Speech intelligibility in multilingual spaces

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On the mechanism of response latencies in auditory nerve fibers

Despite the structural differences of the middle and inner ears, the latency pattern in auditory nerve fibers to an identical sound has been found similar across numerous species. Studies have shown the similarity in remarkable species with distinct cochleae or even without a basilar membrane. This stimulus-, neuron-, and species- independent similarity of latency cannot be simply explained by the concept of cochlear traveling waves that is generally accepted as the main cause of the neural latency pattern. An original concept of Fourier pattern is defined, intended to characterize a feature of temporal processing—specifically phase encoding—that is not readily apparent in more conventional analyses. The pattern is created by marking the first amplitude maximum for each sinusoid component of the stimulus, to encode phase information. The hypothesis is that the hearing organ serves as a running analyzer whose output reflects synchronization of auditory neural activity consistent with the Fourier pattern. A combined research of experimental, correlational and meta-analysis approaches is used to test the hypothesis. Manipulations included phase encoding and stimuli to test their effects on the predicted latency pattern. Animal studies in the literature using the same stimulus were then compared to determine the degree of relationship. The results show that each marking accounts for a large percentage of a corresponding peak latency in the peristimulus-time histogram. For each of the stimuli considered, the latency predicted by the Fourier pattern is highly correlated with the observed latency in the auditory nerve fiber of representative species. The results suggest that the hearing organ analyzes not only amplitude spectrum but also phase information in Fourier analysis, to distribute the specific spikes among auditory nerve fibers and within a single unit. This phase-encoding mechanism in Fourier analysis is proposed to be the common mechanism that, in the face of species differences in peripheral auditory hardware, accounts for the considerable similarities across species in their latency-by-frequency functions, in turn assuring optimal phase encoding across species. Also, the mechanism has the potential to improve phase encoding of cochlear implants

Mandarin Chinese Teacher Education Issues and solutions

Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, and in a rapidly globalizing environment, speaking it is an increasingly important skill for young people in the UK. 'Mandarin Chinese Teacher Education' stems from the work of the UCL Institute of Education Confucius Institute, which supports the development of Mandarin Chinese as a language on offer in schools as part of the mainstream curriculum. This edited collection brings together researchers, teachers involved in action research and student-teachers, in an effort to address the current lack of literature specifically aimed at supporting Chinese language teachers. It features: • practical ideas for teachers of Chinese to implement in their own classrooms • evaluation of differing strategies and approaches unique to teaching Chinese • examples of using action research to help teachers reflect on their own practice while informing practice across the discipline. The book will be useful for PGCE Mandarin students, teacher trainers and those involved in the development of Mandarin Chinese in schools across the UK and further afield

Can visual feedback improve English speakers' Mandarin tone production?

Non-native tones are considered challenging for adult second language speakers to perceive and produce. The current study examined the effect of a laboratory-based intensive training in improving American English speakers’ tone production. Participants’ task was to repeat Mandarin words after the model. There were two conditions in the experiment: in one condition, participants did not get any external feedback; whereas in the other condition, participants received detailed visual feedback, which was the pitch contour of their tone production alongside the native version. Eight participants completed training with no feedback and another eight participants were trained with visual feedback. Results revealed that participants in both groups did not improve their tone production after training, and participants trained with visual feedback did not show more improvement than those trained with no feedback. Given the lack of improvement in participants’ tone production after training, methodological and theoretical limitations with respect to the use of a repetition-based training paradigm are discussed

Methods and Effects of Shadowing Using Online Authentic Videos on L2 Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones

Mandarin Chinese tones are notoriously difficult for second language (L2) learners. Previous research focuses on tone training methods that can help learners produce monosyllabic lexical tones, and studies about the production of multisyllabic lexical tones at the sentence level in spontaneous speech are limited. This study applies shadowing—a method where the learners repeat what they heard with as little delay as possible—to tone training and compares the effects of using authentic videos and textbook audios as shadowing materials for beginner L2 Mandarin learners’ tone improvement at the sentence level. Fourteen students in elementary Chinese classes at an American university participated in the tone training activity for four weeks. The participants in the “authentic video” group received authentic videos as their training materials, while the “textbook audio” group was trained with textbook audios. The participants shadowed the materials twice a week, six times per session, at home in their free time. Tone accuracy was rated by Mandarin native speakers according to the pre-test and the post-test consisting of a read-aloud task and a one-on-one conversation. Qualitative and quantitative surveys were conducted to analyze learners’ attitudes toward the shadowing activity and the materials. The results indicate that learners in both groups showed significant improvements in their accuracy in spontaneous speech with no significant differences between the two groups. As for learners’ attitudes, although the participants reported overall positive feedback on the shadowing activity regardless of the materials, authentic materials generated great interest from the participants and were more appealing to the learners. A strong correlation between learners’ confidence in speaking and flexibility of the activity was also found. Based on the finding, pedagogical implications are discussed, including how to select suitable materials and shadowing instructions. For example, educators could introduce textbook audios first and gradually add authentic materials. The findings provide Mandarin Chinese instructors an effective and engaging way to improve learners’ tone production in spontaneous speaking. Incorporating shadowing activities into class has great potential to encourage learners’ autonomy without occupying precious class time. The findings not only contribute to research on teaching Chinese as a second language and the related pedagogy but also shed light on the use of authentic materials in second language teaching and learning

Negative vaccine voices in Swedish social media

Vaccinations are one of the most significant interventions to public health, but vaccine hesitancy creates concerns for a portion of the population in many countries, including Sweden. Since discussions on vaccine hesitancy are often taken on social networking sites, data from Swedish social media are used to study and quantify the sentiment among the discussants on the vaccination-or-not topic during phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Out of all the posts analyzed a majority showed a stronger negative sentiment, prevailing throughout the whole of the examined period, with some spikes or jumps due to the occurrence of certain vaccine-related events distinguishable in the results. Sentiment analysis can be a valuable tool to track public opinions regarding the use, efficacy, safety, and importance of vaccination

Comprehensibility and Prosody Ratings for Pronunciation Software Development

In the context of a project developing software for pronunciation practice and feedback for Mandarin-speaking learners of English, a key issue is how to decide which features of pronunciation to focus on in giving feedback. We used naïve and experienced native speaker ratings of comprehensibility and nativeness to establish the key features affecting comprehensibility of the utterances of a group of Chinese learners of English. Native speaker raters assessed the comprehensibility of recorded utterances, pinpointed areas of difficulty and then rated for nativeness the same utterances, but after segmental information had been filtered out. The results show that prosodic information is important for comprehensibility, and that there are no significant differences between naïve and experienced raters on either comprehensibility or nativeness judgements. This suggests that naïve judgements are a useful and accessible source of data for identifying the parameters to be used in setting up automated feedback

Directions for the future of technology in pronunciation research and teaching

This paper reports on the role of technology in state-of-the-art pronunciation research and instruction, and makes concrete suggestions for future developments. The point of departure for this contribution is that the goal of second language (L2) pronunciation research and teaching should be enhanced comprehensibility and intelligibility as opposed to native-likeness. Three main areas are covered here. We begin with a presentation of advanced uses of pronunciation technology in research with a special focus on the expertise required to carry out even small-scale investigations. Next, we discuss the nature of data in pronunciation research, pointing to ways in which future work can build on advances in corpus research and crowdsourcing. Finally, we consider how these insights pave the way for researchers and developers working to create research-informed, computer-assisted pronunciation teaching resources. We conclude with predictions for future developments

A Method of Teaching English Speaking Learners to Produce Mandarin-Chinese Tones

Learning Mandarin Chinese tones is a big challenge for English speaking learners. The average tonal production accuracy is reported to be about 70 percent for intermediate-level learners and 40 percent for beginning-level Chinese learners. The Chinese tonal proficiency significantly influences the learners\u27 communicative effectiveness, including listening and speaking, but research often overlooks tonal production. This study proposed and tested a novel method of teaching English-speaking learners to pronounce Mandarin Chinese tones. This teaching method includes a Chinese tones bookmark, and a 30--50 minutes in-class training module. The research undertook five cycles of Design-Based Research (DBR) implementations with 31 public school students, adult learners, and Chinese teachers. Two audio recordings, one pre-training and one post-training, were collected and compared through the paired samples t-tests. Interviews, surveys, and class observations were adopted to determine the participants\u27 attitudes toward the training and the teaching model. The results revealed that the designed teaching method was effective to improve the tonal production accuracy of English speaking K-12 children and adult learners. In addition, the results indicated that the participants\u27 attitudes toward the designed method were positive. This study contributes to the current Chinese tonal teaching repertoire and presents a flexible, practical method for teachers to use when instructing students on Chinese tones