Promoting Increased Pitch Variation in Oral Presentations with Transient Visual Feedback

This paper investigates learner response to a novel kind of intonation feedback generated from speech analysis. Instead of displays of pitch curves, the feedback our system produces is flashing lights of different colors, which show how much pitch variation the speaker has produced rather than an absolute measure of frequency. The variable used to generate the feedback is the standard deviation of fundamental frequency (as measured in semitones) over the previous ten seconds of speech. Flat or monotone speech causes the system to show yellow lights, while more expressive speech that has used pitch to give focus to any part of an utterance generates green lights. The system is designed to be used with free, rather than modeled, speech. Participants in the study were 14 Chinese-native students of English at intermediate and advanced levels. A group that received feedback was compared with a group that received no feedback other than the ability to listen to recordings of their speech, with the hypothesis that the feedback would stimulate the development of a speaking style that used more pitch variation. Pitch variation was measured at four stages of our study: in a baseline oral presentation; for the first and second halves of roughly three hours of training; and finally in the production of a new oral presentation. Both groups increased their pitch variation with training, and the effect lasted after the training had ended. The test group showed a significantly higher increase than the control group, indicating that the feedback is effective. These positive results imply that the feedback could be beneficially used in a system for practicing oral presentations

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: CMB Polarization at 200<ℓ<9000200<\ell<9000

We report on measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and celestial polarization at 146 GHz made with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol) in its first three months of observing. Four regions of sky covering a total of 270 square degrees were mapped with an angular resolution of $1.3'$. The map noise levels in the four regions are between 11 and 17 $\mu$K-arcmin. We present TT, TE, EE, TB, EB, and BB power spectra from three of these regions. The observed E-mode polarization power spectrum, displaying six acoustic peaks in the range $200<\ell<3000$, is an excellent fit to the prediction of the best-fit cosmological models from WMAP9+ACT and Planck data. The polarization power spectrum, which mainly reflects primordial plasma velocity perturbations, provides an independent determination of cosmological parameters consistent with those based on the temperature power spectrum, which results mostly from primordial density perturbations. We find that without masking any point sources in the EE data at $\ell<9000$, the Poisson tail of the EE power spectrum due to polarized point sources has an amplitude less than $2.4$ $\mu$K$^2$ at $\ell = 3000$ at 95\% confidence. Finally, we report that the Crab Nebula, an important polarization calibration source at microwave frequencies, has 8.7\% polarization with an angle of $150.7^\circ \pm 0.6^\circ$ when smoothed with a $5'$ Gaussian beam.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures, 5 table

Pronunciation Assessment Using Speech Technology

After decades of research, language technologies finally entered the mass market in the fall of 2011 with the release of the iPhone 4, whose main innovation was the introduction of Siri, the virtual, speech-directed personal assistant. As we become more comfortable with speech interfaces, we can expect growing trust in their use for pedagogical purposes. Language technologies are, relatively speaking, better at assessing pronunciation than at teaching it. Speech recognition (ASR) can identify deviant phonemes, without being able to easily provide a learner with information about what needs to be adjusted in terms of articulation. My contribution to the round table will report on the research challenges faced by engineers designing pronunciation training and assessment systems, and evaluate the strengths and weakness of automatic pronunciation testing.QC 20191115</p

Computer support for learners of spoken English

This thesis concerns the use of speech technology to support the process of learning the English language. It applies theories of computer-assisted language learning and second language acquisition to address the needs of beginning, intermediate and advanced students of English for specific purposes. The thesis includes an evaluation of speech-recognition-based pronunciation software, based on a controlled study of a group of immigrant engineers. The study finds that while the weaker students may have benefited from their software practice, the pronun¬ciation ability of the better students did not improve. The linguistic needs of advanced and intermediate Swedish-native students of English are addressed in a study using multimodal speech synthesis in an interactive exercise demonstrating differences in the placement of lexical stress in two Swedish-English cognates. A speech database consisting of 28 ten-minute oral presentations made by these learners is described, and an analysis of pronunciation errors is pre¬sented. Eighteen of the presentations are further analyzed with regard to the normalized standard deviation of fundamental frequency over 10-second long samples of speech, termed pitch variation quotient (PVQ). The PVQ is found to range from 6% to 34% in samples of speech, with mean levels of PVQ per presentation ranging from 11% to 24%. Males are found to use more pitch variation than females. Females who are more proficient in English use more pitch variation than the less profi¬cient females. A perceptual experiment tests the relationship between PVQ and impressions of speaker liveliness. An overall correlation of .83 is found. Temporal variables in the presentation speech are also studied. A bilingual database where five speakers make the same presentation in both English and Swedish is studied to examine effects of using a second language on presentation prosody. Little intra-speaker difference in pitch variation is found, but these speakers speak on average 20% faster when using their native language. The thesis concludes with a discussion of how the results could be applied in a proposed feedback mechanism for practicing and assessing oral presentations, concept¬ualized as a ‘speech checker.’ Potential users of the system would include native as well as non-native speakers of English.QC 2010102

Recently hired tenure-track faculty and Swedish : An unsolicited report for KTH leadership

The new KTH development plan acknowledges that many KTH environments are no longer bilingual, and that efforts must be made to strengthen the position of Swedish. Unfortunately, it appears that many KTH leaders underestimate the time and resources necessary for most adults to learn a second language to the high proficiency level necessary for teaching or for academic leadership. An examination of job advertisements found that it is at present a common practice across northern Europe to specify that applicants to faculty positions be prepared to learn the local language well enough to use it for teaching within two years. The language expectations placed on newly hired KTH faculty hired to tenure-track positions were investigated to find out what extent this is true at KTH. Of 49 non-Swedish speakers who answered a survey, eight were met with the teaching-within-two-year expectation when hired, and 14 are meeting the expectation at present. The Swedish learning is to take place mostly in one’s free time, and little progress toward adequate proficiency is being made among the faculty. These findings are discussed in light of what is known about the time it takes for adults to learn a second language to a high level of professional proficiency. If departments seriously expect transnational faculty to teach in Swedish within two years, they should allow the individual the equivalent of six months of full-time study of the language. A more reasonable timeframe for learning high-proficiency Swedish would be five or six years. Language-learning plans should be written for all new hires to tenure-track positions, and followed up at regular intervals.QC 20190329</p

Pronunciation Assessment Using Speech Technology

After decades of research, language technologies finally entered the mass market in the fall of 2011 with the release of the iPhone 4, whose main innovation was the introduction of Siri, the virtual, speech-directed personal assistant. As we become more comfortable with speech interfaces, we can expect growing trust in their use for pedagogical purposes. Language technologies are, relatively speaking, better at assessing pronunciation than at teaching it. Speech recognition (ASR) can identify deviant phonemes, without being able to easily provide a learner with information about what needs to be adjusted in terms of articulation. My contribution to the round table will report on the research challenges faced by engineers designing pronunciation training and assessment systems, and evaluate the strengths and weakness of automatic pronunciation testing.QC 20191115</p

Recently hired tenure-track faculty and Swedish : An unsolicited report for KTH leadership

The new KTH development plan acknowledges that many KTH environments are no longer bilingual, and that efforts must be made to strengthen the position of Swedish. Unfortunately, it appears that many KTH leaders underestimate the time and resources necessary for most adults to learn a second language to the high proficiency level necessary for teaching or for academic leadership. An examination of job advertisements found that it is at present a common practice across northern Europe to specify that applicants to faculty positions be prepared to learn the local language well enough to use it for teaching within two years. The language expectations placed on newly hired KTH faculty hired to tenure-track positions were investigated to find out what extent this is true at KTH. Of 49 non-Swedish speakers who answered a survey, eight were met with the teaching-within-two-year expectation when hired, and 14 are meeting the expectation at present. The Swedish learning is to take place mostly in one’s free time, and little progress toward adequate proficiency is being made among the faculty. These findings are discussed in light of what is known about the time it takes for adults to learn a second language to a high level of professional proficiency. If departments seriously expect transnational faculty to teach in Swedish within two years, they should allow the individual the equivalent of six months of full-time study of the language. A more reasonable timeframe for learning high-proficiency Swedish would be five or six years. Language-learning plans should be written for all new hires to tenure-track positions, and followed up at regular intervals.QC 20190329</p