Speech synthesis : Developing a web application implementing speech technology

Speech is a natural media of communication for humans. Text-to-speech (TTS) technology uses a computer to synthesize speech. There are three main techniques of TTS synthesis. These are formant-based, articulatory and concatenative. The application areas of TTS include accessibility, education, entertainment and communication aid in mass transit. A web application was developed to demonstrate the application of speech synthesis technology. Existing speech synthesis engines for the Finnish language were compared and two open source text to speech engines, Festival and Espeak were selected to be used with the web application. The application uses a Linux-based speech server which communicates with client devices with the HTTP-GET protocol. The application development successfully demonstrated the use of speech synthesis in language learning. One of the emerging sectors of speech technologies is the mobile market due to limited input capabilities in mobile devices. Speech technologies are not equally available in all languages. Text in the Oromo language was tested using Finnish speech synthesizers; due to similar rules in orthography of germination of consonants and length of vowels, legible results were gained

ISCA Workshop on Speech and Language Technology in Education (SLATE)

This paper introduces the architecture and interface of a serious game intended for pronunciation training and assessment for Spanish students of English as second language. Users will confront a challenge consisting in the pronunciation of a minimal-pair word battery. Android ASR and TTS tools will prove useful in discerning three different pronunciation proficiency levels, ranging from basic to native. Results also provide evidence of the weaknesses and limitations of present-day technologies. These must be taken into account when defining game dynamics for pedagogical purposes.MEC-FEDER Grant TIN2014-59852-R y la Junta de Castilla y León Regional Grant VA145U1

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MOHAMAD NASIR’S SPEECH

ABSTRACT Discourse is a unit of language in which its form is longer than a sentence including the vast majority of everyday communication; in addition, it ussually employes specific kinds of language as well as infromation structures to deliver specific purposes. In order to identify the structure and purpose of a discourse, the present research employed Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyze an educational speech in May 2nd, 2016 delivered by the Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education, Mohamad Nasir in the celebration of the National Education Day of Indonesia. The result of the analysis showed how the speech was constructed in form of macrostructure, superstructure, and microstructure revealed how the social power was used by symbolic elites to invite all parties in educational field to join together in reforming educational system of Indonesia to be better than what had been conducted by previous partisans in the past. Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA); Indonesian Ministry’s speech; educational speech; National Education Da

SRoL - Web-based Resources for Languages and Language Technology e-Learning

The SRoL Web-based spoken language repository and tool collection includes thousands of voice recordings grouped on sections like "Basic sounds of the Romanian language", "Emotional voices", "Specific language processes", "Pathological voices", "Comparison of natural and synthetic speech", "Gnathophonics and gnathosonics". The recordings are annotated and documented according to proprietary methodology and protocols. Moreover, we included on the site extended documentation on the Romanian language, on speech technology, and on tools, produced by the SRoL team, for voice analysis. The resources are a part of the CLARIN European Network for Language Resources. The resources and tools are useful in virtual learning for phonetics of the Romanian language, speech technology, and medical subjects related to voice. We report on several applications in language learning and voice technology classes. Here, we emphasize the utilization of the SRoL resources in education for medicine and speech rehabilitation

Розвиток мовленнєвої культури як основа професійної підговки майбутніх вихователів ДНЗ

Матеріали статті відображають одну з актуальних проблем підготовки майбутніх педагогів дошкільної освіти – розвиток мовленнєвої культури. У публікації репрезентовано аналіз категорії «мовленнєва культура» як лінгвістичного і соціопедагогічного феномену, розкрито концептуальні основи і технологію її розвитку в майбутніх педагогів дошкільної освіти в процесі навчання у виші. (Materials articles reflect one of the pressing problems of preparation of future teachers of preschool education – the development of oral cultures. The publication presents an analysis of the category of «verbal culture» as a linguistic and social and pedagogical phenomenon revealed the conceptual framework and its development in the technology of the future teachers of preschool education in the learning process at the university. The article deals with the formation of professional speech culture of the future teacher. Indicated that educational broadcasting future educator effectiveness depends on the level of language, proper selection of language means that the culture of language and speech culture. The concept «language culture» and «language culture». The main features of the concept «language culture». Characterize the level of verbal culture. Outlines the aspects of speech culture of future educators. Factors affecting the linguistic culture of the future teacher. Structural features of speech future educator. The essence to Ukrainian-speaking culture of a schoolteacher is revealed in the present paper. Different scientific approaches to the determination of structural components of this phenomenon have been analyzed. According to the actor position, which is theoretically substantiated, the structure of the Ukrainian culture of a teacher includes such components as motivational and stimulating, emotional and valuable, cognitive and conductive, professional and personal

Theoretical and methodological principles of competence-activity technology of teaching foreign languages

Автор статті розглядає і науково обґрунтовує компетентнісно-діяльнісну технологію навчання іноземних мов у закладах загальної середньої освіти. Він характеризує дидактичні компоненти цієї технології, визначає базовий рівень сформованості іншомовної комунікативної компетентності сучасного учня. Проілюстровані теоретичні положення технології базуються на науковому та навчальному досвіді автора, підґрунтям для чого слугували сучасні тенденції розвитку шкільної іншомовної освіти.In the article, the author examines and scientifically substantiates the competency-activity technology of teaching foreign languages in institutions of general secondary education. He characterizes the didactic components of this technology, defines the basic level of formation a foreign-language communicative competence of a contemporary pupils. The illustrated theoretical provisions of the technology are based on the author's scientific and educational experience, which served as the basis for the current trends in the development of school foreign language education. Under the term competency oriented teaching of foreign communication, the author understands the ability of pupils to perform foreign language means the actual task for them to communicate in everyday, educational, industrial and cultural life; the ability to use the facts of speech for the communication purposes. A pupil has a foreign language communicative competence, if he, in the conditions of direct or indirect contact, successfully fulfills the tasks of mutual understanding and interaction with the native speakers of the studied language in accordance with accepted norms and traditions. Essential characteristics of this category are considered skills appropriate to use the language in accordance with the topic of communication. Noted, that competency-activity technology promotes the learning of linguistic and socio-cultural knowledge and skills appropriate to use them in speech activities. The author outlines the scope of the main pragmatic information that pupils need to acquire during competency oriented education. Those are following: • how to organize / support foreign language communication in different ways of social and communicative conditions; • what the rules of a foreign language communicative behavior for different circumstances of communication should be; • what language units during production of expressions in different time and local situations should be guided; • which language samples in different conditions communication, in particular with representatives of different social statuses and groups, at meetings / meetings of different social directions should be used; • from which sources and in which ways they have obtain the necessary information to meet their own foreign communication needs; • how to demonstrate the flexibility of their communicative behavior and what non-verbal strategies to use in the absence of certain language experiences; • which way should they improve foreign communication experience. The main areas of the teaching foreign languages content transformation in accordance with the competence-activity technology are following: a) didactic rethinking the essence of educational material from the perspective of its expediency, accessibility, correspondence with other language communication skills of pupils of a certain age category, sufficiency to ensure their communicative intentions; b) determining the connections of the studied material with the life practices that are significant for the pupils, which is associated with the level of its pragmatism - the areas of usage in real communication conditions; c) ensuring the effective activation of linguistic material in various types of speech activity through the motivation of educational actions and the use of the optimal system of exercises and tasks and didactically appropriate auxiliary materials; d) facilitating the conscious learning by students of ways working with educational foreign language material within a certain range of concepts, phenomena, processes, objects, facts, in particular topics for communication, the content of speech material, the contents of instructions, etc. The author suggests to consider the competence-activity technology of teaching foreign language communication from several positions: a) the goals of school foreign language education; b) the features of selection and organization of the content of education; c) the features of the choice and usage methods, educational forms and means of education; d) the peculiarities of the organization of the educational process; e) features of the forms and types of control of learning outcomes

TEKNOLOGI INFORMASI DALAM MENDOKUMENTASIKAN TUTUR BAHASA NGADHA YANG MENGAJARKAN KODE ETIK TEKS LOKAL

This research is an answer to the concern about the extinction of the local text code of ethics in an area. These codes of ethics teach the noble values ​​of the local area. The area taken in this study is Ngada in the central part of Flores Island, NTT Province. Research and documentation of Ngadha speech which teaches a code of ethics for local texts is widely carried out. However, this is only known by some people who speak Ngadha. The community in general knows the local language spoken from the local customary activities that have been passed down from generation to generation. Current generations and future generations do not know the meaning and speech of their own local language which contains the education of Pancasila values. Information technology is currently one of the solutions in documenting and publishing Ngadha speech. There are 160 Ngadha language sayings which have Pancasila educational values. These data are collected from interviews that have been written in book form and translated into Indonesian. A website is created to document digitally for further dissemination which is equipped with a literal and figurative meaning. It is hoped that, now and in the future, both elementary and secondary school children will know the meaning and value of Ngadha language speech. Educators can teach local wisdom values ​​in the form of texts to students. Another goal, for academic interests, both in the field of information technology and philosophy, is the moral responsibility of academics in documenting local content in Ngadha language

The Virtual Man Project's CD-ROM "Voice Assessment: Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology & Medicine", Vol.1

The CD-ROM "Voice Assessment: Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology & Medicine" was developed as a teaching tool for people interested in the production of the spoken or sung human voice. Its content comprises several subjects concerning the anatomy and physiology of spoken and sung voice. A careful assessment becomes necessary in order to ensure the effectiveness of teaching and learning educational materials, whether related to education or health, within the proposal of education mediated by technology. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the Virtual Man Project's CD-ROM "Voice Assessment: Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology & Medicine", as a self-learning material, in two different populations: Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology students and Lyrical Singing students. The participants were instructed to study the CD-ROM during 1 month and answer two questionnaires: one before and another one after studying the CD-ROM. The quantitative results were compared statistically by the Student's t-test at a significance level of 5%. RESULTS: Seventeen out of the 28 students who completed the study, were Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology students, while 11 were Lyrical Singing students (dropout rate of 44%). Comparison of the answers to the questionnaires before and after studying the CD-ROM showed a statistically significant increase of the scores for the questionnaire applied after studying the CD-ROM for both Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology and Lyrical Singing students, with p<0.001 and p<0.004, respectively. There was also a statistically significant difference in all topics of this questionnaire for both groups of students. CONCLUSION: The results concerning the evaluation of the Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology and Lyrical Singing students' knowledge before and after learning from the CD-ROM allowed concluding that the participants made significant improvement in their knowledge of the proposed contents after studying the CD-ROM. Based on this, it is assumed that this didactic material is an effective instrument for self-learning of this population

A Speaker Diarization System for Studying Peer-Led Team Learning Groups

Peer-led team learning (PLTL) is a model for teaching STEM courses where small student groups meet periodically to collaboratively discuss coursework. Automatic analysis of PLTL sessions would help education researchers to get insight into how learning outcomes are impacted by individual participation, group behavior, team dynamics, etc.. Towards this, speech and language technology can help, and speaker diarization technology will lay the foundation for analysis. In this study, a new corpus is established called CRSS-PLTL, that contains speech data from 5 PLTL teams over a semester (10 sessions per team with 5-to-8 participants in each team). In CRSS-PLTL, every participant wears a LENA device (portable audio recorder) that provides multiple audio recordings of the event. Our proposed solution is unsupervised and contains a new online speaker change detection algorithm, termed G 3 algorithm in conjunction with Hausdorff-distance based clustering to provide improved detection accuracy. Additionally, we also exploit cross channel information to refine our diarization hypothesis. The proposed system provides good improvements in diarization error rate (DER) over the baseline LIUM system. We also present higher level analysis such as the number of conversational turns taken in a session, and speaking-time duration (participation) for each speaker.Comment: 5 Pages, 2 Figures, 2 Tables, Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2016, San Francisco, US