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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Pronunciation'
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Erichsen, Stian. "Evaluating Vowel Pronunciation in Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training." Thesis, Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, Institutt for elektronikk og telekommunikasjon, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:no:ntnu:diva-13377.
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Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) applications are tools that can be used when learning a second language. By evaluating the speech of a student, the CAPT system is able to give automatic feedback on his or her pronunciation performance.Two important properties in Norwegian pronunciation is the quantity and quality of the vowels. It is therefore important that students get to practice this.Feedback was produced by an ASR based CAPT system, where a speech recognizer evaluated the pronunciation produced by different speakers. However, sind ASR is prone to errors, verification was later performed to test the correctness of the recognizers results.The recognizer had an error-rate of 7.5 % when evaluating vowel quantity, and an error rate of 42.1 % when evaluating vowel quality. After verification, the first error rate was reduced to 1.35 % by rejecting 7.2 % of the results. The second error rate was reduced to 27,7 % by rejecting 23.5 of the results.The use of such a system could therefore be justified for evaluating the vowel quantity in the pronunciation, but not vowel quality.
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Versvik, Eivind. "Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training : Evaluation of non-native vowel length pronunciation." Thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, 2009. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:no:ntnu:diva-9016.
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Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training systems have become popular tools to train on second languages. Many second language learners prefer to train on pronunciation in a stress free environment with no other listeners. There exists no such tool for training on pronunciation of the Norwegian language. Pronunciation exercises in training systems should be directed at important properties in the language which the second language learners are not familiar with. In Norwegian two acoustically similar words can be contrasted by the vowel length, these words are called vowel length words. The vowel length is not important in many other languages. This master thesis has examined how to make the part of a Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training system which can evaluate non-native vowel length pronunciations. To evaluate vowel length pronunciations a vowel length classifier was developed. The approach was to segment utterances using automatic methods (Dynamic Time Warping and Hidden Markov Models). The segmented utterances were used to extract several classification features. A linear classifier was used to discriminate between short and long vowel length pronunciations. The classifier was trained by the Fisher Linear Discriminant principle. A database of Norwegian words of minimal pairs with respect to vowel length was recorded. Recordings from native Norwegians were used for training the classifier. Recordings from non-natives (Chinese and Iranians) were used for testing, resulting in an error rate of 6.7%. Further, confidence measures were used to improve the error rate to 3.4% by discarding 8.3% of the utterances. It could be argued that more than half of the discarded utterances were correctly discarded because of errors in the pronunciation. A CAPT demo, which was developed in an former assignment, was improved to use classifiers trained with the described approach.
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Liu, Yang. "The effectiveness of integrating commercial pronunciation software into an ESL pronunciation class." [Ames, Iowa : Iowa State University], 2008.
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Davel, Marelie Hattingh. "Pronunciation modelling and bootstrapping." Thesis, Pretoria : [s.n.], 2005. http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-10112005-150530.
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Centerman, Sofi, and Felix Krausz. "Common L2 Pronunciation Errors." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Lärarutbildningen (LUT), 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-32834.
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The present study focuses on students at two Swedish secondary schools and the pronunciation errors that are the most prominent during reception and production of specific speech sounds. The primary focus of this degree paper is to establish whether or not certain speech sounds such as e.g. the /tʃ/ sound, which do not occur in the Swedish language in initial position are difficult or not and whether or not they act as an obstacle for Swedish students learning English as their L2. The aim was to establish which specific pronunciation errors that occurred in the L2 language classroom. Since this was the aim, primarily quantitative studies were carried out at two secondary schools in southern Sweden. The results from the four different tests show that the tested Swedish L2 students seem to have a greater difficulty with speech sounds placed in initial position than in final position of a specific word. According to this degree paper this is due to the fact that the Swedish language does not have an equivalent to the difficult speech sound in initial position, therefore making it difficult and often resulting in negative transfer from the L1. Furthermore, the English sounds that posed the biggest problems for the students were ones that sometimes can be found in the Swedish language. These sounds were very similar to native sounds creating a challenge for the Swedish students when perceiving and producing the English sounds. However, it was shown that when these sounds were presented in a context, they proved to be less challenging for the students to receive and produce. Moreover, although the syllabus only mentions that communication should be functional, there still needs to be an element of focus on form in order to become a proficient language user.
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Eckstein, Grant Taylor. "A Correlation of Pronunciation Learning Strategies with Spontaneous English Pronunciation of Adult ESL Learners." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2007. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/973.
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In the last thirty years, language learning strategies have been used in the field of English as a Second Language (ESL) to help learners autonomously improve their English listening, speaking, reading, and writing. However, language learning strategies have not been applied to pronunciation learning in a large scale manner. This study attempted to bridge this gap by investigating the usage of pronunciation learning strategies among adult ESL learners. A strategic pronunciation learning scale (SPLS) was administered to 183 adult ESL learners in an Intensive English Program. Their scores on the SPLS were compared with their scores of spontaneous pronunciation on a program-end speaking assignment. A stepwise regression analysis showed that frequently noticing other's English mistakes, asking for pronunciation help, and adjusting facial muscles all correlated significantly with higher spontaneous pronunciation skill. Other analyses suggested that strong pronunciation learners used pronunciation learning strategies more frequently than poorer learners. Finally, a taxonomy is proposed that categorizes pronunciation learning strategies into pedagogically-founded groups based on Kolb's (1984) learning construct and four stages of pronunciation acquisition: input/practice, noticing/feedback, hypothesis forming, and hypothesis testing. This taxonomy connects language learning strategies to pronunciation acquisition research.
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Robins, Seth L. "Examining the Effects of Pronunciation Strategy Usage on Pronunciation Gains by L2 Japanese Learners." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2010. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2840.
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Language learning strategies have become an important element of second language acquisition research over the course of the last few decades. Much research on these strategies has been dedicated to speaking, reading, and other language skill sets. However, one essential skill needed for communication is pronunciation. No matter how proficient other areas of linguistic ability may be, it can be difficult to interact effectively with native speakers if one's pronunciation is poor. Yet research dedicated to pronunciation and language learning strategies is in surprisingly short supply. Of those studies that have researched pronunciation strategies, some have been dedicated to discovering new pronunciation strategies (Derwing & Rossiter, 2002; Osburne, 2003; and Vitanova & Miller, 2002), while others (Peterson, 2000) categorized pronunciation strategies using a well known strategy inventory. However, there is one study that has gone in a different direction concerning pronunciation strategies. Rather than categorize pronunciation strategies using a strategy taxonomy like Oxford (1990), Eckstein (2007) categorized pronunciation strategies using Kolb's (1984) Experiential Learning Cycle model and found significant effects between pronunciation accuracy and use of pronunciation strategies mapped using Eckstein's (2007) Pronunciation Acquisition Construct (PAC).The present study tested the PAC by teaching pronunciation strategies to L2 Japanese learners. The aim of the current study was to examine the effect of pronunciation strategy usage categorized using the PAC upon pronunciation gains and to examine learner differences based upon pronunciation gains and strategy usage. In doing so, significant gains were found in contextualized pronunciation. Additionally, subjects who more frequently used the strategy "think of benefits to be gained by improving pronunciation", a motivation strategy, were found to show higher levels of pronunciation gain in a non-contextualized pronunciation environment.
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(UPC), Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. "Pronunciation and phonetics - TR192 201801." Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC), 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10757/623641.
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El curso Pronunciation and Phonetics es un curso de especialidad de la Carrera de Traducción e Interpretación
Profesional. Pronunciation and Phonetics realiza un profundo análisis y exploración de los fundamentos
introductorios de la fonética y fonología de la lengua inglesa que serán llevados a la práctica mediante la
realización de transcripciones fonéticas de textos cortos utilizando el Alfabeto Fonético Internacional (AFI).
Así, el curso busca desarrollar habilidades específicas que contribuirán al uso correcto y eficiente de la oralidad
de la lengua inglesa.
El curso Pronunciation and Phonetics ha sido diseñado con el propósito de permitir al futuro traductor intérprete
desarrollar sus competencias orales en inglés a través de la aplicación de saberes y estrategias que se verán
directamente reflejados en la correcta pronunciación y mayor fluidez en esta lengua, potenciando así su
ejercicio profesional. El curso contribuye directamente al desarrollo de las competencias de Comunicación Oral
(general-UPC) y, específica de Segundas Lenguas, ambas a nivel 3. Pronunciation and Phonetics tiene como
pre-requisito el curso de Inglés TI4.
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Alsabaan, Majed Soliman K. "Pronunciation support for Arabic learners." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2015. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/pronunciation-support-for-arabic-learners(3db28816-90ed-4e8b-b64c-4bbd35f98be7).html.
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The aim of the thesis is to find out whether providing feedback to Arabic language learners will help them improve their pronunciation, particularly of words involving sounds that are not distinguished in their native languages. In addition, it aims to find out, if possible, what type of feedback will be most helpful. In order to achieve this aim, we developed a computational tool with a number of component sub tools. These tools involve the implementation of several substantial pieces of software. The first task was to ensure the system we were building could distinguish between the more challenging sounds when they were produced by a native speaker, since without that it will not be possible to classify learners’ attempts at these sounds. To this end, a number of experiments were carried out with the hidden Markov model toolkit (the HTK), a well known speech recognition toolkit, in order to ensure that it can distinguish between the confusable sounds, i.e. the ones that people have difficulty with. The developed computational tool analyses the differences between the user’s pronunciation and that of a native speaker by using grammar of minimal pairs, where each utterance is treated as coming from a family of similar words. This provides the ability to categorise learners’ errors - if someone is trying to say cat and the recogniser thinks they have said cad then it is likely that they are voicing the final consonant when it should be unvoiced. Extensive testing shows that the system can reliably distinguish such minimal pairs when they are produced by a native speaker, and that this approach does provide effective diagnostic information about errors. The tool provides feedback in three different sub-tools: as an animation of the vocal tract, as a synthesised version of the target utterance, and as a set of written instructions. The tool was evaluated by placing it in a classroom setting and asking 50 Arabic students to use the different versions of the tool. Each student had a thirty minute session with the tool, working their way through a set of pronunciation exercises at their own pace. The results of this group showed that their pronunciation does improve over the course of the session, though it was not possible to determine whether the improvement is sustained over an extended period. The evaluation was done from three points of view: quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, and using a questionnaire. Firstly, the quantitative analysis gives raw numbers telling whether a learner had improved their pronunciation or not. Secondly, the qualitative analysis shows a behaviour pattern of what a learner did and how they used the tool. Thirdly, the questionnaire gives feedback from learners and their comments about the tool. We found that providing feedback does appear to help Arabic language learners, but we did not have enough data to see which form of feedback is most helpful. However, we provided an informative analysis of behaviour patterns to see how Arabic students used the tool and interacted with it, which could be useful for more data analysis.
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Flisberg, Julia. "English pronunciation in Swedish Upper Secondary School Students : A qualitative study of Swedish students’ pronunciation tendencies." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-165479.
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Geographically, Sweden is significantly closer to England as opposed to America, two English speaking countries with two rather different varieties of the language. With regard to Britain’s history of colonization it could be assumed that British English (RP-variety) would be most frequently used globally. However, America’s power position in politics, economics, international businesses, and movie industries have contributed to making the American English (GA-variety) the more predominantly used variety of the two (Barber, 2000, p. 236). In the different varieties, the vowels /əu/ /ou/ /ju:/ /u:/ /ɑ:/ /æ/ /ɒ/ /ɑ/ /aɪ/ /i:/ and the consonants /ə/ /r/ /t/ /d/ show the most prominent difference in pronounciation (Navrátilová, 2013). Furthermore, Axelsson (2002, p.144) (in Alftberg, 2009, p. 4) claims that with regard to the previously mentioned factors, Swedish students come in contact with several different varieties of English on a daily basis, thus a one-accent-only approach seems outdated for learning purposes. In addition to this, the syllabus for teaching English in Sweden, LGY11 (SNAE, 2011) lays focus, not explicitly on pronunciation, but on intonation and fluency, two factors which are certainly affected by one’s pronunciation and prosody. The document also emphasizes the importance of incorporating different varieties of English from different English speaking cultures and countries into the lessons (SNAE, 2011).This raised the question of whether or not Swedish upper secondary school students tend to follow the global Americanization of pronunciation, if they still adhere to using RP due to its geographical proximity and former prestige, or if they mix different varieties. Therefore, a study was conducted on Swedish students’ pronunciation tendencies and attitudes towards different pronunciations. 58% of the students claimed to use GA and said that TV/YouTube is where they hear English the most. Only 17% claimed they used RP. However, the recordings of the students indicated that the majority used a mixture of the two, and only one student was completely consistent in their variety. Keywords: English pronunciation, Sweden, General American, Received Pronunciation, Teaching, Upper secondary school
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Peterson, Susan S. "Pronunciation Learning Strategies and Learning Strategies Related to Pronunciation Ability in American University Students Studying Spanish." The Ohio State University, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1394793631.
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Oviedo, Kerry Thomson. "The second language learner and pronunciation." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UFPR, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1884/22508.
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Resumo: O presente estudo investiga a problemática das diferenças de precisão da pronúncia em estudantes que estudam inglês como segunda língua. Este tema foi considerado no contexto geral da aprendizagem de uma segunda língua. A pesquisa abrange um estudo bibliográfico de um modelo de aprendizagem de uma segunda língua e vários estudos teóricos e experimentais de fatores que influem na aprendizagem da pronúncia. O estudo das fontes citadas indica que: 1. Todo o aprendizando em condições fisiológicas normais tem a habilidade inata de aprender a pronúncia de uma segunda língua; 2. Esta habilidade poderá sofrer modificações por variáveis individuais do aprendizando tais como idade, estilo cognitivo, experiência de aprendizagem de língua, atitudes, motivação, aptidão inata de expressão oral, personalidade e outras. 3. A aquisição de uma pronúncia inteligível requer contacto com a língua que contém as variedades suficientes para a aquisição de informações adequadas sobre os aspectos fonológicos e fonéticos da língua em questão. Tais informações são exigidas para a eficiente operação de tais processos comuns a toda a aprendizagem da segunda língua, incluindo a pronúncia. 4. A aprendizagem da pronúncia é facilitada se os estudantes são treinados na prática formal e funcional durante o contacto com a língua enfocada; em práctica formal e inferência para o processamento da informação obtida, bem como em controlar e inferir para a formação de respostas lingüisticas. 5. O objetivo de uma pronúncia similar à do nativo ê accessível àqueles aprendizandos que realizam uma identificação com a cultura em questão, utilizando as estratégias de aprendizagem para adquirir aqueles aspectos que distinguem a pronúncia do dialeto que foi selecionado como modelo. 6. Alguns aprendizandos de inglês, como segunda língua, tem uma pronúncia mais acurada do que outros porque suas características individuais de aprendizando o dispuseram a fazer maior uso das estratégias de aprendizagem.
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Badr, Ibrahim. "Pronunciation learning for automatic speech recognition." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/66022.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-101).
In many ways, the lexicon remains the Achilles heel of modern automatic speech recognizers (ASRs). Unlike stochastic acoustic and language models that learn the values of their parameters from training data, the baseform pronunciations of words in an ASR vocabulary are typically specified manually, and do not change, unless they are edited by an expert. Our work presents a novel generative framework that uses speech data to learn stochastic lexicons, thereby taking a step towards alleviating the need for manual intervention and automnatically learning high-quality baseform pronunciations for words. We test our model on a variety of domains: an isolated-word telephone speech corpus, a weather query corpus and an academic lecture corpus. We show significant improvements of 25%, 15% and 2% over expert-pronunciation lexicons, respectively. We also show that further improvements can be made by combining our pronunciation learning framework with acoustic model training.
by Ibrahim Badr.
S.M.
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Loots, Linsen. "Data-driven augmentation of pronunciation dictionaries." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/4212.
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Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates various data-driven techniques by which pronunciation dictionaries can be automatically augmented. First, well-established grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion techniques are evaluated for Standard South African English (SSAE), British English (RP) and American English (GenAm) by means of four appropriate dictionaries: SAEDICT, BEEP, CMUDICT and PRONLEX. Next, the decision tree algorithm is extended to allow the conversion of pronunciations between different accents by means of phoneme-to-phoneme (P2P) and grapheme-andphoneme- to-phoneme (GP2P) conversion. P2P conversion uses the phonemes of the source accent as input to the decision trees. GP2P conversion further incorporates the graphemes into the decision tree input. Both P2P and GP2P conversion are evaluated using the four dictionaries. It is found that, when the pronunciation is needed for a word not present in the target accent, it is substantially more accurate to modify an existing pronunciation from a different accent, than to derive it from the word’s spelling using G2P conversion. When converting between accents, GP2P conversion provides a significant further increase in performance above P2P. Finally, experiments are performed to determine how large a training dictionary is required in a target accent for G2P, P2P and GP2P conversion. It is found that GP2P conversion requires less training data than P2P and substantially less than G2P conversion. Furthermore, it is found that very little training data is needed for GP2P to perform at almost maximum accuracy. The bulk of the accuracy is achieved within the initial 500 words, and after 3000 words there is almost no further improvement. Some specific approaches to compiling the best training set are also considered. By means of an iterative greedy algorithm an optimal ranking of words to be included in the training set is discovered. Using this set is shown to lead to substantially better GP2P performance for the same training set size in comparison with alternative approaches such as the use of phonetically rich words or random selections. A mere 25 words of training data from this optimal set already achieve an accuracy within 1% of that of the full training dictionary.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek verskeie data-gedrewe tegnieke waarmee uitspraakwoordeboeke outomaties aangevul kan word. Eerstens word gevestigde grafeem-na-foneem (G2P) omskakelingstegnieke ge¨evalueer vir Standaard Suid-Afrikaanse Engels (SSAE), Britse Engels (RP) en Amerikaanse Engels (GenAm) deur middel van vier geskikte woordeboeke: SAEDICT, BEEP, CMUDICT en PRONLEX. Voorts word die beslissingsboomalgoritme uitgebrei om die omskakeling van uitsprake tussen verskillende aksente moontlik te maak, deur middel van foneem-na-foneem (P2P) en grafeem-en-foneem-na-foneem (GP2P) omskakeling. P2P omskakeling gebruik die foneme van die bronaksent as inset vir die beslissingsbome. GP2P omskakeling inkorporeer verder die grafeme by die inset. Beide P2P en GP2P omskakeling word evalueer deur middel van die vier woordeboeke. Daar word bevind dat wanneer die uitspraak benodig word vir ’n woord wat nie in die teikenaksent teenwoordig is nie, dit bepaald meer akkuraat is om ’n bestaande uitspraak van ’n ander aksent aan te pas, as om dit af te lei vanuit die woord se spelling met G2P omskakeling. Wanneer daar tussen aksente omgeskakel word, gee GP2P omskakeling ’n verdere beduidende verbetering in akkuraatheid bo P2P. Laastens word eksperimente uitgevoer om die grootte te bepaal van die afrigtingswoordeboek wat benodig word in ’n teikenaksent vir G2P, P2P en GP2P omskakeling. Daar word bevind dat GP2P omskakeling minder afrigtingsdata as P2P en substansieel minder as G2P benodig. Verder word dit bevind dat baie min afrigtingsdata benodig word vir GP2P om teen bykans maksimum akkuraatheid te funksioneer. Die oorwig van die akkuraatheid word binne die eerste 500 woorde bereik, en n´a 3000 woorde is daar amper geen verdere verbetering nie. ’n Aantal spesifieke benaderings word ook oorweeg om die beste afrigtingstel saam te stel. Deur middel van ’n iteratiewe, gulsige algoritme word ’n optimale rangskikking van woorde bepaal vir insluiting by die afrigtingstel. Daar word getoon dat deur hierdie stel te gebruik, substansieel beter GP2P gedrag verkry word vir dieselfde grootte afrigtingstel in vergelyking met alternatiewe benaderings soos die gebruik van foneties-ryke woorde of lukrake seleksies. ’n Skamele 25 woorde uit hierdie optimale stel gee reeds ’n akkuraatheid binne 1% van di´e van die volle afrigtingswoordeboek.
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Madzo, Daniela. "Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Teaching English Pronunciation." Thesis, Jönköping University, Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-51748.
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This paper examines three English teachers’ attitudes towards teaching pronunciation. The teachers involved are teachers at upper-secondary level in Sweden. The study is based on a qualitative method, since the research involves collecting data to understand opinions and experiences. The data in this study are collected through semi-structured interviews to analyze teachers’ attitudes. All of the three teachers agreed on their students having good pronunciation and mentioned different sounds as pronunciation difficulties that are problematic for their students. Furthermore, the three teachers expressed that they avoid correcting their students most of the time, however, when the teachers correct their students, they usually use a corrective method that can be interpreted as implicit feedback. Earlier research has shown that explicit feedback is the most effective method to use in a teaching environment to make it possible for students to improve their pronunciation.
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Gonzalez, Johnson Aracelis Maydee. "Dialectal Allophonic Variation in L2 Pronunciation." OpenSIUC, 2012. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/783.
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This thesis investigated the realization of the English voiceless post-alveolar affricate and the voiceless post-alveolar fricative in native Panamanian speakers learning English as a second language. The Spanish of Panama has a typical deaffrication process where the post-alveolar affricate phoneme is mostly pronounced as a fricative; as a result, the Spanish affricate has two allophones, the voiceless post-alveolar affricate and the voiceless post-alveolar fricative that occur in free variation in the Spanish of Panama. The word positions tested were word initially and finally only. Thus, the purpose of the study was to determine the dominant sound in the Spanish of Panama, to identify dialectal allophonic transfer from the Spanish of Panama, and to verify the accomplishment of the phonemic split in English through the frequency of usage of the target sounds. Subsequently, in order to exemplify the deaffrication phonological process of Panama, I developed and discussed a Feature Geometry of the Spanish language along with the Underspecified consonants of the Spanish language. In addition, I tested three main theories about acquisition of contrastive target sounds, Markedness, and similarity and dissimilarity of sounds. The results showed that these Panamanian learners of English produced the English voiceless post-alveolar fricative significantly more target appropriately than the English voiceless post-alveolar affricate. This indicates that the dominant sound in the Spanish of Panama is the dialectal allophone, the voiceless post-alveolar fricative, which I suggest may become the default post-alveolar phoneme in the Spanish of Panama. Subsequently, the high frequency of the voiceless post-alveolar fricative also indicates that the participants transferred their Panamanian Spanish dialectal allophone, the voiceless post-alveolar fricative, into English and more importantly, they have not reached the phonemic split for these two English target sounds. Taking the dialectal allophone, the voiceless post-alveolar fricative, as the default post-alveolar phoneme in the Spanish of Panama, The Markedness Differential Hypothesis (Eckman, 1977) accounts for the observed trends described as follows: the learning of the less marked sound (English voiceless post-alveolar fricative) was easier to acquire and the learning of the more marked sound (English voiceless post-alveolar affricate) was difficult to acquire.
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Jande, Per-Anders. "Modelling Phone-Level Pronunciation in Discourse Context." Doctoral thesis, Stockholm : Department of Speech, Music and Hearing, Computer Science and Communication, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan (KTH), 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-4202.
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Aarinen, J. (Jenni). "Teaching and learning English pronunciation in Finland." Bachelor's thesis, University of Oulu, 2019. http://jultika.oulu.fi/Record/nbnfioulu-201905111724.
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Abstract. The purpose of this Bachelor’s thesis is to review existing literature regarding the teaching and learning of English pronunciation with the perspective of Finnish education.
As English has become a worldwide language, in the future, people will need to be more adaptable to the versatile front of international spoken English, leading to the need for English as foreign language students to be able to understand and speak a comprehensible variation of it. Most students in Finland start learning English in the beginning of elementary school, and by the time they finish comprehensive school, they will be expected to understand various accents, and speak an intelligible variation of English themselves. However, students do not need to become ‘perfect pronouncers’, but confident and comprehensive users of spoken English (Atli & Bergil, 2012). This, already, establishes the need for quality pronunciation education.
In this thesis, schools’ explicit influence in the acquisition of pronunciation is looked through the general viewpoint of foreign language learning in Finland, before considering the importance and intelligibility issues of pronunciation teaching and learning. The aim of this literature review is to discover the methods and techniques used to teach English pronunciation to Finnish students, in addition to considering the various aspects affecting the optimization of the learning. Furthermore, it is found, that factors such as age, personal background and motivation affect the learning of English pronunciation. Also, the schools’ and teachers’ impact on the learning process are considered.
Pronunciation remains an integral part of language learning, and it should be given its due recognition in foreign language teaching and learning, as it paves way for intelligibility and comprehensibility.Tiivistelmä. Tämän kandidaatintyön tarkoitus on tarkastella olemassa olevaa kirjallisuutta englannin lausumisen opettamisesta ja oppimisesta Suomen koulutuksen näkökulmasta.
Koska englannista on tullut maailmanlaajuisesti käytetty kieli, ihmisten tulee tulevaisuudessa olla paremmin sopeutuvia sen monipuolisiin muotoihin. Tämä tarkoittaa, että englantia vieraana kielenä oppivan oppilaan tulee pystyä ymmärtämään ja puhumaan sitä ymmärrettävästi. Suurin osa suomalaisista oppilaista alkaa opiskelemaan englantia ala-asteen ensimmäisillä luokilla. Peruskoulun päättyessä heidän oletetaan myös ymmärtävän erilaisia englannin aksentteja ja puhesävyjä. Oppilaiden ei kuitenkaan tarvitse osata täydellistä englannin lausuntaa, mutta heidän toivotaan olevan itsevarmoja ja ymmärrettäviä englannin puhujia. Jo tämä vahvistaa englannin lausumisen opiskelun tarpeen.
Tässä kandidaatintyössä käydään läpi koulun vaikutusta englannin lausumisen oppimiseen vieraan kielen opetuksen näkökulmasta ennen lausumisen opiskelun tärkeyden ja ymmärrettävyyden käsittelyä. Tämän kirjallisuuskatsauksen tarkoitus on tarkastella suomenkielisten oppilaiden englannin lausumisen oppimisen menetelmiä ja toteutumista, sekä sen oppimisen mahdollistamista. Koulussa tapahtuvan opetuksen lisäksi tarkastellaan muita englannin lausunnan oppimiseen vaikuttavia tekijöitä, kuten oppilaan ikää, kielellistä taustaa sekä motivaatiota. Myös koulun ja opettajan rooleja oppimisen optimoinnissa käsitellään.
Lausunta on yksi kielen olennaisimmista osista, mikä tulee huomioida vieraan kielen opetuksessa ja oppimisessa, sillä se tukee oppilaan lausunnan ymmärrettävyyttä.
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Andersson, Sigrid. "Pronunciation Teaching in the Swedish EFL Classroom." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-34572.
Full textAbstract:
This essay aims to explore how Swedish teachers of English view the shift from a Native Speaker ideal to English as a Global Language in connection to pronunciation teaching. The essay also aims to explore how the teachers teach this in practice. By interviewing five professional teachers, the results of the study showed that most of the teachers did not teach pronunciation explicitly and believed that pronunciation teaching should be integrated into other parts of language learning. None of the teachers claimed to expect their students to be able to speak with a native accent but believed that the previous views on pronunciation teaching, to some extent, still lingers on. Furthermore, all teachers did use American English or British English when teaching pronunciation but did not expect their students to use these dialects when speaking English. The teachers believed that their students mainly spoke with a dialect influenced by American English since this dialect is what the students mostly hear outside the classroom.This essay is primarily relevant to Swedish EFL teachers and students who are becoming teachers of English, but this study may also contribute to global research within pronunciation teaching. Because of the lack of guidelines regarding pronunciation teaching in the syllabus, the insight in the views and teaching methods of pronunciation teaching can function as a guideline and inspiration for how to teach pronunciation in a continuously globalized world where the views on the English language continually changes.
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Liu, Yi. "Pronunciation modeling for spontaneous mandarin speech recognition /." View Abstract or Full-Text, 2002. http://library.ust.hk/cgi/db/thesis.pl?ELEC%202002%20LIU.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-177). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.
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Véliz, Campos Mauricio Enrique. "Pronunciation learning strategy use, aptitude, and their relationship with pronunciation performance of pre-service English language teachers in Chile." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/17794.
Full textAbstract:
The main objective of this thesis is to establish whether or not there is a relationship between (foreign) language aptitude, pronunciation learning strategies (PLSs), and pronunciation performance. Also, embedded in the major objective is the aim of uncovering which PLSs are most frequently used and which PLSs have been used for the longest period of time. Following a positivistic approach to research, through a correlational and statistically descriptive methodology, all participants were asked to take three tests, each of which was intended to gather data for the three major variables under consideration, namely an adapted version of the Strategic Pronunciation Learning Survey (SPLS), the first two sections of the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT), and a Pronunciation Test (PT), developed by the researcher. The study was conducted at a teacher education university in Chile, with a sample of 43 students, 24 of whom were Year 2 students and 19 were Year 3 students at the time of data collection. The results suggest that there is a good deal of coincidence between those PLSs that are used with the highest frequency and those used with the greatest duration. The results also indicate that the PLSs that are more frequently used and that have been used for the longest period of time by the participants seem to be of a cognitive type, following Oxford’s (1990) broad classification of learning strategies. Finally, the Spearman correlation tests and the diverse statistical models applied reveal that no major correlations were found between PLS frequency/duration and pronunciation accuracy; nor was a major correlation found between language aptitude and pronunciation accuracy. Nonetheless, the application of a statistical model comprising the most frequently used PLSs and those with the longest duration yielded a positive correlation between these PLSs and pronunciation intelligibility levels. Future studies incorporating motivational elements are required to establish how they correlate with pronunciation accuracy in particular. Similarly, research seeking to establish correlations between (a new version of) PLSs, grouped into factors through factor analysis, and pronunciation accuracy is recommended. Lastly, language aptitude – viewed, conceptualised, and quite possibly measured differently, considering differentiating elements (Robinson, 2007; Winke, 2013), is to be further examined to establish whether it can explain pronunciation accuracy in a larger sample of participants.
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Kivistö, de Souza Hanna. "Phonological awareness and pronunciation in a second language." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/393726.
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El propósito de esta tesis es incrementar el conocimiento de la consciencia fonológica en L2 a través de tres objetivos: estudiar la naturaleza de la consciencia fonológica en L2 y su relación con diferencias individuales, examinar la relación entre la consciencia fonológica y la pronunciación en L2, y desarrollar instrumentos para medir eficazmente consciencia fonológica en L2. La investigación previa sobre consciencia fonológica se ha centrado en la adquisición literaria de Ll. En el ámbito de SLA, consciencia fonológica ha sido examinada en su dimensión explícita. No obstante, aprendices de L2 rara vez son capaces de explicar aspectos de la pronunciación. En consecuencia, el presente estudio postula que la consciencia fonológica en L2 consiste mayoritariamente de conocimiento procedimental. Testamos la consciencia fonológica en L2 de 71 aprendices brasileños del inglés a través de tres tests específicos (fonémico, prosódico y fonotáctico). El rendimiento en estos tests fue relacionado con la pronunciación en L2 (medida como el grado de acento extranjero) y con experiencia y uso de L2 y competencia lingüística en L2. Además, 19 hablantes nativos de inglés realizaron los mismos tests de consciencia fonológica, posibilitando la comparativa de consciencia fonológica entre Ll y L2. Los resultados revelaron que los aprendices de L2 manifestaron un grado de consciencia fonológica significativamente menor que los hablantes nativos. Además, la consciencia fonológica en L2 explicó 32.8% de la varianza en la pronunciación en L2. Con respecto a las diferencias individuales, la competencia lingüística en L2 explicó variación única en consciencia fonológica en L2, mientras que el rol de la experiencia y uso de L2 resultaron inconclusos. Aparte de contribuir al conocimiento de la naturaleza de la consciencia fonológica en L2, los resultados tienen implicaciones pedagógicas importantes. El conocimiento de las lagunas en la consciencia fonológica de un aprendiz de L2 posibilita al profesor atraerlas hacia su atención, lo que podría reflejarse en la mejora de la pronunciación. Por último, se espera que los instrumentos desarrollados guíen futuros estudios en consciencia fonológica en L2.The objective of this dissertation is to increase knowledge about L2 phonological awareness through three research agendas: to investigate the nature of L2 phonological awareness in adult language learners and its relation to some individual differences, to examine the relationship between L2 phonological awareness and L2 pronunciation, and to create novel language-specific instruments to measure L2 phonological awareness reliably. Research on phonological awareness has focused on L1 literacy acquisition, where it has been understood as the ability to manipulate speech segments. In SLA, phonological awareness has been examined in its explicit dimension. Nevertheless, due to the special nature of L2 speech acquisition, L2 learners are rarely able to elaborate explicitly on aspects of pronunciation. Consequently, the present study advocates that L2 phonological awareness mainly consists of proceduralized knowledge. L1 BraziIian Portuguese learners of English (n=71) were tested on their awareness about the L2 phonological system through three domain-specific (segmental, suprasegmental and phonotactic) tasks. Performance in the L2 phonological awareness tasks was related to the participants' L2 pronunciation (measured with a Foreign Accent Rating Task) and to individual differences in the amount of L2 experience, L2 use and L2 proficiency. Additionally, 19 L1 American English speakers performed the same phonological awareness tasks, enabling comparison between L1 and L2 phonological awareness. The results revealed that L2 learners manifested significantly lower degrees of phonological awareness than L1 speakers. Moreover, L2 phonological awareness explained 32.8% of the variance in L2 pronunciation. As for the individual differences, L2 proficiency explained unique variance in L2 phonological awareness, whereas the role of L2 experience and use remained unsettled. Apart from contributing to our understanding of the nature of L2 phonological awareness, the findings of the present study have important pedagogical implications. Knowing the gaps in a language learner's L2 phonological awareness enables the instructor to bring them to the learner's attention, which in turn could be positively reflected in improved L2 pronunciation. Finally, the instruments developed for the present study are expected to guide further studies on L2 phonological awareness.
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Fritzsche, Kenneth H. "Visual feedback for a student learning language pronunciation." Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 1997. http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA336924.
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Qader, Raheel. "Pronunciation and disfluency modeling for expressive speech synthesis." Thesis, Rennes 1, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017REN1S076/document.
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Dans la première partie de cette thèse, nous présentons une nouvelle méthode de production de variantes de prononciations qui adapte des prononciations standards, c'est-à-dire issues d'un dictionnaire, à un style spontané. Cette méthode utilise une vaste gamme d'informations linguistiques, articulatoires et acoustiques, ainsi qu'un cadre probabiliste d'apprentissage automatique, à savoir les champs aléatoires conditionnels (CAC) et les modèles de langage. Nos expériences poussées sur le corpus Buckeye démontrent l'efficacité de l'approche à travers des évaluations objectives et perceptives. Des tests d'écoutes sur de la parole synthétisée montrent que les prononciations adaptées sont jugées plus spontanées que les prononciations standards, et même que celle réalisées par les locuteurs du corpus étudié. Par ailleurs, nous montrons que notre méthode peut être étendue à d'autres tâches d'adaptation, par exemple pour résoudre des problèmes d'incohérences entre les différentes séquences de phonèmes manipulées par un système de synthèse. La seconde partie de la thèse explore une nouvelle approche de production automatique de disfluences dans les énoncés en entrée d'un système de synthèse de la parole. L'approche proposée offre l'avantage de considérer plusieurs types de disfluences, à savoir des pauses, des répétitions et des révisions. Pour cela, nous présentons une formalisation novatrice du processus de production de disfluences à travers un mécanisme de composition de ces disfluences. Nous présentons une première implémentation de notre processus, elle aussi fondée sur des CAC et des modèles de langage, puis conduisons des évaluations objectives et perceptives. Celles-ci nous permettent de conclure à la bonne fonctionnalité de notre proposition et d'en discuter les pistes principales d'améliorationIn numerous domains, the usage of synthetic speech is conditioned upon the ability of speech synthesis systems to generate natural and expressive speech. In this frame, we address the problem of expressivity in TTS by incorporating two phenomena with a high impact on speech: pronunciation variants and speech disfluencies. In the first part of this thesis, we present a new pronunciation variant generation method which works by adapting standard i.e., dictionary-based, pronunciations to a spontaneous style. Its strength and originality lie in exploiting a wide range of linguistic, articulatory and acoustic features and to use a probabilistic machine learning framework, namely conditional random fields (CRFs) and language models. Extensive experiments on the Buckeye corpus demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach through objective and subjective evaluations. Listening tests on synthetic speech show that adapted pronunciations are judged as more spontaneous than standard ones, as well as those realized by real speakers. Furthermore, we show that the method can be extended to other adaptation tasks, for instance, to solve the problem of inconsistency between phoneme sequences handled in TTS systems. The second part of this thesis explores a novel approach to automatic generation of speech disfluencies for TTS. Speech disfluencies are one of the most pervasive phenomena in spontaneous speech, therefore being able to automatically generate them is crucial to have more expressive synthetic speech. The proposed approach provides the advantage of generating several types of disfluencies: pauses, repetitions and revisions. To achieve this task, we formalize the problem as a theoretical process, where transformation functions are iteratively composed. We present a first implementation of the proposed process using CRFs and language models, before conducting objective and perceptual evaluations. These experiments lead to the conclusion that our proposition is effective to generate disfluencies, and highlights perspectives for future improvements
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Baker, Amanda A. "Pronunciation Pedagogy: Second Language Teacher Cognition and Practice." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2011. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/alesl_diss/16.
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Over the past few decades, increasing research has examined the cognitions (knowledge and beliefs) of second language (L2) teachers. Such efforts have provided insight into what constitutes teachers' beliefs and knowledge about teaching, how these cognitions have developed and how they are reflected in classroom practice (see Borg, 2006). Although numerous studies have been conducted into the curricular areas of L2 grammar and, to a lesser extent, L2 literacy, far fewer have examined L2 teachers' cognitions concerning L2 pronunciation instruction. The purpose of the present study, therefore, was to explore some of the dynamic relationships that exist between L2 teachers’ cognitions and actual pedagogical practices, how these cognitions
have developed over time, and what relationships exist between both students’ and teachers’ perceptions. In the study, the cognitions and practices - as they relate to the teaching of L2 pronunciation - of five experienced teachers in an Intensive English program were investigated. The teachers participated in three types of data collection procedures over one semester - three semi-structured interviews, five classroom observations, and two stimulated recall interviews. Also, their students completed questionnaires. Findings revealed that, in terms of the development of teachers' cognitions, a graduate course dedicated to pronunciation pedagogy had the greatest impact of the teachers’ cognitions. In addition, all teachers experienced some degree of insecurity about teaching pronunciation. This was especially true for teachers who had never taken a course in pronunciation pedagogy. Yet even those teacher with specific training in pronunciation pedagogy lacked confidence in certain areas, especially in how to diagnose and address problems with pronunciation. Furthermore, some of the teachers were hesitant to assess students' pronunciation, fearing that negative feedback might be damaging to the learners' identities. However, through viewing the results of the student questionnaires, the participant-teachers were surprised to learn that students favored receiving explicit feedback in class in front of their peers over other types of feedback. One final major finding was that the teachers predominantly employed controlled techniques when teaching pronunciation and that, of all the techniques used, guided techniques were used less frequently.
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Soonklang, Tasanawan. "Extending pronunciation by analogy for speech synthesis applications." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.485539.
Full textAbstract:
Automatic pronunciation of unknown words, especially in English, is a hard problem of great importance in speech technology. This thesis focuses on a data-driven approach namely 'pronunciation by analogy', so-called PbA, for generating the p.ronunciation of unknown words from input text. The aim is to explore many useful aspects of the use of PbA in speech synthesis applications. This thesis is mostly devoted to the problem of proper name pronunciation, because previous work showed that proper names have significant impact on the performance of text-to-speech (TTS) systems. The extension of PbA for multilingual pronunciation.is also studied. The performance of PbA is investigated in a wide variety of aspects including: to incorporate automatic syllabification by analogy, to determine the effect of different kinds of lexicon, to determine thc effect of lexicon sizc, to test with seven European languages in order to quantify the relationship between transcription accuracy and orthography, and to compare with other data-driven methods in terms of objective and subjective evaluations. The experimental results show that PbA can achieve a promising level of word accuracy and is superior to other methods totsted on the problem of proper name pronunciation. In the objective evaluation, the best performance is 68.38% names correct and 94.31% phonemes correct, with a standard PbA using a leave-one-out strategy on 52,911 names in the CMU dictionary. In the subjective evaluation, the comparison is primarily based on 24 listeners' opinions of the acceptability of pronunciations from 150 names. 'Wilcoxson signed-rank tests show that the dictionary pronunciations are rated superior to the automatically-inferred pronunciations; one part of listening tests shows that PbA is marginally superior to the other methods, but no such superiority is seen for another part of listening tests. With reference to the performance on seven European languages (Dutch, English, French, Frisian, German, Norwegian, and Spanish), PbA achieves more than 85% words correct in case of all languages except English. In conclusion, this thesis has shown that PbA should become the method of choice in TTS applications.
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Livescu, Karen 1975. "Feature-based pronunciation modeling for automatic speech recognition." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34488.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-140).
Spoken language, especially conversational speech, is characterized by great variability in word pronunciation, including many variants that differ grossly from dictionary prototypes. This is one factor in the poor performance of automatic speech recognizers on conversational speech. One approach to handling this variation consists of expanding the dictionary with phonetic substitution, insertion, and deletion rules. Common rule sets, however, typically leave many pronunciation variants unaccounted for and increase word confusability due to the coarse granularity of phone units. We present an alternative approach, in which many types of variation are explained by representing a pronunciation as multiple streams of linguistic features rather than a single stream of phones. Features may correspond to the positions of the speech articulators, such as the lips and tongue, or to acoustic or perceptual categories. By allowing for asynchrony between features and per-feature substitutions, many pronunciation changes that are difficult to account for with phone-based models become quite natural. Although it is well-known that many phenomena can be attributed to this "semi-independent evolution" of features, previous models of pronunciation variation have typically not taken advantage of this. In particular, we propose a class of feature-based pronunciation models represented as dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs).
(cont.) The DBN framework allows us to naturally represent the factorization of the state space of feature combinations into feature-specific factors, as well as providing standard algorithms for inference and parameter learning. We investigate the behavior of such a model in isolation using manually transcribed words. Compared to a phone-based baseline, the feature-based model has both higher coverage of observed pronunciations and higher recognition rate for isolated words. We also discuss the ways in which such a model can be incorporated into various types of end-to-end speech recognizers and present several examples of implemented systems, for both acoustic speech recognition and lipreading tasks.
by Karen Livescu.
Ph.D.
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Lee, Ann Ph D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Language-independent methods for computer-assisted pronunciation training." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107338.
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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2016.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 137-145).
Computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) systems help students practice speaking foreign languages by providing automatic pronunciation assessment and corrective feedback. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology is a natural component in CAPT systems. Since a nonnative speaker's native language (Li) background affects their pronunciation patterns in a target language (L2), typically not only native but also nonnative training data of specific Ls is needed to train a recognizer for CAPT systems. Given that there are around 7,000 languages in the world, the data collection process is costly and has scalability issues. In addition, expert knowledge on the target L2 is also often needed to design a large feature set describing the deviation of nonnative speech from native speech. In contrast to machines, it is relatively easy for native listeners to detect pronunciation errors without being exposed to nonnative speech or trained with linguistic knowledge beforehand. In this thesis, we are interested in this unsupervised capability and propose methods to overcome the language-dependent challenges. Inspired by the success of unsupervised acoustic pattern discovery, we propose to discover an individual learner's pronunciation error patterns in an unsupervised manner by analyzing the acoustic similarity between speech segments from the learner. Experimental results on nonnative English and nonnative Mandarin Chinese spoken by students from different Ls show that the proposed method is Li-independent and can be portable to different L2s. Moreover, the method is personalized such that it accommodates variations in pronunciation patterns across students. In addition, motivated by the success of deep learning models in unsupervised feature learning, we explore the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for mispronunciation detection. A language-independent data augmentation method is developed to take advantage of native speech as training samples. Experimental results on nonnative Mandarin Chinese speech show the effectiveness of the model and the method. Moreover, both qualitative and quantitative analyses on the convolutional filters reveal that the CNN automatically learns a set of human-interpretable high-level features.
by Ann Lee.
Ph. D.
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Bagshaw, Paul Christopher. "Automatic prosodic analysis for computer aided pronunciation teaching." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/10694.
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Correct pronunciation of spoken language requires the appropriate modulation of acoustic characteristics of speech to convey linguistic information at a suprasegmental level. Such prosodic modulation is a key aspect of spoken language and is an important component of foreign language learning, for purposes of both comprehension and intelligibility. Computer aided pronunciation teaching involves automatic analysis of the speech of a non-native talker in order to provide a diagnosis of the learner's performance in comparison with the speech of a native talker. This thesis describes research undertaken to automatically analyse the prosodic aspects of speech for computer aided pronunciation teaching. It is necessary to describe the suprasegmental composition of a learner's speech in order to characterise significant deviations from a native-like prosody, and to offer some kind of corrective diagnosis. Phonological theories of prosody aim to describe the suprasegmental composition of speech for a specific language. It is argued here that the suprasegmental composition of the speech of a non-native talker can be highly influenced by mother-tongue interference thereby rendering a language-specific phonological representation of prosody inappropriate. Moreover, languages vary in the way acoustic characteristics of speech are modified to manifest prosodic aspects of speech and the only secure means available to describe prosody for foreign language teaching therefore lies at an acoustic-phonetic representation. The automatic prosodic analysis of speech presented in this thesis aims to provide such an acoustic-phonetic representation. The prosodic aspects of speech are described in a syllabic domain which is synchronised with a phonetic segmentation. An algorithm is presented which groups acoustic-phonetic segments into syllabic units.
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Yates, Karen. "Teaching linguistic mimicry to improve second language pronunciation." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2003. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4164/.
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This thesis tests the hypothesis that a whole language approach to ESL (English As A Second Language) pronunciation with emphasis on suprasegementals through the use of linguistic mimicry is more effective than a focus on segmentals in improving native speakers perceptions of accent and comprehensibility of ESL students' pronunciation of English. The thesis is organized into seven chapters. Chapter 2 is a discussion of the factors that affect the degree of foreign accent in second language acquisition. Chapter 3 gives a background on current ESL pedagogy followed by a description of the linguistic mimicry approach used in this research in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 and 6 are discussion of Materials and Methods and Conclusions and Implications.
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Wen, Tao-Chih. "The Role of Motivation in Second Language Pronunciation." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2005. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4829/.
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This thesis investigates the phonological ability of exceptional second language (L2) learners of English and their levels of motivation. This study is the first of its kind to do a large-scale examination of L2 learners whose first languages (L1s) do not belong to the same Indo-European language family as English. Fifteen non-native speakers (NNSs) of English filled out a questionnaire and produced four speech samples, including a picture description task, paragraph reading task, sentence reading and word reading task. Fifteen native speaker (NS) controls also produced the same speech samples. Four NSs judged all participants' accents. Six NNSs scored as highly as NSs on some of the speech segments using a 2-standard deviation (SD) cut-off point. There was no significant correlation between their scores on pronunciation and motivation.
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Binturki, Turki A. "Analysis of pronunciation errors of Saudi ESL learners /." Available to subscribers only, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1594494161&sid=6&Fmt=2&clientId=1509&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2008."Department of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages." Includes bibliographical references (p. 74-80). Also available online.
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Ma, Rui. "The Role of Pronunciation in Speaking Test Ratings." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2015. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4426.
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This study explores the weight of pronunciation in a speaking proficiency test at an English as a Second Language (ESL) Intensive English Program (IEP) in America. As an integral part of speaking, beliefs, practices, and research of pronunciation teaching have experienced shifts over the decades (Morley, 1991). Most studies concerning speaking have focused on intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness of speaking, with attempting to address the role of pronunciation in oral communication. However, the degree to which pronunciation is weighed in determining speaking proficiency levels is unclear (Higgs & Clifford, 1982, Kang, 2013). In an effort to contribute to the understanding of this issue, the current study investigates the relationship between pronunciation and speaking proficiency ratings. The speaking proficiency ratings and pronunciation ratings in vowels, consonants, word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and rhythm of 226 speaking samples from English learners were collected at Brigham Young University's (BYU) English Language Center (ELC). The study confirms that suprasegmentals explain more variance than segmentals in English proficiency, and among those suprasegmental features, only the ratings of sentence stress increase incrementally with the proficiency levels without overlapping among proficiency levels.
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Tegnered, Axel, and Jonas Rentner. "Teachers’ Views on Teaching English Pronunciation : A Phenomenographic Study of Upper-secondary Teachers’ Views and Reported Practices." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och samhälle, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-177896.
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This study investigates Swedish upper-secondary teachers’ views and reported practices regarding pronunciation instruction in the English-as-a-foreign-language classroom. It adopts a mixed-method design, analysing qualitative data collected from a focus-group interview (N=4) and quantitative data collected from an online survey (N=54). To investigate the views and reported practices of teachers, the following research questions were posed: 1. What are the views and attitudes of English teachers in the Swedish upper-secondary school regarding pronunciation and pronunciation instruction? 2. How do English teachers in the Swedish upper-secondary school describe their own practices in pronunciation instruction? Results indicate that teachers generally value comprehensibility as the most important aim of pronunciation instruction. However, a native-like accent still seems to be highly valued, and nativeness norms still seem to affect teachers’ views and practices to some extent. Finally, our findings indicate that teachers spend very little time on pronunciation teaching in general, and they highlight that other aspects of language instruction are more important.
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Бондаренко, Юлия Станиславовна, Алена Владимировна Сауляк, Юлія Станіславівна Бондаренко, Yuliia Stanislavivna Bondarenko, Alona Yevhenivna Sauliak, and Альона Євгенівна Сауляк. "Estuary as the latest pronunciation standard of the English language." Thesis, Нижний Новгород: Издательство Волго-Вятской академии государственной службы, 2010. http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/2749.
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The nature of Estuary English is investigated in this paper. The description of phonemic variety of this pronunciation standard is analyzed. The Popularity of the Pronunciation Standard is given.У статті розглянуто вимовний варіант англійської мови Ест’юарі, подано опис фонемічної варіативності цієї вимовної норм та популярність цього вимовного стандарту. При цитуванні документа, використовуйте посилання http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/2749
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Umezawa, Kaoru. "Japanese pitch accent and the English speaking learner : a study of production, perception and teaching." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.251751.
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Östlund, Fredrik. "British vs American English : Pronunciation in the EFL Classroom." Thesis, Karlstad University, Division for Culture and Communication, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-31.
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Today English is a world language; it is spoken by millions both as first and second language almost all over the world. The varieties best known to Swedish pupils are the varieties British and American English. Another variety of English, which is spoken by both native and non-native speakers, is a mixture of British English and American English called Mid-Atlantic English. As long as the English language has been a part of the Swedish curriculum, the leading variety taught has been British English, but lately American English has influenced Swedish teenagers because of its prominent status in media. Since both British English and American English are used in Swedish schools, different attitudes can be perceived among pupils and teachers towards these two varieties. The aim of this paper is to determine if Swedish pupils are using British or American English or if they mix these two varieties. Attitudes and prejudice amongst pupils and their teachers towards these two varieties are looked into as well as whether the pupils speak the variety of English they claim they speak. The question of why the pupils speak the variety they do is also investigated. The results show that most pupils mix British and American English and that American English features predominate in the mix. According to this investigation, teachers and pupils find British English to be a bit “snobbish” while American English can sound a bit “cocky” to them. This investigation concludes that the two major influences on the pupils are their teachers and different kind of media.
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Snow, Charles. "Improving continuous speech recognition with automatic multiple pronunciation support." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape10/PQDD_0020/NQ44592.pdf.
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Snow, Charles. "Improving continuous speech recognition with automatic multiple pronunciation support." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35621.
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Conventional computer speech recognition systems use models of speech acoustics and the language of the recognition task in order to perform recognition. For all but trivial recognition tasks, sub-word units are modeled, typically phonemes. Recognizing words then requires a pronunciation dictionary ( PD) to specify how each word is pronounced in terms of the units modeled. Even if the acoustic modeling component is perfect, the recognizer will still be prone to misrecognition, most often because the speaker can use a pronunciation other than that in the PD. This different pronunciation may be due to the speaker being a non-native speaker of the language being recognized, having 'mispronounced' the word, coarticulatory effects, recognizer errors in phoneme hypothesization, or any combination of these. One way to overcome these misrecognitions is to use a dynamic PD, able to acquire new pronunciations for words as they are encountered and misrecognized. The thesis examines the following questions: can automated methods be found that produce reliable alternate pronunciations? If so, does augmenting a PD (which originally contains only canonical pronunciations) with these alternate pronunciations lead to improved recognizer performance? It shows that using even simple methods, average reductions in word error rate of at least 45% are possible, even with speakers who are not native speakers of the recognition task language.
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Peabody, Mitchell A. (Mitchell Aaron). "Methods for pronunciation assessment in computer aided language learning." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/68491.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-176).
Learning a foreign language is a challenging endeavor that entails acquiring a wide range of new knowledge including words, grammar, gestures, sounds, etc. Mastering these skills all require extensive practice by the learner and opportunities may not always be available. Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) systems provide non-threatening environments where foreign language skills can be practiced where ever and whenever a student desires. These systems often have several technologies to identify the different types of errors made by a student. This thesis focuses on the problem of identifying mispronunciations made by a foreign language student using a CALL system. We make several assumptions about the nature of the learning activity: it takes place using a dialogue system, it is a task- or game-oriented activity, the student should not be interrupted by the pronunciation feedback system, and that the goal of the feedback system is to identify severe mispronunciations with high reliability. Detecting mispronunciations requires a corpus of speech with human judgements of pronunciation quality. Typical approaches to collecting such a corpus use an expert phonetician to both phonetically transcribe and assign judgements of quality to each phone in a corpus. This is time consuming and expensive. It also places an extra burden on the transcriber. We describe a novel method for obtaining phone level judgements of pronunciation quality by utilizing non-expert, crowd-sourced, word level judgements of pronunciation. Foreign language learners typically exhibit high variation and pronunciation shapes distinct from native speakers that make analysis for mispronunciation difficult. We detail a simple, but effective method for transforming the vowel space of non-native speakers to make mispronunciation detection more robust and accurate. We show that this transformation not only enhances performance on a simple classification task, but also results in distributions that can be better exploited for mispronunciation detection. This transformation of the vowel is exploited to train a mispronunciation detector using a variety of features derived from acoustic model scores and vowel class distributions. We confirm that the transformation technique results in a more robust and accurate identification of mispronunciations than traditional acoustic models.
by Mitchell A. Peabody.
Ph.D.
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Peng, Li. "Embodied pronunciation training : the benefits of visuospatial hand gestures." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/672644.
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In the last few decades, the use of hand gestures that encode phonological features of the target language has been proven to play a positive role in L2 suprasegmental learning. However, less is known about the effects of embodied pronunciation training on the acquisition of novel segments. This doctoral dissertation includes three between-subject studies which tested the effects of visuospatial hand movements as pedagogical gestures for training L2 pronunciation features. Study 1 demonstrated that producing durational gestures (i.e., horizontal hand movements to illustrate vowel-length contrasts) improves novice learners’ production of Japanese long vowels. Study 2 showed that appropriately performing gestures that mimic consonantal aspiration boosts the learning of Mandarin aspirated plosives by novice learners. Finally, study 3 revealed that the observation of hand gestures encoding melodic and rhythmic features of speech helps learners with elementary-to-inter-mediate French proficiency reduce their accentedness and improve their accuracy in producing the non-native front rounded vowels. Overall, the three studies show the benefits of embodied pronunciation training involving hand gestures that encode segmental and supraseg-mental phonological information. These results highlight the need to integrate embodied training methods in L2 classrooms and support the predictions of the Embodied Cognition paradigm for L2 phonological learning.Al llarg de les últimes dècades s’ha demostrat que emprar gestos manuals que fan visibles els aspectes fonològics d’una llengua estrangera afavoreix l’aprenentatge de la prosòdia d’aquesta llengua. No obstant això, hi ha menys estudis sobre l’efectivitat d’aquests gestos en l’adquisició de nous sons. Aquesta tesi doctoral inclou tres estudis experimentals que tenen per objectiu avaluar els efectes dels entrenaments multimodals de la pronúncia que inclouen aquests moviments manuals com a gestos pedagògics per a l’entrenament dels trets fonètics . L’estudi 1 demostra que emprar gestos que codifiquen trets fonètics de duració dels sons (i.e., moviments horitzontals de les mans que il·lustren aquests contrastos de durada vocàlica) millora la producció de les vocals llargues del japonès per part d’aprenents novells. L’estudi 2 mostra que una realització adequada dels gestos que imiten els trets d’aspiració consonàntica facilita l’aprenentatge de les consonants oclusives aspirades del xinès per part de nous aprenents. L’estudi 3 demostra que un entrenament multimodal que integri gestos manuals que facin visibles els trets prosòdics del francès ajuda els aprenents d’aquesta llengua a reduir el seu accent i alhora augmentar la precisió en la pronúncia de les vocals arrodonides anteriors. En resum, els tres estudis mostren els beneficis de la pràctica multimodal de la pronúncia amb exercicis que incloguin gestos manuals que codifiquen informació fonològica a nivell segmental i suprasegmental. Els resultats ressalten la importància d’incorporar entrenaments multimodals de la pronúncia en l’aula de llengües estrangeres i donen suport a les prediccions del paradigma de la Cognició Corporeïtzada (Embodied Cognition) sobre l’aprenentatge fonològic de segones llengües.
A lo largo de las últimas décadas, se ha demostrado que el uso de gestos manuales que visualizan aspectos fonológicos de una segunda lengua facilita el aprendizaje de la prosodia de esta lengua. No obstante, hay menos estudios sobre la efectividad de esos gestos en la adquisición de nuevos sonidos. Esta tesis doctoral incluye tres estudios experimentales que tienen por objetivo evaluar los efectos de entrenamientos multimodales de la pronunciación que incluyen esos movimientos manuales como gestos pedagógicos de los rasgos fonéticos. El estudio 1 demuestra que el uso de gestos que codifican rasgos fonéticos de duración de los sonidos (i.e., movimientos horizontales de las manos que ilustran los contrastes de duración vocálica) mejora la producción de las vocales largas del japonés por parte de nuevos aprendices. El estudio 2 muestra que una realización adecuada de los gestos que imitan los rasgos de aspiración consonántica facilita el aprendizaje de las con-sonantes oclusivas aspiradas del chino por parte de estudiantes principiantes. El estudio 3 demuestra que un entrenamiento multimodal que incluye el uso de gestos manuales que codifican los rasgos prosódicos del francés ayuda a los estudiantes de esta lengua a reducir su acento y aumentar la precisión en la pronunciación de las vocales labializadas anteriores. En resumen, los tres estudios muestran los beneficios de la práctica multimodal de la pronunciación con ejercicios que incluyan gestos manuales que codifican información fonológica a nivel segmental y suprasegmental. Los resultados resaltan la importancia de incorporar entrenamientos multimodales en el aula de lenguas extranjeras y apoyan las predicciones del paradigma de la Cognición Corporeizada (Embodied Cognition) en el contexto del aprendizaje fonológico de segundas lenguas.
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Tikkakoski, S. (Saara). "Communicative language teaching as English pronunciation teaching method:developing exercises." Bachelor's thesis, University of Oulu, 2016. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201602031107.
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This thesis pursues to apply communicative language teaching (CLT) into English pronunciation teaching in the context of Finnish school and curriculum for grades 7.-9. CLT is the theoretical basis of this thesis and the research question is: How can CLT be applied to English pronunciation teaching to promote learner autonomy and motivation in order to achieve more effective learning results? This question is answered in the form of communicative pronunciation tasks (CPTs) which aim to realise the principles of the theory of CLT. Research methods used in this thesis are ethnographical observations and experience, and ideation based on the theory of CLT. The analysis resulted in three communicative pronunciation tasks which each include communicative features. However, each of the tasks also face challenges in realising the principles of CLT and are therefore examples on how to begin developing new language tasks, rather than finished model examples of communicative pronunciation tasks. Further research should be conducted in order to prove the functionality of the CPTs presented in this thesis, and to develop them further.
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HARRIS, DAWN FAIRLEY. "THE EFFECTS OF TRAINING ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF MANDARIN." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2002. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1022165161.
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Cruz, Neide de Fátima Cesar da. "Pronunciation intelligibility in spontaneous speech of brazilian learners englisg." Florianópolis, SC, 2004. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/86878.
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Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-21T11:37:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0
The main aim of this study is to find out the extent to which features of
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Tegnered, Axel, and Jonas Rentner. "The Importance of Pronunciation Instruction in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och samhälle, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-167481.
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The field of pronunciation instruction has long been a neglected area. In recent years, however, researchers have found a renewed interest in the subject. For example, research has been conducted to investigate the views on pronunciation instruction held by teachers and learners. In light of this, the present study seeks to explore the field of research in pronunciation instruction to answer the question of whether pronunciation instruction is important and beneficial for learners of English as a foreign language. The results of the present study show that teachers and learners alike consider pronunciation instruction an integral part of language teaching. Furthermore, the results show that pronunciation affects comprehension and that pronunciation teaching has positive effects on pronunciation development. In the present study, these results are connected to the Swedish school context, where we draw the conclusion that pronunciation should be included in the English language classroom to a greater extent than is the case at the time of writing this thesis.
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Taylor, Sean D. "A Musician's Guide to Latin Diction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Choral Repertoire." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1368026296.
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Westerberg, Ann-Britt. "Med fokus på uttalet : Elever lär tilsammans." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Estetisk-filosofiska fakulteten, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-14234.
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鄭少玲 and Siu-ling Flona Cheng. "A study of variant readings of Chinese characters labeledas mispronounced in the Yueyin zhengdu zihui." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2008. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B40733968.
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李素琴 and So-kam Lee. "A comparison of Cantonese Transcriptions in Guangzhouhua zhengyin zidian and Changyongzi guangzhouhua duyinbiao." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2008. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B40736982.
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廖雲娟 and Wan-kuen Liu. "A comparison of the Cantonese transcriptions in Guangzhouhua zhengyin zidian and Yueyin zhengdu shouce." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2008. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B41547093.
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