Native Speaker Perceptions of Accented Speech: The English Pronunciation of Macedonian EFL Learners

The paper reports on the results of a study that aimed to describe the vocalic and consonantal features of the English pronunciation of Macedonian EFL learners as perceived by native speakers of English and to find out whether native speakers who speak different standard variants of English perceive the same segments as non-native. A specially designed computer web application was employed to gather two types of data: a) quantitative (frequency of segment variables and global foreign accent ratings on a 5-point scale), and b) qualitative (open-ended questions). The result analysis points out to three most frequent markers of foreign accent in the English speech of Macedonian EFL learners: final obstruent devoicing, vowel shortening and substitution of English dental fricatives with Macedonian dental plosives. It also reflects additional phonetic aspects poorly explained in the available reference literature such as allophonic distributional differences between the two languages and intonational mismatch

An acoustic investigation of the developmental trajectory of lexical stress contrastivity in Italian

We examined whether typically developing Italian children exhibit adult-like stress contrastivity for word productions elicited via a picture naming task (n=25 children aged 3\u20135 years and 27 adults). Stimuli were 10 trisyllabic Italian words; half began with a weak\u2013strong (WS) pattern of lexical stress across the initial 2 syllables, as in patata, while the other half began with a strong\u2013weak (SW) pattern, as in gomito. Word productions that were identified as correct via perceptual judgement were analysed acoustically. The initial 2 syllables of each correct word production were analysed in terms of the duration, peak intensity, and peak fundamental frequency of the vowels using a relative measure of contrast\u2014the normalised pairwise variability index (PVI). Results across the majority of measures showed that children\u2019s stress contrastivity was adult-like. However, the data revealed that children\u2019s contrastivity for trisyllabic words beginning with a WS pattern was not adult-like regarding the PVI for vowel duration: children showed less contrastivity than adults. This effect appeared to be driven by differences in word-medial gemination between children and adults. Results are compared with data from a recent acoustic study of stress contrastivity in English speaking children and adults and discussed in relation to language-specific and physiological motor-speech constraints on production

IMPLEMENTING GROUP PRESENTATION USING POWERPOINT ( GPPPt ) TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING COMPETENCE ( A Classroom Action Research at the Tenth Grade ( X-C ) , the Second Semester Students of SMA Negeri 1 Ngawi in 2009/2010 Academic Year )

Implementing Group Presentation Using PowerPoint ( GPPPt ) to Improve the Students’ Speaking Competence ( A Classroom Action Research at the Tenth Grade ( X-C ) , the Second Semester Students of SMA Negeri 1 Ngawi in 2009/2010 Academic Year ) . A Thesis: English Education Department, Graduate School, Sebelas Maret University, 2010. The objectives of this research are to: ( 1 ) identify whether or not and to what extent the use of “GPPPt” is able to improve the students’ speaking competence; and ( 2 ) describe the situations when GPPPt is being applied in the speaking class. In this research, the problem refers to the learning English, especially their speaking competence which is still low. The research methodology applied in this research is action research with two cycles in which each cycle starts from planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The data collected are the qualitative data and the quantitative data. The qualitative data are collected from observation, interview, questionnaire, and document. The quantitative data are collected from the pre test in pre research and the post test in Cycle 1 and Cycle 2. The qualitative data are analyzed by Constant Comparative Method and the quantitative data are analyzed by descriptive statistics. The implementation of GPPPt has succeeded in improving and enhancing the students’ English speaking competence. It could be seen from these indicators: 1 ) it is able to: ( a ) help the students to express their mind and ideas quickly; ( b ) help the students make sentence ( s ) fluently; ( c ) improve the students’ pronunciation to be relatively accepted; ( d ) influence the students to use correct grammar to make sentence ( s ) ; and ( e ) increase the students’ achievement in speaking evaluation; and 2 ) it enables to: ( a ) reduce the students’ temptation to have a chat with their desk mates; ( b ) respond the teacher’s questions actively; ( c ) influence the students to avoid doing non academic activities; and ( d ) motivate the students to use either their dictionaries or grammar books in English class. Besides, from the collected data, the students had obtained better score from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2. For instance, the mean of pre test score of the pre research was 66.76, while the mean of the post test score in Cycle 1 was 74.00 and that of Cycle 2 was 77.64. That the implementation of GPPPt has succeeded in improving and enhancing the students’ English speaking competence, I would like to propose some suggestions for the English teachers, especially those who teach in senior high school to: ( 1 ) apply GPPPt to conduct the teaching learning process in the speaking class; ( 2 ) improve their acquisition of knowledge about GPPPt; and ( 3 ) provide more chance for the students to practice their English orally through GPPPt

Augev Method and an Innovative Use of Vocal Spectroscopy in Evaluating and Monitoring the Rehabilitation Path of Subjects Showing Severe Communication Pathologies

A strongly connotative element of developmental disorders (DS) is the total or partial impairment of verbal communication and, more generally, of social interaction. The method of Vocal-verb self-management (Augev) is a systemic organicistic method able to intervene in problems regarding verbal, spoken and written language development successfully. This study intends to demonstrate that it is possible to objectify these progresses through a spectrographic examination of vocal signals, which detects voice phonetic-acoustic parameters. This survey allows an objective evaluation of how effective an educational-rehabilitation intervention is. This study was performed on a population of 40 subjects (34 males and 6 females) diagnosed with developmental disorders (DS), specifically with a diagnosis of the autism spectrum disorders according to the DSM-5. The 40 subjects were treated in “la Comunicazione” centers, whose headquarters are near Bari, Brindisi and Rome. The results demonstrate a statistical significance in a correlation among the observed variables: supervisory status, attention, general dynamic coordination, understanding and execution of orders, performing simple unshielded rhythmic beats, word rhythm, oral praxies, phono-articulatory praxies, pronunciation of vowels, execution of graphemes, visual perception, acoustic perception, proprioceptive sensitivity, selective attention, short-term memory, segmental coordination, performance of simple rhythmic beatings, word rhythm, voice setting, intonation of sounds within a fifth, vowel pronunciation, consonant pronunciation, graphematic decoding, syllabic decoding, pronunciation of caudate syllables, coding of final syllable consonant, lexical decoding, phoneme-grapheme conversion, homographic grapheme decoding, homogeneous grapheme decoding, graphic stroke

Improved status following behavioural intervention in a case of severe dysarthria with stroke aetiology

There is little published intervention outcome literature concerning dysarthria acquired from stroke. Single case studies have the potential to provide more detailed specification and interpretation than is generally possible with larger participant numbers and are thus informative for clinicians who may deal with similar cases. Such research also contributes to the future planning of larger scale investigations. Behavioural intervention is described which was carried out with a man with severe dysarthria following stroke, beginning at seven and ending at nine months after stroke. Pre-intervention stability between five and seven months contrasted with significant improvements post-intervention on listener-rated measures of word and reading intelligibility and communication effectiveness in conversation. A range of speech analyses were undertaken (comprising of rate, pause and intonation characteristics in connected speech and phonetic transcription of single word production), with the aim of identifying components of speech which might explain the listeners’ perceptions of improvement. Pre- and post intervention changes could be detected mainly in parameters related to utterance segmentation and intonation. The basis of improvement in dysarthria following intervention is complex, both in terms of the active therapeutic dimensions and also the specific speech alterations which account for changes to intelligibility and effectiveness. Single case results are not necessarily generalisable to other cases and outcomes may be affected by participant factors and therapeutic variables, which are not readily controllable