognition and network assistance

The purpose of this paper is to use English specific syllables and prosodic features in spoken speech data to carry out English spoken recognition, and to explore effective methods for the design and application of English speech detection and automatic recognition systems. The method proposed by this study is a combination of SVM_FF based classifier, SVM_IER based classifier and syllable classifier. Compared with the method based on the combination of other phonological characteristics such as phonological rate, intensity, formant and energy statistics and pronunciation rate, and the syllable-based classifier based on specific syllable training, a better recognition rate is obtained. In addition, this study conducts simulation experiments on the proposed English recognition and identification method based on specific syllables and prosodic features and analyzes the experimental results. The result found that the recognition performance of the English spoken recognition system constructed by this study is significantly better than the traditional model.

Development and Construct Validation of a Diagnostic Pronunciation Rating Scale by Many-Facet Rasch Analysis

Development and Construct Validation of a Diagnostic Pronunciation Rating Scale by Many-Facet Rasch Analysis

An EEG study on the brain representations in language learning

This paper presents an experimental study to understand the key differences in the neural representations when the subject is presented with speech signals of a known and an unknown language and to capture the evolution of neural responses in the brain for a language learning task. In this study, electroencephalography (EEG) signals were recorded while the human subjects listened to a given set of words from English (familiar language) and Japanese (unfamiliar language). The subjects also provided behavioural signals in the form of spoken audio for each input audio stimuli. In order to quantify the representation level differences for the auditory stimuli of two languages, we use a classification approach to discriminate the two languages from the EEG signal recorded during listening phase by designing an off-line classifier. These experiments reveal that the time-frequency features along with phase contain significant language discriminative information. The language discrimination is further confirmed with a second subsequent experiment involving Hindi (the native language of the subjects) and Japanese (unknown language). A detailed analysis is performed on the recorded EEG signals and the audio signals to further understand the language learning processes. A pronunciation rating technique on the spoken audio data confirms the improvement of pronunciation over the course of trials for the Japanese language. Using single trial analysis, we find that the EEG representations also attain a level of consistency indicating a pattern formation. The brain regions responsible for language discrimination and learning are identified based on EEG channel locations and are found to be predominantly in the frontal region.

Pronunciation Rating Scale in Second Language Pronunciation Assessment: A Review

By reviewing previous studies on pronunciation rating scale in second language pronunciation assessment, this article aims to summarize research gaps and weaknesses so as to contribute to the pronunciation rating scale research and development. Several research topics concerning construct, criterion, descriptor, scale length, scale format and scale users and suggestions with regard to participants, data collection methods and data analysis methods are provided for future research.

Linguistic Feature Analyses of Chinese Learners of English and Contributions of Discrete Features to Perceptual Judgment

This study (a) conducted a feature analysis of the spoken data of Chinese university students in pronunciation, grammar, and discourse, (b) investigated the contributions of the discrete linguistic features to the perceptual ratings on foreign accent, comprehensibility, delivery, and general language use. Ten university learners were selected from the Spoken Corpus of the English of Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese learners (http://corpus.ied.edu.hk/phonetics/), in which two speakers were paired up to conduct a five minutes interview. Three-level analyses were done to investigate Chinese learners’ linguistic features. Forty listeners from four L1 language backgrounds were recruited to rate the speech samples. The results show that strongly negative correlations were found between the production and perceptual rating scores for “omission of consonant(s) in final position” “redundant article ‘the’”, “silent pauses” and “discourse markers,” suggesting that the four features can be perceived and exert strong negative influences on perceptual judgments. Pronunciation rating had the strongest positive correlations with “foreign accentedness”; grammar rating had the strongest positive correlations with “general language use”; discourse rating had the strongest positive correlations with “general delivery”, and “general language use.” Regarding the rating of comprehensibility, “misuse of conjunctions” “redundant article ‘the’”, “silent pauses”, “lengthening”, and “stressing” showed strong negative correlations whereas “filled pauses” had strong positive correlations with it. Regarding the rating of foreign accentedness, strong negative correlations were found between “omission of consonant(s) in final position”, “lengthening”, “discourse markers”, and “stressing” and the rating of “foreign accentedness”.

Rating Algorithm for Pronunciation of English Based on Audio Feature Pattern Matching

With the increasing internationalization of China, language communication has become an im- portant channel for us to adapt to the political and economic environment. How to improve English learners' language learning efficiency in limited conditions has turned into a problem demanding prompt solution at pre- sent. This paper applies two pronunciation patterns according to the actual needs of English pronunciation rating: to-be-evaluated pronunciation pattern and standard pronunciation pattern. It will translate the patterns into Eng- lish pronunciation rating results through European distance. Besides, this paper will introduce the design philos- ophy of the whole algorithm in combination with CHMM matching pattern. Each link of the CHMM pattern will be given selective analysis while a contrast experiment between the CHMM matching pattern and the other two patterns will be conducted. From the experiment results, it can be concluded that CHMM pattern is the best op- tion.

Does a rater’s familiarity with a candidate’s pronunciation affect the rating in oral proficiency interviews?

This study investigated factors that could affect inter-examiner reliability in the pronunciation assessment component of speaking tests. We hypothesized that the rating of pronunciation is susceptible to variation in assessment due to the amount of exposure examiners have to nonnative English accents. An inter-rater variability analysis was conducted on the English pronunciation ratings of three test candidate interlanguages: Chinese, Korean, and Indian English. Pronunciation was rated by 99 International English Language Testing System (IELTS) examiners across five geographically dispersed test centres. The examiners had either prolonged exposure, or no, or little exposure to the interlanguage of the candidates. A significant proportion of examiners rated pronunciation higher when they had prolonged exposure, and lower when they had no, or little, exposure to the candidates’ interlanguage. The location of the test centre also had a significant effect on the pronunciation rating, independent of the familiarity variable, with a significant proportion of NNS raters scoring candidates from their home country higher than those who were not. It is recommended that interlanguage phonology familiarity should be considered in the design of speaking tests and rater training and that research is required into test centre bias and the phonological judgements and awareness of OPI raters.

Language awareness and second language pronunciation: a classroom study

We examined the relationship between the quality of second language (L2) learners’ language awareness (as shown through dialogue journal entries) and the quality of their L2 pronunciation (as assessed through listener-based ratings of accentedness, comprehensibility, and fluency). The participants were 10 students enrolled in a 13-week university-level pronunciation course focusing on the suprasegmental aspects of English. We evaluated the students’ pronunciation during week 1 and week 11 of class and examined weekly dialogue journal entries written by the students over 10 weeks for evidence of language awareness. We analysed the comments for aspects of language awareness which were quantitative (language learning as assimilating a set of discrete items) and qualitative (language learning as a meaningful context in which learning occurs). We found a relationship between the students’ pronunciation ratings and the number of qualitative (not quantitative) language awareness comments, such that higher pronunciation ratings were associated with a greater number of qualitative language awareness comments. We also found that the students who produced the most qualitative language awareness comments were those who reported the largest amount of L2 listening done outside of class. We discuss the results in light of the role of language awareness in L2 pronunciation learning.

Silent reading rate and memory span

This paper reports two experiments concerned with the form of the linear function relating memory span to pronunciation rate. Experiment 1 asked whether the intercept of the equation is attributable to an interaction between modality, word‐length, and serial position. The results lead us to reject this possibility. Experiment 2 examined the shape of the span function for visual presentation of lists read aloud or silently. The results show that the intercept of the span function disappears for silent presentation but not for aloud presentation. The results are discussed in terms of a balance between two opposing effects of word‐length.

The Distribution of Attention Across a Talker's Face

In 2 experiments, a novel experimental paradigm investigated how spatial attention is distributed across a talker's face during auditory-visual speech discourse processing. Dots were superimposed onto several talkers' faces for 17-msec durations on the talker's left side, mouth, right side, and eyebrow area. Participants reported the locations of dots in 2 task conditions varying the presence or absence of concurrent language processing. Concurrent language processing did not interfere with spatial performance. Dot detection performance was greater for the talker's left, compared to their right, side, and for the mouth, compared to the eyebrow, area. Emotional expressiveness of the face, attractiveness, and clarity of voice pronunciation ratings were correlated with detection performance. Results support a 2-pool attention resource model of auditory-visual language processing. Results also suggest that attention engagement during multimodal language processing is primarily internally, rather than externally, driven, because attention is directed to the eye area when the talker displays low facial emotional expressiveness, and to the speaker's left side due to left hemisphere language processing, even though the right side displays greater motion.

Different aspects of expert pronunciation quality ratings and their relation to scores produced by speech recognition algorithms

The ultimate aim of the research reported on here is to develop an automatic testing system for Dutch pronunciation. In the experiment described in this paper automatic scores of telephone speech produced by native and non-native speakers of Dutch are compared with specific, i.e., temporal and segmental, and global pronunciation ratings assigned by three groups of experts: three phoneticians and two groups of three speech therapists. The goals of this experiment are to determinutee (1) whether specific expert ratings of pronunciation quality contribute to our understanding of the relation between human pronunciation scores and machine scores of speech quality, (2) whether different expert groups assign essentially different ratings, and (3) to what extent rater pronunciation scores can be predicted on the basis of automatic scores. The results show that collecting specific ratings along with overall ones leads to a better understanding of the relation between human and automatic pronunciation assessment. Furthermore, after normalization no considerable differences are observed between the ratings by the three expert groups. Finally, it appears that the speech quality scores produced by our speech recognizer can predict expert pronunciation ratings with a high degree of accuracy.

Word-length effects in immediate memory: Overwriting trace decay theory

Memory is worse for items that take longer to pronounce, even when the items are equated for frequency, number of syllables, and number of phonemes. Current explanations of the word-length effect rely on a time-based decay process within the articulatory loop structure in working memory. Using an extension of Nairne's (1990) feature model, we demonstrate that the approximately linear relationship between span and pronunciation rate can be observed in a model that does not use the concept of decay. Moreover, the feature model also correctly predicts the effects of modality, phonological similarity, articulatory suppression, and serial position on memory for items of different lengths. We argue that word-length effects do not offer sufficient justification for including time-based decay components in theories of memory.

A multinomial processing tree model for degradation and redintegration in immediate recall.

When items are presented for immediate recall, a verbal trace is formed and degrades quickly, becoming useless after about 2 sec. The span for items such as digits equals the number of items that can be pronounced in the available time. The length of the items affects span by affecting pronunciation rate. Other properties, such as phonological similarity and lexicality, can affect span without affecting pronunciation rate. These properties change the trace's useful lifetime by affecting redintegration. An analogy is drawn between trace reconstruction and repair of errors in speech. When a trace is degraded, one process attempts to form a phoneme string, and another process attempts to form a word. The two processes are autonomous and can be selectively influenced by lexicality and phonological similarity. The resulting processing tree models make simple predictions that depend on whether or not the influenced processes are sequential. The results are illustrated with data from experiments by Besner and Davelaar (1982).

The Relationship Between Native Speaker Judgments of Nonnative Pronunciation and Deviance in Segmentais, Prosody, and Syllable Structure

This study investigated the relationship between experienced SPEAK Test raters' judgments of nonnative pronunciation and actual deviance in segmentals, prosody, and syllable structure. Sixty reading passage speech samples from SPEAK Test tapes of speakers from 11 language groups were rated impressionistically on pronunciation and later analyzed for deviance in segmentals, prosody, and syllable structure. The deviance found in each area of pronunciation was then correlated with the pronunciation ratings using Pearson correlations and multiple regression. An analysis of the 60 speakers showed that whereas deviance in segmentals, prosody, and syllable structure all showed a significant influence on the pronunciation ratings, the prosodic variable proved to have the strongest effect. When separate analyses were done on two language subgroups within the sample, prosody was always found to be significantly related to the global ratings, whereas this was not always true for the other variables investigated.

Reading Rates and Digit Span in Bilinguals: The Superiority of Mother Tongue

Several studies have shown a negative linear relationship between speech rate and memory span. This relationship has implications for bilingual studies, as span could be larger in a bilingual's secondary language provided that pronunciation rate is faster than in the mother language. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of digit word length on digit span in bilinguals. Experiment 1 tested the effects of digit syllable length on speech rate in five different bilingual groups. Results revealed that digit‐reading rates were significantly faster in all mother languages. Experiment 2 examined more closely the correspondence between speech rate and digit span with Portuguese‐English bilinguals. Results showed that digit‐reading rates were faster and digit span larger in the mother language even if the mean number of syllables per digit was higher. The superiority of mother tongue was discussed according to the view that digits are subject to massive practice in one's native language with a strong tendency to be abbreviated, thus reducing its spoken duration.

Phonological Similarity, Pronunciation Rate, and Memory Span

Memory span is smaller for (a) items taking longer to pronounce and (b) phonologically more similar items. We investigated the relation between the two effects. Chase (1977) found that phonologically similar items were pronounced more slowly than dissimilar ones in a pronunciation task. A pronunciation rate difference in immediate recall could explain the phonological similarity effect as a special case of the word-length effect. Instead, the study found that pronunciation rates were equal. In the equation s = rt, span equals pronunciation rate times trace duration, word-length affects r while phonological similarity affects t. The two effects are shown to be complementary.