Výuka anglického jazyka pro neslyšící a nedoslýchavé studenty vysokých škol

Disertační práce s názvem Výuka anglického jazyka pro neslyšící a nedoslýchavé studenty vysokých škol si klade za cíl přiblížit z hlediska lingvistického i metodologického problematiku výuky anglického jazyka na vysokých školách, zejména pak na Karlově univerzitě v Praze. Práce je primárně rozdělena na dvě hlavní části. Úvodní část práce se zabývá obecnou sondou do problematiky jazykových kompetencí a jejich nabývání, rovněž i z hlediska lingvistického, u osob se sluchovým postižením. Ukazuje proměnné, které hrají, nebo mohou hrát roli při nabývání mluveného jazyka osobami se sluchovým postižením. Dále popisuje základní rozdělení těchto osob z medicínského pohledu, tj. na základě ztráty sluchu a vyzvdvihuje nutnost vzdělávání těchto studentů na základě lingvistických zkoumání, výzkumů a zjištění. Je zde popsána nutnost propojení lingvistiky s pedagogikou a přínos lingvistických výzkumů a postupů, jako jsou chybová analýza a kontrastivní analýza pro rozvoj produktivních dovedností studentů se sluchovým postižením Druhá část práce je vlastní konkrétní výzkumná část týkající se výuky anglického jazyka v rámci povinného základu studentů se sluchovým postižením na Univerzitě Karlově v Praze. Práce shrnuje výsledky pětiletého působení doktorandky jako lektorky anglického jazyka pro neslyšící a...This dissertation titled Teaching English to Deaf and Hard-of-hearing University Students aims to portray a picture of the situation of teaching English to university students, more specifically of those studying at Charles University in Prague. The work is divided into two main parts. The first part brings general insight, also from linguistic perspective, into language competences and language acquisition by the hearing impaired. It describes variables and possible variables affecting spoken language acquisition by this minority. It gives basic overview of different levels of hearing loss on the grouds of medicine assessment of hearing loss. The dissertiation stresses out the neccessity of educating these students with respect to linguistic research and findings. Moreover, it emphasizes the needs to interweave linguistics and pedagogy and benefits of linguistics research and methods such as error analysis and contrastive analysis for enhancement of language productive skills of hearing impaired students. The second part of the dissertation is devoted to the research of English language teaching to hearing impaired students at Charles University in Prague. The work summarizes the findings of five-year long research carried out at the Language Resource Centre, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in...Institut of Deaf StudiesÚstav jazyků a komunikace neslyšícíchFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

Error Signals from the Brain: 7th Mismatch Negativity Conference

The 7th Mismatch Negativity Conference presents the state of the art in methods, theory, and application (basic and clinical research) of the MMN (and related error signals of the brain). Moreover, there will be two pre-conference workshops: one on the design of MMN studies and the analysis and interpretation of MMN data, and one on the visual MMN (with 20 presentations). There will be more than 40 presentations on hot topics of MMN grouped into thirteen symposia, and about 130 poster presentations. Keynote lectures by Kimmo Alho, Angela D. Friederici, and Israel Nelken will round off the program by covering topics related to and beyond MMN

Exploring the use of speech in audiology: A mixed methods study

This thesis aims to advance the understanding of how speech testing is, and can be, used for hearing device users within the audiological test battery. To address this, I engaged with clinicians and patients to understand the current role that speech testing plays in audiological testing in the UK, and developed a new listening test, which combined speech testing with localisation judgments in a dual task design. Normal hearing listeners and hearing aid users were tested, and a series of technical measurements were made to understand how advanced hearing aid settings might determine task performance. A questionnaire was completed by public and private sector hearing healthcare professionals in the UK to explore the use of speech testing. Overall, results revealed this assessment tool was underutilised by UK clinicians, but there was a significantly greater use in the private sector. Through a focus group and semi structured interviews with hearing aid users I identified a mismatch between their common listening difficulties and the assessment tools used in audiology and highlighted a lack of deaf awareness in UK adult audiology. The Spatial Speech in Noise Test (SSiN) is a dual task paradigm to simultaneously assess relative localisation and word identification performance. Testing on normal hearing listeners to investigate the impact of the dual task design found the SSiN to increase cognitive load and therefore better reflect challenging listening situations. A comparison of relative localisation and word identification performance showed that hearing aid users benefitted less from spatially separating speech and noise in the SSiN than normal hearing listeners. To investigate how the SSiN could be used to assess advanced hearing aid features, a subset of hearing aid users were fitted with the same hearing aid type and completed the SSiN once with adaptive directionality and once with omnidirectionality. The SSiN results differed between conditions but a larger sample size is needed to confirm these effects. Hearing aid technical measurements were used to quantify how hearing aid output changed in response to the SSiN paradigm

Investigating the build-up of precedence effect using reflection masking

The auditory processing level involved in the build‐up of precedence [Freyman et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 874–884 (1991)] has been investigated here by employing reflection masked threshold (RMT) techniques. Given that RMT techniques are generally assumed to address lower levels of the auditory signal processing, such an approach represents a bottom‐up approach to the buildup of precedence. Three conditioner configurations measuring a possible buildup of reflection suppression were compared to the baseline RMT for four reflection delays ranging from 2.5–15 ms. No buildup of reflection suppression was observed for any of the conditioner configurations. Buildup of template (decrease in RMT for two of the conditioners), on the other hand, was found to be delay dependent. For five of six listeners, with reflection delay=2.5 and 15 ms, RMT decreased relative to the baseline. For 5‐ and 10‐ms delay, no change in threshold was observed. It is concluded that the low‐level auditory processing involved in RMT is not sufficient to realize a buildup of reflection suppression. This confirms suggestions that higher level processing is involved in PE buildup. The observed enhancement of reflection detection (RMT) may contribute to active suppression at higher processing levels

Proceedings of the VIIth GSCP International Conference

The 7th International Conference of the Gruppo di Studi sulla Comunicazione Parlata, dedicated to the memory of Claire Blanche-Benveniste, chose as its main theme Speech and Corpora. The wide international origin of the 235 authors from 21 countries and 95 institutions led to papers on many different languages. The 89 papers of this volume reflect the themes of the conference: spoken corpora compilation and annotation, with the technological connected fields; the relation between prosody and pragmatics; speech pathologies; and different papers on phonetics, speech and linguistic analysis, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Many papers are also dedicated to speech and second language studies. The online publication with FUP allows direct access to sound and video linked to papers (when downloaded)