The Potential Use of Slow-down Technology to Improve Pronounciation of English for International Communication

The focus of this research is on oral communication between L1 (first language) and L2 (second language) English users - to determine whether an algorithm which slows down speech can increase the intelligibility of speech between interlocutors for EIC (English for International Communication). The slow-down facility is a CALL tool which slows down speech without tonal distortion. It allows English language learners more processing time to hear individual phonemes as produced in the stream of connected speech, to help them hear and produce phonemes more accurately and thus more intelligibly. The study involved five tests, all concerned with the intelligibility of English speech. The first test looked at L2:L2 English communication and levels of receptive intelligibility, while Tests 2 and 3 focused on testing the slow-down for receptive communication – to help L2 users to process speech by slowing it down and thus making the speech signal more accessible. Tests 4 and 5 changed focus, testing the slow-down speech tool as a means of enhancing the intelligibility of L2 speech production, namely individual phoneme production, as little research has been carried out in this area and phoneme discrimination can greatly increase the intelligibility of an L2 speaker’s pronunciation. Test 5, the main test, used a qualitative analysis of a pre- and post test and a number of questionnaires to assess subjects’ progress in developing intelligible English phoneme production across three groups: the Test Group, who used the slow-down speech tool, the Control Group, who undertook similar pronunciation training but without the application of the slow-down tool and the Non-Interference Group, who received no formal pronunciation training whatsoever. The study also ascertained and evaluated the effects of other variables on the learning process, such as length of time learning English, daily use of English, attitudes to accents, and so forth

The Need for a Speech Corpus

This paper outlines the ongoing construction of a speech corpus for use by applied linguists and advanced EFL/ESL students. The first section establishes the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills and pronunciation practice for EFL/ESL students. It argues for the need to use authentic native-to-native speech in the teaching/learning process so as to promote social inclusion and contextualises this within the literature, based mainly on the work of Swan, Brown and McCarthy. The second part addresses features of native speech flow which cause difficulties for EFL/ESL students (Brown, Cauldwell) and establishes the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills. Examples are given of reduced forms characteristic of relaxed native speech, and how these can be made accessible for study using the Technological University Dublin’s slow-down technology, which gives students more time to study native speech features, without tonal distortion. The final section introduces a novel Speech Corpus being developed at DIT. It shows the limits of traditional corpora and outlines the general requirements of a Speech Corpus. This tool–which will satisfy the needs of teachers, learners and researchers–will link digitally recorded, natural, native-to-native speech so that each transcript segment will be linked to its associated sound file. Users will be able to locate desired speech strings, play, compare and contrast them—and slow them down for more detailed study

DIT’s Dynamic Speech Corpus and Dialogic Fluency

Monologic fluency is characterised by a lack of pauses and a smooth oral delivery. Dialogic fluency in L1-L1 unscripted speech, however, is characterized by seeming dis-fluency, hesitations, false starts etc. Yet the L1 speakers make perfect sense to each other. The Dynamic Speech Corpus (DSC) currently being developed under the FLUENT project at the Technological University Dublin (DIT). In dialogue, language represents only one of the communication channels at play in what is a dynamic, unscripted social interchange rather than a stand-alone linguistic performance. The language stream is supplemented by pragmatic considerations and a greater emphasis on prosody. DIT’s DSC is based on natural, native-to-native dialogues and recorded at a high level of audio quality and is being developed mainly for autonomous learners. It will afford access to a unique audio resource based on unscripted dialogues between friends and acquaintances, exemplifying informal, native-speaker speech and natural turn-taking, rather than scripted interactions. The presentation demonstrates how users can locate and study samples of L1-to-L1 speech, as well as various phonetic phenomena such as speed-induced elisions in their full, pragmatic, dialogic context. This will allow the learner user to focus on the manner in which native speakers produce reduced forms and slow them down for detailed study. The corpus will be a rich resource for users who wish to study the communicative value of prosody and formulaic sequences, and particular attention will be paid to turn-taking strategies, along with other forms of interaction, which some researchers see as a ‘fifth skill’

HTML5 and the Learner of Spoken Languages

Traditional corpora are not renowned for being user friendly. If learners are to derive maximum benefit from speech corpora, then better interfaces are needed. This paper proposes such a role for HTML5. DIT’s dynamic speech corpus, FLUENT, contains a limited series of informal dialogues between friends and acquaintances. They are characterised by naturalness and their audio quality and marked-up using a schema which allows learners to retrieve features of spoken language, such as speaker intention, formulaicity and prosodic characteristics such as speed of delivery. The requirement to combine audio assets and synchronous text animation has in the past necessitated the use of browser ‘plug-in’ technologies, such as Adobe Flash. Plug-in-based systems all suffer from major drawbacks. They are not installed by default on deployed browsers. More critically they obscure the underlying speech corpus structure. Also proprietary UIs offer no standard way of dealing with accessibility or dynamic interface reconfiguration, e.g. moving from corpus playback to concordance views. This makes design of a unified interface framework, with audio playback, synchronous text and speech, more difficult. Given the profusion of plug-in architectures and plug-in types, it is clear that such an environment is unsustainable for building tools for speech corpus visualisation. In order to overcome these challenges, FLUENT drew heavily on the HTML5 specification coupled with a user-centred design for L2 learners to specify and develop scalable, reusable and accessible UIs for many devices.This paper describes the design of the corpus schema and its close integration with the UI model

Dialogic Fluency - Why it Matters

Speech as an LSP: Many dialogues presented to language learners could be better described as ‘interleaved mini-monologues’, their purpose being to provide examples of grammatical sentences in realistic settings. Real dialogues, on the other hand, are worked out ‘live’, with neither speaker knowing in detail where the conversation will lead. Speaker interaction is marked to a large extent by prosody and often even good communicators sound disfluent if their half of the dialogue is judged in isolation. Dialogic fluency: The objective of dialoguing L1 speakers, however, is to realise a social or personal goal, with language only part of effective communication. Possibly the bulk of the communication devolves to prosody, shared knowledge and body language. Whereas this might not be a mainstream production goal for language learners, all users of English as an international language likely to come into contact with native speakers should be sensitised to native-speaker prosody. Influence of live dialogue on speech production: Given that the aim of an L1-L1 dialogue is not to provide learners with sample sentences, but rather to use language as a key factor in a social encounter, learners need a tool which will allow them to study the interaction of real dialogues. Of particular interest is the turn-taking behaviour of speakers, which is often flagged prosodically and produces utterances which, on the surface seem disfluent, but which on further analysis are seen to have an interactive function. The production of such a tool is the aim of the Dynamic Speech Corpus (DSC)

Natural English in Speaking and Listening Activities

DIT Speech Research Cluster will present recommendations for materials development based on the technologies and methodologies they are developing in the area of listening skills and the use of natural English in learning situations. The first speaker will address features of native speech flow which cause difficulties for EFL students (Brown, Cauldwell) and establish the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills. She will give examples of elision, assimilation and weak forms, and how these can be made accessible for study using DIT’s slow-down technology, which gives students more time to study native speech features, without tonal distortion. The second speaker will establish the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills and pronunciation practice for EFL students. She will demonstrate the need to use authentic native-to-native speech in the teaching/learning process so as to promote their social inclusion and contextualise this within the literature, based on the work of Swan, Brown and McCarthy. Suggestions will be made as to the types of exercise materials which would best suit the computer-based technology. The third speaker will take a corpus linguistic approach and introduce a novel Speech Corpus being developed at DIT. He will show the limits of current corpora and outline the general requirements of a Speech Corpus. This tool - which will satisfy the needs of teachers, learners and researchers- will link digitally recorded, natural, native-native speech acts in such a way that each transcript segment will be linked to its associated sound file. Users will be able to locate desired speech strings, play, compare and contrast them, and slow them down for more detailed study

DIT Speech Corpus

DIT’s nascent speech corpus will allow a body of spoken material to be searched for features of informal native speech via a normalised transcription. Once located, the original sound files can be played at normal speed or slowed down in order to better study the recorded speech. The DIT speech corpus treats speed of delivery as a key element in producing the elisions, assimilation, reductions and co-articulations characteristic of native-to-native dialogues. Lack of training in dealing with this spoken register can lead to lack of preparation for the world of real speech and even to a degree of social exclusion. It is also envisaged that non-native speech will be included in the corpus so that comparisons can be drawn between native speech and that of various nativised productions of the same items. The database will therefore be capable of being queried on a multi-factorial basis depending on user needs. The optimal segmentation of the normalised transcript is, however, far from clear, and some of the difficulties will be touched on by this presentation. While the tone unit, as proposed by David Brazil, for example, is attractive as a base unit for displaying the concordanced speech corpus, it nevertheless raises problems when there is a discrepancy between semantic segmentation and actual phonetic delivery. The rationale for the currently adopted minimal unit will be explained and members of the audience will be invited to offer feedback on any requirements their own use of corpora would place on the database

The DIT Dynamic Speech Corpus

This presentation will outline the current development and functionalities of the DIT Dynamic Speech Corpus which is based on natural, informal dialogue and recorded at a high level of audio quality. The presenters will demonstrate how learners can find samples of native-to-native speech (in various L1 varieties) on a chosen topic and, in particular, speed-induced elisions, co-articulations and reductions, studying sequences in their full, natural, dialogic environment. At all stages users will be able to slow down sequences to study how native speakers produce them. First data on the acceptability and effectiveness of the slow-down technology will also be presented

DIT’s Dynamic Speech Corpus

Given the current focus of language learning on learner autonomy, the Dublin Institute of Technology is using its FLUENT project (commencement date 7/1/’08) to produce a Dynamic Speech Corpus, which will be a valuable resource for learners, teachers, authors and researchers. The resultant database will afford access to a unique audio resource based on unscripted dialogues between friends, characterized by industry-standard audio quality (for analysis purposes) and a high degree of naturalness. By means of search string and/or tags such as speaker intention, users will be able to find samples of native-to-native speech (various L1 varieties) on a chosen topic, particularly speed-induced elisions, reductions and vowel centralizations. They will also be able to study sequences of interest in their full, natural, dialogic environment. They will be able to listen to and contrast what Cauldwell (2002) calls the ‘blur of natural speech’ with its orthographic, ‘static’ counterpart, thus allowing them to focus on the manner in which native speakers produce those difficult reduced forms of English. At all stages the user will be able to slow down sequences for heightened intelligibility. The presentation will outline how a scaffolding approach will allow students following any learning method to derive benefit from the Dynamic Speech Corpus