Speed Of Speech Research Articles

Time, the deer, is in the wood: Chronotopic identities, trajectories of texts and community self-management

AbstractThis paper opens with a problematisation of the notion ofreal-timein discourse analysis – dissected, as it is, as if time unfolded in a linear and regular procession at the speed of speech. To illustrate this point, the author combines Hasan’s concept of “relevant context” with Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope to provide an analysis of Sorley MacLean’s poemHallaig, with its deep-rootedness in space and its dissolution of time. The remainder of the paper is dedicated to following the poem’s metamorphoses and trajectory as it intertwines with Bartlett’s own life and family history, creating a layered simultaneity of meanings orienting to multiple semio-historic centres. In this way the author (pers. comm.) “sets out to illustrate in theory, text analysis and (self-)history the trajectories taken by texts as they cross through time and space; their interconnectedness with social systems at different scales; and the manner in which they are revoiced in order to enhance their legitimacy before the diverse audiences they encounter on their migratory paths.” In this process, Bartlett relates his own story to the socioeconomic concerns of the Hebridean island where his father was raised, and to dialogues between local communities and national and external policy-makers – so echoing Denzin’s call (2014.Interpretive Autoethnography (2nd Edition). Los Angeles: Sage: vii) to “develop a methodology that allows us examine how the private troubles of individuals are connected to public issues and to public responses to these troubles”. Bartlett presents his data through a range of legitimation strategies and voicing techniques, creating transgressive texts that question received notions of identity, authorship, legitimacy and authenticity in academia, the portals of power, and the routines of daily life. The current Abstract is one such example. As with the author’s closing caveat on the potential dangers of self-revelation, offered, no doubt, as a flimsy justification for the extensive focus in the paper on his own life as a chronotope, I leave it for the individual reader to decide if Bartlett’s approach is ultimately ludic or simply ludicrous.

TWO ADJACENT VOWELS IN PAGU AND THEIR ALTERNATING WORD STRESS PLACEMENT

Some diphthongs in Pagu, rather than being pronounced as a single syllable in a normal/rapid speed of speech, can alternate to appear in two different adjacent syllables when pronounced in a slow speech. In Pagu, the speed of speech affects the words syllable number and word stress placement. The previous study suggests that word stress in Pagu is placed on the penultimate syllable. This paper will discuss word stress placement in Pagu in two different speed of speech (normal and slow) as well as two adjacent vowels as affected by the speed and their position in the word. This sheds a light on the behaviors of two adjacent vowels in the stress placement area i.e. whether they are different vowels they can alternate between a diphthong or two separate vowels in two different syllables and when they are identical they cannot be separated into two different syllables when occur in the final position.

The challenges of using TED Talks as authentic resources of academic listening for EFL university students

Developing listening skills in an academic context is essential as it requires students to acquire a sufficient number of vocabulary, which will enable them to comprehend the information provided in a text. This paper explores the challenges faced by twenty-seven EFL students in an Academic Listening course using a task-based language teaching framework (Nunan, 2004; Willis, 1996; Willis Willis, 2011). The data were collected from the students’ listening journals containing accounts of their experiences during the course. The data from the journals were analyzed qualitatively to identify the themes that emerged. The results of the analysis reveal various challenges encountered by the students: unfamiliar accents, fast speed of speech, and new vocabulary. The paper ends with a recommendation to investigate vocabulary learning strategies of spoken texts.

Self-perception of shyness and its relation to aspects of public speaking.

To determine the prevalence of shyness in university students and to analyze among the sociodemographic and public communication factors, those that are most related to their presence. A cross-sectional analytical study was carried out with 1124 university students aged between 17 and 63 years old. It was used a questionnaire with questions related to sociodemographic characteristics; frequency of participation in public speaking activities; self-report of fear of speaking; self-perception of non-verbal aspects of oral communication: tone of voice, speed of speech, voice intensity, vocal projection, eye contact with the audience during the speech, use hands in public presentations; self-assessment of public speaking (Scale for Self-Assessment in Public Speaking) and self-perception of shyness (Revised Shyness Scale). The analysis of factors associated with shyness and with the other variables was performed by Pearson's chi-square test and univariate and multivariate logistic regression. The level of significance adopted was 5%. The majority of the university population self-reported traces of shyness and fear of speaking in public. There was an association of shyness with the age of 17 to 30 years, fear of speaking in public, little participation in public speaking activities, negative self-perception of speech and with non-verbal communication aspects. Shyness is prevalent in young university students, who participate in few public speaking activities, who are afraid to speak in public, self-report speaking at low intensity and who are unable to use their hands naturally during public presentations.

Using deep learning to classify English native pronunciation level from acoustic information

The main purpose of this research is to test the use of deep learning for automatically classifying an English learner’s pronunciation proficiency, a step in the construction of a system that supports second language learners. Our deep learning dataset consists of 28 speakers – ranging in proficiency from native to beginner non-native – reading the same 216-word English story. In the supervised deep learning training process, we first label the English proficiency level of the data, but this is a complicated task because there are a number of different ways to determine someone’s speech proficiency. In this research, we focus on three elements: foreign accent, speech fluency (as measured by total number of pauses, total length of pauses, and speed of speech) and pronunciation (as measured by speech intelligibility). We use Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) layers for deep learning, train a computer on differently labeled data, test a computer on separate data, and present the results. Features used from audio data are calculated by Mel-Frequency Cepstrum Coefficients (MFCCs) and pitch. We try several combinations of parameters for deep learning to find out what settings are best for our database. We also try changing the labeling method, changing the length of each audio sample, and changing the method of cross-validation. As a result, we conclude that labeling by speech fluency instead of by speech intelligibility tends to get better deep learning test accuracy.

A Study on the Emotional Feature Composed of the Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficient and the Speech Speed

A Study on the Emotional Feature Composed of the Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficient and the Speech Speed

AN INVESTIGATION OF STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION TOWARD LISTENING COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES AND TOP-DOWN LISTENING STRATEGY

The main purpose of conducting this research is to investigate students’ perception toward listening comprehension difficulties and the use of Top-down listening strategy in listening class of the ninth grade students of SMPN 13 Pontianak in the year 2018-2019. It also investigated the correlation between students’ listening difficulties and strategy usage. The method of this research is a cross-sectional survey. The data were collected by using a questionnaire, continuous Likert-scale. Then, the data collected from the questionnaire was analyzed by using descriptive statistical analysis to present the items frequency, mean, and standard deviation. The population of this research is all of the ninth grade students at SMPN 13 Pontianak. The total population is 333 students from 9 classes. While the participants are 168 selected through representative stratified random. The findings showed that accent, pronunciation, the speed of speech, lack of vocabulary, the complex grammatical structure, basic background knowledge, lack of concentration, bad quality of recording were the major difficulties encountered by the ninth grade students in SMPN 13 Pontianak. The development of listening skill to the learners must be intensified in language learning because listening is critical and important not only as a receptive skill but also as a tool needed for the development of spoken language ability.

Investigation of voice characteristics and their modification in dental prosthetics

Each person's voice is unique. Voice quality is characterized by intelligibility of speech (correlation between voice pitch, volume, timbre and speech speed). Changes in the oral cavity due to tooth loss and resorption of processus alveolaris maxillae or processus alveolaris mandibulae can cause defects in the patient's voice and speech. When using incorrect or functionally low-quality dentures, other changes can be observed, such as skipping, replacing, distorting, adding sounds, as well as nasal speaking. Restrictions or changes in the normal movement of the jaws may interfere with the transmission of acoustic energy through the oral cavity, thereby affecting both the voice characteristics and capabilities, and the balance of the oral resonance. Phonetic adaptation of prosthetic patients depends on the choice and placement of artificial teeth, on the thickness, size and placement of the prosthetic base, optimal tongue space, individual adaptive ability, and the patient's ability to recognize the sound. This report presents the possibilities for maximum restoration of voice characteristics in effective collaboration between the dental team and specialists in otolaryngology and speech therapy.

THE ROLE OF VIDEO RECORDING DURING THE INTERROGATION OF A MINOR SUSPECT

The problems of taking truthful evidence during the interrogation of minors suspect are reflected in the article. The reasons to denounce false evidence by such category of persons are considered. Attention is focused on verbal and non-verbal signs of lies in the testimony of minor interrogatet persons: changing the speed and volume of speech, murmuring, changing the tone of voice, looking away to the side, touching the face by hands, hiding hands, etc.
 It is argued the feasibility of obligatory using of video recording during the interrogation of minors since such form of fixing makes it possible to obtain not only high precision and completeness of evidence representation but help the interrogator to follow the features of facial expression, gesticulation in conjunction with their manifestation with the contents of testimony representation, intonational features, emotional coloring and so on. The video recording facilitates the improving of results of this inquisitorial act, enhancing the tactical capabilities of its undertaking. Besides this it enable to make an objective assessment of the interrogation of minors suspect.
 It is invited to make the necessary changes in CPC of Ukraine, namely: item 5 Article 224 should be amended to read «During the interrogation photo, audio or/and video recording can be used. The interrogation with the participation of minor suspect is carried out with obligatory video recording». The Article 490 should be added the requirement as follows: «During the interrogation the use of video recording is obligatory».

Avaliação integrada da fluência: uma perspectiva ampliada do cuidado fonoaudiológico

A fluência é uma habilidade que envolve a participação de múltiplos sistemas neurais, principalmente, dos processamentos da linguagem, fala, voz e audição. Tais interfaces justificam a necessidade de considerar na dinâmica avaliativa fonoaudiológica, suas interações com os demais conteúdos específicos da Fonoaudiologia. O presente artigo de cunho teórico, consiste em uma revisão não-sistemática da literatura que objetiva discutir acerca do processo de avaliação fonoaudiológica da fluência, mediante uma perspectiva de integralidade do cuidado. Tal discussão visa contribuir para a consolidação do caráter transversal da fluência na literatura nacional, coerente com a complexidade da sua natureza neurofisiológica; bem como favorecer ao fonoaudiólogo, informações e reflexões necessárias para a sua aplicabilidade em contexto prático. Para isso, estruturou-se esta comunicação em duas principais seções: apresentação do processo de avaliação da fluência, e discussão acerca da avaliação integrada da fluência. Dessa forma, conclui-se que, para uma avaliação fonoaudiológica integrada da fluência é necessário ir além da identificação das rupturas e realização dos cálculos de velocidade de fala. Requer conhecimento aprofundado sobre a natureza da fluência, enquanto habilidade e área da Fonoaudiologia, para o exercício do raciocínio clínico integrado que contemple a unicidade de cada sujeito, bem como suas necessidades comunicativas para além da queixa, vislumbrando a saúde da sua comunicação.

Exploring PechaKucha in EFL learners’ speaking fluency

The research aims at investigating to what extent PechaKucha optimizes English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ speaking fluency and identifying the class climate when learners implement PechaKucha. The data of the study were derived through classroom observation, pre and post-tests, field note, and interview. Constant Comparative Method was used to analyze the qualitative data while the mean score of two raters was found out to obtain the quantitative data. The result from this research indicated that the exploration of PechaKucha optimized EFL learners' speaking fluency including improving the speed of learners' speech and words per minute; increasing articulation rate; strengthening phonation time ratio; reducing the frequency of silent pause; avoiding filler words; and decreasing disfluency in spontaneous speech. The enhancement of learners’ score showed from the mean score of pre-test was 65.8; post-test 1 was 73.4, and post-test 2 was 82.3. The use of PechaKucha also improved the class climate: EFL learners were involved actively to present course material and their responsibilities to work in pair increased. Considering the research findings, it is suggested that teachers and lecturers implement PechaKucha for assisting the learners to enhance their speaking fluency and creating the effective class climate.

Kesulitan Menyimak dan Strategi Mahasiswa dalam Memahami Bagian Listening Comprehension pada Tes TOEIC

This study is aimed to identify the difficulties to comprehend listening activities experienced by students and their strategies in understanding Listening Comprehension section of TOEIC test. Descriptive qualitative method was employed to find out and analyze the difficulties and strategies the students implemented. The research was carried out at English Department of Politeknik Negeri Bandung with the population of the third semester students in Academic Year 2017/2018. There were 22 students as the subject in this study. Data were collected by questionnaires and interview to confirm students’ answers. The results showed that the major problems encountered by students were unfamiliar vocabulary, accents of the speaker, speed of speech, lack of concentration, and quality of recorded materials. Listening strategies implemented by students were mostly metacognitive strategy since in this strategy they obtain the awareness of the materials they are listening to in a more cautious way. This method is about the ways of planning, monitoring and assessing the collected information from the listening section the same as pre listening activities. Students applying metacognitive strategies have the benefits such as they can use appropriate learning strategy to master learning materials; they comprehend learning materials more quickly and integrate the knowledge seriously; they put themselves to be loyal receivers and can be properly adaptable to all conditions; they have high confidences in themselves to get help when needed from their peers, teachers, or family; they pay attention to the materials and assess themselves as to how to be successful learners; and they properly deal with the problems in doing their task. Keywords: Students’ Difficulties, Listening Comprehension, Listening Strategies

Listening Comprehension Problems of FL Learners in a Peer Interactive, Self-Regulated Listening Task

It is vital to understand the listening problems students face in a foreign language (FL) classroom. In the current study, students were provided with options to identify these problems. Twenty-eight A1 level Turkish secondary school students worked in pairs and had autonomy to control the audio while listening. While dialogic exchanges illustrated articulated listening comprehension problems in a natural and observable way, self-control data enabled the researcher to observe how students chose to operate the input after encountering such difficulties. Students mostly experienced problems related to process, listener, affect, and input, followed by social- and task-related problems. The most frequent problems were mental translation, inability to chunk streams of speech and difficulty keeping pace with the delivery. In terms of self-controlling the input, students operated the audio mainly to check understanding and catch up with the speed of speech. With the help of these valuable data, the current study aims to highlight the possible benefits of peer interaction by portraying how students experienced and shared the mental, affective, and social processes involved in listening.

A duet and/or a concerto?

Abstract Working memory and interpreting expertise are generally acknowledged as two essential factors that affect the interpreting process. With reference to the compensation model, the independent influences model, and the rich-get-richer model proposed in cognitive psychology concerning the interplay between working memory and domain expertise, this experimental study, by varying the delivery speed of the source speech, examines the interplay between working memory and interpreting expertise in the setting of simultaneous interpreting. This study finds that (1) working memory and interpreting expertise can each have a positive impact on simultaneous interpreting quality; (2) other factors being equal, interpreting expertise can have a greater impact on simultaneous interpreting than working memory, and when the interpreting task proves more challenging, interpreting expertise can help relieve the pressure triggered by inadequate working memory; (3) working memory and interpreting expertise function differently in simultaneous interpreting in different stages: for beginner interpreting students, working memory’s contribution to the quality of simultaneous interpreting is more prominent, while for advanced interpreting students, interpreting expertise plays a more direct and prominent role, and the composite influence of working memory and interpreting expertise on simultaneous interpreting performance is weakened due to the increasing impact of other factors.

Which is more prominent for fighter pilots under different flight task difficulties: Visual alert or verbal alert?

To explore the behavioural and cognition patterns of fighter pilots under visual and verbal alert conditions, 20 right-handed subjects participated in the experiment after 200 h of flight task training, and ERP technology was used to conduct EEG experiments under four conditions: high time pressure visual alert, low time pressure visual alert, fast speech speed verbal alert, and slow speech speed verbal alert. The results indicated the following: 1) the highest accuracy rate and shortest reaction time could be achieved under the slow speech speed verbal alert condition, indicating that the slow speech speed alert performance was optimal. 2) Subjects in the verbal alert trial showed a “right hemisphere advantage”, and the brain function area was located in the right temporal lobes. The speech speed correlated negatively with the latency and amplitude of P80.3) Subjects in the visual alert trial showed a “left hemisphere advantage”, and the brain activity was located in the left parietal lobes. 4) The latency of P80 evoked by verbal alert was earlier than that of N140 evoked by visual alert, indicating that a verbal alert causes an earlier attention effect in pilots. Based on the eye movement experiment, the performance of visual and verbal dual-channel alert was significantly higher than that of visual alert.

Perfil de la fluidez del habla en niños de 8 y 9 años en Santa Anita

Speech Fluency in children aged 8 and 9 years of the Educational Institution No. 108 “Santa Rosa de Quives” of the Santa Anita district of Metropolitan Lima. The method used was a simple non-experimental descriptive type with a transverse research design. The sample was applied to 37 students, using the protocol of the Speech Fluency Assessment (Furquim de Andrade), to measure the types of fluctuations, speech speed and rupture frequencies. The results established the most frequent types of dysfluences in the 8-year group are hesitations, interjections, extensions and pauses, and in the 9-year group they are: hesitations, word repetitions, unfinished words and syllable repetitions. In speech speed, the 9-year-old group has a higher speed than the 8-year-old group. It was determined as conclusions that in relation to the profile of speech fluency there are no significant differences between the age groups with the type of dysfluences, rupture frequencies and the speed of speech.

Evaluations of the voice to text transfer in different conditions

The purpose of the research was evaluations of voice to text transfer in different conditons for the use in the verbal control of industrial robots. The research aims to find the best conditions to command an industrial robot using the human voice. A comprehensive study of existing problems and suggestions for simulation problems has been performed. Unlike some other works, it focused on the simply external problems to affect the voice to text transfer. The main problems of voice to text transfer (speech speed, speaker distance, ambient noise) has been established. The simulation using a personal computer equipped with a sound board and a headset microphone has been performed in all combinations of conditions. On the basis of the analyzes was establish the result of this research, the most suitable conditions and the worst conditions for voice to text transfer.

Особенности обучения студентов-иностранцев основам ораторского искусства

We substantiate the necessity of teaching students foreigners the aesthetics of Russian language, speech culture and oratory. This is due to the fact that the students in the learning process have to speak publicly: to participate in discussions, conversations, dialogues, make presentations and reports on scientific topics, read the verses, retell the texts, defend coursework, diplomas, etc. It is necessary for them to acquire communication skills to communicate in Russian language, get acquainted with the culture, traditions and customs of our country. It is well known that public speaking foreigners studying Russian language at home in most cases, using textbooks and with fewer practical classes are not always convincing, of course. It is well known that public speaking of foreigners who studied Russian in their native country, in most cases with the help of textbooks and with a small number of practical classes, do not always sound convincing and naturally. Pov-erty of lexicon leads to voids in the speech, ignorance of basic grammar rules entails the use of nouns only in the nominative case, and verbs in the infinitive form. Students, especially from Asian countries, are very much afraid of public speaking, nervous, worrying, often go astray, for-get words, etc. In connection with this we analyze the main aspects of teaching foreign students the public speaking. We formulate the requirements for the speech technique and speed, intona-tion, tone and timbre of their voices, the use of specific rhetorical techniques, lexical means of ex-pressiveness, pantomimicry of students and the formation of general informativeness, expressive-ness and beauty of oratorical speeches.

Speech Recognition Application for the Speech Impaired using the Android-based Google Cloud Speech API

Those who are speech impaired (tunawicara in the Indonesian language) suffer from abnormalities in their delivery (articulation) of the language as well their voice in normal speech, resulting in difficulty in communicating verbally within their environment. Therefore, an application is required that can help and facilitate conversations for communication. In this research, the authors have developed a speech recognition application that can recognise speech of the speech impaired, and can translate into text form with input in the form of sound detected on a smartphone. By using the Google Cloud Speech Application Programming Interface (API), this allows converting audio to text, and it is also user friendly to use such APIs. The Google Cloud Speech API integrates with Google Cloud Storage for data storage. Although research into speech recognition to text has been widely practiced, this research try to develop speech recognition, specially for speech impaired's speech, as well as perform a likelihood calculation to see the factor of tone, pronunciation, and speech speed in speech recognition. The test was conducted by mentioning the digits 1 through 10. The experimental results showed that the recognition rate for the speech impaired is about 80%, while the recognition rate for normal speech is 100%.

Web System Prototype based on speech recognition to construct medical reports in Brazilian Portuguese

The overall purpose of automatic speech recognition systems is to make possible the interaction between humans and electronic devices through speech. For example, the content captured from user's speech using a microphone can be transcribed into text. In general, such systems should be able to overcome adversities such as noise, communication channel variability, speaker's age and accent, speech speed, concurrent speeches from other speakers and spontaneous speech. Despite this challenging scenario, this study aims to develop a Web System Prototype to generate medical reports through automatic speech recognition in the Brazilian Portuguese language. The prototype was developed by applying a Software Engineering technique named Delivery in Stage. During the conduction of this technique, we integrated the Google Web Speech API and Microsoft Bing Speech API into the prototype to increase the number of compatible platforms. These automatic speech recognition systems were individually evaluated in the task of transcribing the dictation of a medical area text by 30 volunteers. The recognition performance was evaluated according to the Word Error Rate measure. The Google system achieved an error rate of 12.30%, which was statistically significantly better (p-value <0.0001) than the Microsoft one: 17.68%. Conducting this work allowed us to conclude that these automatic speech recognition systems are compatible with the prototype and can be used in the medical field. The findings also suggest that, besides supporting medical reports construction, the Web System Prototype can be useful for purposes such as recording physicians’ notes during a clinical procedure.