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Journal articles on the topic 'Spoken English tests'
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1
Bernstein, Jared, Alistair Van Moere, and Jian Cheng. "Validating automated speaking tests." Language Testing 27, no. 3 (July 2010): 355–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265532210364404.
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This paper presents evidence that supports the valid use of scores from fully automatic tests of spoken language ability to indicate a person’s effectiveness in spoken communication. The paper reviews the constructs, scoring, and the concurrent validity evidence of ‘facility-in-L2’ tests, a family of automated spoken language tests in Spanish, Dutch, Arabic, and English. The facility-in-L2 tests are designed to measure receptive and productive language ability as test-takers engage in a succession of tasks with meaningful language. Concurrent validity studies indicate that scores from the automated tests are strongly correlated with the scores from oral proficiency interviews. In separate studies with learners from each of the four languages the automated tests predict scores from the live interview tests as well as those tests predict themselves in a test-retest protocol (r = 0.77 to 0.92). Although it might be assumed that the interactive nature of the oral interview elicits performances that manifest a distinct construct, the closeness of the results suggests that the constructs underlying the two approaches to oral assessment have a stable relationship across languages.
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IYEIRI, YOKO, MICHIKO YAGUCHI, and HIROKO OKABE. "To be different from or to be different than in present-day American English?" English Today 20, no. 3 (July 2004): 29–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266078404003050.
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The present paper discusses the use of the prepositions after different in present-day spoken American English, using the Corpus of Spoken Professional American-English [sic] (CSPAE), which includes transcriptions of conversations recorded between 1994 and 1998. As the corpus consists of four different professional settings (i.e. press conferences held at the White House and other locations, faculty meetings of the University of North Carolina, national meetings on mathematics tests, and national meetings on reading tests), it provides useful data for stylistic analyses. It is also useful for gender analyses of English, since it provides some personal data for most speakers and indicates whether they are male or female.
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Zechner, Klaus, Derrick Higgins, Xiaoming Xi, and David M. Williamson. "Automatic scoring of non-native spontaneous speech in tests of spoken English." Speech Communication 51, no. 10 (October 2009): 883–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2009.04.009.
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Wang, Yinping. "Detecting Pronunciation Errors in Spoken English Tests Based on Multifeature Fusion Algorithm." Complexity 2021 (February 13, 2021): 1–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2021/6623885.
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In this study, multidimensional feature extraction is performed on the U-language recordings of the test takers, and these features are evaluated separately, with five categories of features: pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary, grammar, and semantics. A deep neural network model is constructed to model the feature values to obtain the final score. Based on the previous research, this study uses a deep neural network training model instead of linear regression to improve the correlation between model score and expert score. The method of using word frequency for semantic scoring is replaced by the LDA topic model for semantic analysis, which eliminates the need for experts to manually label keywords before scoring and truly automates the critique. Also, this paper introduces text cleaning after speech recognition and deep learning-based speech noise reduction technology in the scoring model, which improves the accuracy of speech recognition and the overall accuracy of the scoring model. Also, innovative applications and improvements are made to key technologies, and the latest technical solutions are integrated and improved. A new open oral grading model is proposed and implemented, and innovations are made in the method of speech feature extraction to improve the dimensionality of open oral grading.
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Asmawati, Nur. "MODEL OF ENGLISH LEARNING BASED ON COLLABORATIVE THEORY TO IMPROVE INDONESIAN’ SPOKEN COMMUNICATION ABILITY." ETERNAL (English, Teaching, Learning, and Research Journal) 4, no. 2 (December 31, 2018): 255. http://dx.doi.org/10.24252/eternal.v42.2018.a9.
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This study aims at findings whether collaborative method can improve students' spoken communition or not. This study use quasi experimental design with Posttest-Only, Non-Equivalent Control Group Design. The sample of this research were student’s of State Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN) Palu. The instrument in this research was speaking English test ability. The tests were carried out in five times with different learning themes. Data analysis was performed by descriptive statistics and inference and presented in the form of percentages, frequency, min and statistical analysis in t test comparison (t-test) and Pearson correlation test. The researcher finds distribution of scores for the students’ spoken communication ability posttest is normal and variance-covariance for the dependent variables is homogeneous across the independent variables. The researcher finds a significant difference between the experimental class taught by a learning model of three theories collaboration and controclass taught by conventional learning model. The result of students] spoken communication ability on first test had higher compared second test. Similarly, also with the students’spoken communication abilities between the second tests with the third test, the third test with the fourth test, and the fourth test with the fifth test was very significant. The researcher also finds increased English spoken communication ability in experimental class. Improvement of spoken communication is due to model of learning English based on collaborative theory
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Nozawa, Akio, Tota Mizuno, Hirotoshi Asano, and Hideto Ide. "Evaluation of Spoken Language Understanding by Oxygenated Hemoglobin Concentration." Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics 22, no. 1 (February 20, 2010): 3–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.20965/jrm.2010.p0003.
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The subjective understanding of spoken language understanding is quantitatively evaluated by variations in oxygenated hemoglobin concentration measured by near-infrared spectroscopy. English listening comprehension tests consisting of two levels of difficulty were taken by 4 subjects during measurement. A correlation was found between subjective understanding and variations in oxygenated hemoglobin concentration.
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Vanhove, Jan, and Raphael Berthele. "The lifespan development of cognate guessing skills in an unknown related language." International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 53, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 1–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/iral-2015-0001.
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AbstractThis study investigates the lifespan development of the ability to correctly guess the meaning of foreign-language words with known translation-equivalent cognates. It also aims to identify the cognitive and linguistic factors driving this development. To this end, 159 German-speaking Swiss participants aged 10 to 86 were asked to translate 45 written and 45 spoken isolated Swedish words with German, English or French cognates. In addition, they were administered an English language test, a German vocabulary test as well as fluid intelligence and working memory tests. Cognate guessing skills were found to improve into young adulthood, but whereas they show additional increases in the written modality throughout adulthood, they start to decrease from age 50 onwards for spoken stimuli. Congruently with these findings, L1 vocabulary knowledge is a stronger predictor of written cognate guessing success, whereas fluid intelligence is the most important predictor in the spoken modality. Raw data and computer code used for the analyses are freely available online.
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Meierkord, Christiane. "Attitudes Towards Exogenous and Endogenous Uses of English: Ugandan’s Judgements of English Structures in Varieties of English." International Journal of English Linguistics 10, no. 1 (December 10, 2019): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v10n1p1.
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Uganda is a former British protectorate, where English has contributed to the country’s linguistic ecology since 1894, when the British established a protectorate over the area of the Buganda kingdom. Over time, Ugandan English has developed as a nativised second language variety, spoken by Uganda’s indigenous population. At the same time, due to migrations, globalisation and the influence of international media and the Internet, its speakers have increasingly been in contact with varieties other than British English: American English, Indian English, Kenyan English, and Nigerian English may all influence Ugandan English. This paper looks at how Ugandan English can be conceptualised as a variety shaped by other varieties. It reports on the results of acceptability tests carried out with 184 informants in the North, the Central and the West of Uganda and discusses how speakers assess individual grammatical structures used in Ugandan English and in those varieties they are potentially in contact with.
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Levey, Sandra, Henriette W. Langdon, and Deborah Rhein. "Bilingual Spanish/English–Speaking Children's Sentence Reading Comprehension." Perspectives on Communication Disorders and Sciences in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Populations 19, no. 2 (July 2012): 58–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/cds19.2.58.
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A number of factors were examined to determine which were associated with 40 bilingual Spanish/English–speaking children's sentence reading comprehension (SRC). In our study, 40 bilingual Spanish/English–speaking children, age ranged from 8.07 to 14.96 years, completed nonword repetition, spoken language, receptive vocabulary, single word reading (SWR), and novel word discrimination tests, with all language and reading tests administered in English. Parents' occupations, the report of the language used in interaction with friends (English vs. Spanish), age, and academic grade were also considered as possible factors for SRC. Our results found that receptive vocabulary and SWR accounted for intact SRC. Findings revealed that 13 of the 40 bilingual children (32.5%) presented with SRC difficulties. However, only 2 of these 13 children were identified with reading difficulties prior to their participation in this study, suggesting that early screening is essential to prevent later literacy difficulties.
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Ndzotom Mbakop, Antoine Willy, Sonia Laurei Emalieu Kanko, and Adrienne Michelle Tida. "French Grammatical Accents: Practices, Sociolinguistic Foundations, and Pedagogical Implications in a Multilingual Setting." Journal of Language and Education 4, no. 2 (June 30, 2018): 78–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.17323/2411-7390-2018-4-2-78-91.
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The present paper probes the use of French grammatical accents by English-speaking learners of French in a multilingual country: Cameroon. Its aim is twofold. First, it highlights the extent to which the various appropriative uses of French by French-speaking Cameroonians influence the form of the language spoken by their English-speaking counterparts. Then, it checks the effect of the language spoken by these learners on their written language. The data were collected among 160 Form 3 and Form 4 pupils from two high schools in the town of Maroua, Far North Region, Cameroon. Six tests and fifty tape recordings were carried out among the target population. Also, four French teachers were tape recorded during the exercise. The analysis of the errors made by the informants revealed significant patterns of acute and grave accents in the spoken language of respondents. These patterns of oral usage were found to strongly correlate with their written production. It therefore appears that Cameroon French displays some specific phonological characteristics, which severely spoils the acquisition of grammatical accents by English-speaking Cameroonians. These findings may revive the debate over whether French in former colonies should adapt to its contexts or keep its native purity.
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Ndzotom Mbakop, Antoine Willy, Sonia Laurei Emalieu Kanko, and Adrienne Michelle Tida. "French Grammatical Accents: Practices, Sociolinguistic Foundations, and Pedagogical Implications in a Multilingual Setting." Journal of Language and Education 4, no. 2 (June 30, 2018): 92–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.17323/2411-7390-2018-4-2-92-105.
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The present paper probes the use of French grammatical accents by English-speaking learners of French in a multilingual country: Cameroon. Its aim is twofold. First, it highlights the extent to which the various appropriative uses of French by French-speaking Cameroonians influence the form of the language spoken by their English-speaking counterparts. Then, it checks the effect of the language spoken by these learners on their written language. The data were collected among 160 Form 3 and Form 4 pupils from two high schools in the town of Maroua, Far North Region, Cameroon. Six tests and fifty tape recordings were carried out among the target population. Also, four French teachers were tape recorded during the exercise. The analysis of the errors made by the informants revealed significant patterns of acute and grave accents in the spoken language of respondents. These patterns of oral usage were found to strongly correlate with their written production. It therefore appears that Cameroon French displays some specific phonological characteristics, which severely spoils the acquisition of grammatical accents by English-speaking Cameroonians. These findings may revive the debate over whether French in former colonies should adapt to its contexts or keep its native purity.
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Ruivivar, June, and Laura Collins. "Nonnative accent and the perceived grammaticality of spoken grammar forms." Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 5, no. 2 (September 17, 2019): 269–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jslp.17039.rui.
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Abstract Scholars advocate for more classroom attention to be paid to spoken grammar which deviates from commonly taught rules of writing. However, these recommendations have not considered potential barriers that learners may encounter when using spoken grammar with L1 speakers. We investigate one such challenge: the effect of learners’ accents and degree of accentedness on how their use of these forms is subjectively perceived by L1 speakers. Ten non-expert raters rated the grammatical acceptability of four frequent spoken grammar forms, read out by 15 speakers (10 L1 Tagalog, 5 L1 English) rated as having heavy, moderate, or no accents. A one-way ANOVA revealed a significant effect of accent on grammaticality scores. Post-hoc tests showed a strong correlation between accent and perceived grammaticality, with more accented speakers scoring significantly lower on grammaticality. The discussion considers implications for spoken grammar teaching, and future research on the relationship between accent and perceived grammaticality.
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Römer, Ute. "Language assessment and the inseparability of lexis and grammar: Focus on the construct of speaking." Language Testing 34, no. 4 (September 19, 2017): 477–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265532217711431.
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This paper aims to connect recent corpus research on phraseology with current language testing practice. It discusses how corpora and corpus-analytic techniques can illuminate central aspects of speech and help in conceptualizing the notion of lexicogrammar in second language speaking assessment. The description of speech and some of its core features is based on the 1.8-million-word Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) and on the 10-million-word spoken component of the British National Corpus (BNC). Analyses of word frequency and keyword lists are followed by an automatic extraction of different types of phraseological items that are particularly common in speech and serve important communicative functions. These corpus explorations provide evidence for the strong interconnectedness of lexical items and grammatical structures in natural language. Based on the assumption that the existence of lexicogrammatical patterns is of relevance for constructs of speaking tests, the paper then reviews rubrics of popular high-stakes speaking tests and critically discusses how far these rubrics capture the central aspects of spoken language identified in the corpus analyses as well as the centrality of phraseology in language. It closes with recommendations for speaking assessment in the light of this characterization of real-world spoken lexicogrammar.
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Paffen, Peter. "Spreektoetsen Moderne Vreemde Talen." Spreken in moedertaal en vreemde taal 54 (January 1, 1996): 145–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ttwia.54.14paf.
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In 1988 CITO started research into the feasibility of valid and reliable oral proficiency tests based on communicative principles. This was to meet the demand for a communicative speech test to be used in school based examinations in secondary education. Using the Test of Spoken English as a guideline, tests for French, German and English were developed. Simultaneous research into the reliability and validity of the tests led to various adaptations of the original model. From 1992 onwards oral proficiency tests for each of the three languages in question have been published at levels VBO/MAVO, HAVO and VWO (approxi-mately: vocational, secondary modern and grammar school). The results of a user inquiry held in 1994 led to a number of further changes to improve the user-friend-liness of the tests. Early in 1996 a new research project concerning the reliability and validity of the tests was started. The results will be published in the autumn of 1996.
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Callahan, Erin. "Interlanguage and Cross-Generational Assimilation: Past Tense Unmarking in Hispanicized English." Journal of English Linguistics 45, no. 2 (May 3, 2017): 103–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0075424217702948.
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This study analyzes an emerging variety of North Carolina Hispanicized English in terms of the grammatical variable of past tense marking. It compares variation in Durham, North Carolina, Hispanicized English at increasing lengths of residency to generational varieties of Hispanicized English in a comparison sample, another contact-influenced ethnic variety of English, spoken by a longstanding Chicano community in south Texas. In this way, it tests the hypothesis that interlanguage (socio)linguistic development may in fact recapitulate generational changes in different sociodemographic speech settings. Results indicate that for the speakers in this study, the -t/-d variable indicates not only the constraints of the phonological process of deletion, but two morphosyntactic constraints: (1) the effects of verb class and (2) a grammatical process of past tense unmarking.
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Ihsan Ullah Khan. "Exploring the Role of Dialogic Teaching in Improving Learners’ Spoken English at Intermediate Level in District Bannu." sjesr 3, no. 3 (September 29, 2020): 90–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.36902/sjesr-vol3-iss3-2020(90-95).
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The study aims to explore the role of dialogic teaching, derived from Bakhtin's 'Dialogism', at an intermediate level in the English language teaching-learning process in District Bannu. An experimental research design was used in the study. Pre and post-tests were used for data collection. A 12th Grade Class of a public sector college was selected for the conduction of the experimental study. In this design, two groups namely, the control group and treatment group were administered pre and post-tests. Only the treatment group was given the treatment. The pre-test was designed to assess the oral proficiency of the treatment group. A paired sample t-test was used for the analysis of data. After the analyses of the data results were drawn. Data revealed that monologic teaching was prevalent in most of the classrooms, with no or very little space for the students to interact in the English language. Dialogic pedagogy proved very effective in finding out a solution to a real-world problem. Being dialogic, the pedagogy improved the oral proficiency of the students of the treatment group considerably.
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Velasco, Yvonne Pedria. "136 COMPOSITIONALITY/NON-COMPOSITIONALITY OF IDIOMS: NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS’ CONSTRAINTS TO COMPREHENSION." Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics 6, no. 1 (July 29, 2016): 135. http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v6i1.2745.
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<p>Informed by Jackendoff’s (1997) Representational Modularity (RM) Hypothesis which states that, similar to how people make sense of categories, they also systematically make sense of language. This study seeks to discover the way non-native speakers of English negotiate meaning when faced with idiomatic expressions that are modified either by a process of passivization or by a process of quantification; and whether idiom comprehension influence judgments of appropriateness of use of the modified expressions. Employing a researcher-made questionnaire that underwent content validity and reliability tests, the instrument was administered to four college freshman classes from four different higher education institutions. Findings reveal that a significant difference was found between group performance in the passivization and quantification tests through a one-sample test. However, an absence of a statistical relationship between the scores in the test and the participants’ judgment of appropriateness of use (spoken, written, spoken and written) was revealed by the statistical analysis.</p>
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Takagi, Naoyuki, and Virginia Mann. "The limits of extended naturalistic exposure on the perceptual mastery of English /r/ and /l/ by adult Japanese learners of English." Applied Psycholinguistics 16, no. 4 (1995): 380–406. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716400066005.
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AbstractTo evaluate the effect of extended adult exposure to authentic spoken English on the perceptual mastery of English /r/ and /l/, we tested 12 native speakers of English (A), 12 experienced Japanese (EJ) who had spent 12 or more years in the United States, and 12 less experienced Japanese (LJ) who had spent less than one year in the United States. The tests included the forced-choice identification of naturally produced /r/s and /1/s and the labeling of word-initial synthetic tokens that varied F2 and F3 to form an /r/-/l/-/w/ continuum. The F.Js’ mean performance in both tasks was closer to that of the As than the LJs, but nonetheless fell short. Extended exposure may improve /r/-/l/ identification accuracy; it does not ensure perfect perceptual mastery.
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Yang, Liu, Yang Tong, and Xu Siyuan. "The Efficacy of Using Liulishuo for Spoken English Ability—Taking the Practice of Liulishuo in North China Electric Power University (Baoding) as an Example." International Education Studies 12, no. 4 (March 25, 2019): 244. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ies.v12n4p244.
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This research aims to verify the effectiveness and practicability of Liulishuo, an English-learning APP, in improving college students’ oral English. The research adopts different student groups according to their different listening levels, and compares the scores of the pre- and post-practice tests of the control groups and the feedback analysis of the two sessions. The research results showed an upward trend, which proved the efficacy and practicability of Liulishuo in improving students’ oral English.
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Bateson, Gordon. "Developing an Online Test to Measure Writing and Speaking Skills Automatically." International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching 11, no. 4 (October 2021): 69–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijcallt.2021100105.
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As a result of the Japanese Ministry of Education's recent edict that students' written and spoken English should be assessed in university entrance exams, there is an urgent need for tools to help teachers and students prepare for these exams. Although some commercial tools already exist, they are generally expensive and inflexible. To address these shortcomings, a new open-source, online test for assessing English ability was developed. The test features the automatic grading not only of reading and listening, but also of speaking and writing. Thus, the general English ability of large numbers of students can be checked quickly online, making the test suitable for use in entrance exams and placements tests. It is based around the Moodle LMS and features several new plugins to automatically grade speaking and writing. This paper details plugin development, shows preliminary samples, and explains how test reliability will be verified by comparing students' scores with human-ratings and widely used tests such as IELTS, TOEIC, and CASEC.
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Khamees, Khalid Sabie. "Measuring EFL Learners' Ability to Recover and Reconstruct Missing Information in Spoken English Discourse." International Journal of Linguistics 8, no. 3 (June 15, 2016): 90. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v8i3.9615.
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<p class="1"><span lang="EN-GB">This study was set up to experimentally investigate the extent of EFL learners' ability to locate, decode, recover and reconstruct unstated information presented in discursive conversation. Specifically, the study examines the learners' ability to recover ellipted words, substituted forms and fully deleted sentences. It also sheds light on the techniques used and the obstacles they encounter in this respect. Thirty- five Iraqi sophomores majoring in English took three listening tests consisting of 27 items. The participants were asked to put the heard dialogues or single utterances with omitted information into their original complete and coherent forms. The overall result indicated that EFL learners were poor at identifying and recovering missing information. Data analysis showed that although the participants were able, to some extent, to identify and recover ellipted elements, their performance in recovering substituted element and unstated sentences was quite limited. It was also found that the more cognitively complicated the task is, the harder it will be to recover missing information. </span></p>
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Greene, Beth G. "Perception of Synthetic Speech by Nonnative Speakers of English." Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting 30, no. 13 (September 1986): 1340–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/154193128603001323.
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Nonnative speakers of English listened to natural and synthetic speech materials. All natural speech material was spoken by a native male speaker of American English. The synthetic speech was produced by the MITalk-79 system for the first experiment and by the Prose 2000 V2.1 text-to-speech system for the second experiment. Results from Experiment 1 indicated that nonnative speakers show higher levels of performance when listening to natural speech than when listening to synthetic speech. However, nonnative speakers did not reach the level of performance of native speakers for either natural or synthetic speech. Experiment 2 provided further evidence that nonnative speakers fail to reach the same level of performance when listening to synthetic speech as native speakers. Performance of nonnative speakers on a dictation task showed high positive correlations with their general English language ability as measured by two standardized tests. Results indicate the importance of language background and experience in the perception of speech, particularly synthetic and digitally encoded speech.
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CALUDE, ANDREEA. "The use of heaps as quantifier and intensifier in New Zealand English." English Language and Linguistics 23, no. 3 (December 11, 2017): 531–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1360674317000521.
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This article documents novel uses of the noun heaps in New Zealand English, namely as quantifier and intensifier, by means of quantitative and qualitative analyses of corpus data. Closely following in the footsteps of lots, heaps is the second most frequent size noun in New Zealand English. On the basis of exhaustive coding of four corpora of New Zealand English (spoken and written), the article describes and exemplifies the various uses of heaps in this English variety. Results show heaps is preferred in speech compared to writing, and that its most common use is as a quantifier, followed by an extension to an intensifying use, which has received comparatively less attention in the literature (and never specifically in the context of New Zealand English). An examination of early New Zealand English in the ONZE Corpus testifies to this incoming change, with heaps grammaticalizing into an adverb and bearing the semantic role of intensifier. Multivariate statistical tests show that innovative uses of heaps are largely driven by younger speakers.
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BIRD, STEPHEN A., and JOHN N. WILLIAMS. "The effect of bimodal input on implicit and explicit memory: An investigation into the benefits of within-language subtitling." Applied Psycholinguistics 23, no. 4 (November 19, 2002): 509–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716402004022.
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Two experiments examined the effect of single-modality (sound or text) and bimodal (sound and text) presentation on word learning, as measured by both improvements in spoken word recognition efficiency (long lag repetition priming) and recognition memory. Native and advanced nonnative speakers of English were tested. In Experiment 1 auditory lexical decisions on familiar words were equally primed by prior bimodal and sound-only presentation, whereas there were no priming effects for nonwords. Experiment 2 employed a rhyme judgment task using nonwords. Repetition priming of auditory rhyme judgment decisions was now obtained, and this was greater in the bimodal than the sound-only condition. In both experiments prior bimodal presentation improved recognition memory for spoken words and nonwords compared to single modality presentation. We conclude that simultaneous text presentation can aid novel word learning under certain conditions, as assessed by both explicit and implicit memory tests.
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Choi, Ikkyu. "Empirical profiles of academic oral English proficiency from an international teaching assistant screening test." Language Testing 34, no. 1 (August 3, 2016): 49–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265532215601881.
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Language proficiency constitutes a crucial barrier for prospective international teaching assistants (ITAs). Many US universities administer screening tests to ensure that ITAs possess the required academic oral English proficiency for their TA duties. Such ITA screening tests often elicit a sample of spoken English, which is evaluated in terms of multiple aspects by trained raters. In this light, ITA screening tests provide an advantageous context in which to gather rich information about test taker performances. This study introduces a systematic way of extracting meaningful information for major stakeholders from an ITA screening test administered at a US university. In particular, this study illustrates how academic oral English proficiency profiles can be identified based on test takers’ subscale score patterns, and discusses how the resulting profiles can be used as feedback for ITA training and screening policy makers, the ITA training program of the university, ESL instructors, and test takers. The proficiency profiles were identified using finite mixture modeling based on the subscale scores of 960 test takers. The modeling results suggested seven profile groups. These groups were interpreted and labeled based on the characteristic subscale score patterns of their members. The implications of the results are discussed, with the main focus on how such information can help ITA policy makers, the ITA training program, ESL instructors, and test takers make important decisions.
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Oktarini, Eka, and Pujiyati Suyata. "Pengaruh bahasa Inggris ragam lisan guru, media, dan sumber belajar terhadap kemampuan listening comprehension siswa." LingTera 6, no. 1 (May 19, 2019): 8–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.21831/lt.v6i1.11337.
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Penelitian ini memiliki tujuan yakni untuk mengetahui pengaruhintensitas penggunaan bahasa Inggris ragam lisan,pemanfaatan media pembelajaran,dan kelengkapan sumber belajar terhadap kemampuan listening comprehensionsiswa SMP di Kabupaten Sleman. Penelitian ini adalah penelitian Ex post Facto. Sampel yang dipilih sebanyak 370 siswa, dengan menggunakan teknik stratified proportional cluster random sampling. Instrumen penelitian menggunakan angket dan tes. Kualitas intrumen yang digunakan adalah IRT dengan menggunakan program QUEST. Data dianalisis dengan teknik statistik Regresi Ganda yang diteruskan dengan Korelasi Parsial.Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan bahasa Inggris ragam lisan, intensitas pemanfaatan media,dan kelengkapan sumber belajar mempengaruhi kemampuan listening comprehension Siswa SMP di Kabupaten Sleman dengan nilai analisis Regresi (F = 0,038p ≤ 0,05). Pengaruh penggunaan bahasa Inggris ragam lisan terhadap kemampuan listening comprehensionadalah sebesar 12,6 % dengan nilai Korelasi Parsial (r = 0,126, sig. p ≤ 0,05, Beta 0,126).PengaruhIntensitas pemanfaatan media terhadap kemampuan listening comprehensionadalah sebesar 0,8% dengan nilai Korelasi Parsial (r = - 0,080,Sig. p ≤ 0,05, Beta -0,080). Dan pengaruh kelengkapan sumber terhadap kemampuan listening comprehension sebesar 1,4% dengan nilai Korelasi Parsial (r = -0,014, Sig. p ≤ 0,05 Beta -0,014). The effect of teachers’ spoken English variety, media, and learning sources on the ability of students’ listening comprehension AbstractThis study has fourobjectives. First is to investigate the gathering effect of of English spoken language, the intensity of the use of media, and completeness of learning resources on the ability of listening comprehension in Sleman Junior high school students. The other objectives are the effect of each variable on the ability of listening comprehension Junior high school students in Sleman District.This research is an ex-post facto research.The sample consisted of 370 students were selected using stratified proportional random sampling techniques. The research instruments were questionnaire and tests. IRT was used to know the quality of instrumen by using QUEST program. The data were analyzed by using the Multiple Regression and Partial Correlation statistic analysis.The result of analysis indicates that the use of English spoken language, the intensity of the use of media, and completeness of learning resources together combined affect the listening comprehension.with Reression value (F = 0.038, sig. with p ≤ 0.05). The result of each variable on the listening comprehension indicates that the use of English spoken language affects 12.6 % with score (r = 0.126, sig. p ≤ 0.05, Beta 0.126). the intensity of using media affects 0.8% with score (r = - 0.080,Sig. p ≤ 0.05, Beta -0.080).And completeness of learning resources affect 1.4% with score (r = -0.014, Sig. p ≤ 0.05 Beta -0.014).
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Habibah, Nur. "Training Senior High School English Teachers in Developing Listening Assessment." IJET (Indonesian Journal of English Teaching) 6, no. 2 (December 19, 2017): 156–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.15642/ijet2.2017.6.2.156-166.
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The ceaseless assessment ignorance, ineffective practices, even indisposition to assess listening skills among English teachers are prevalent due to the complexity of providing spoken texts, the impractical implementation, not to mention the little concern regarding teachers’ assessment development. One possible way to address the problem is to improve teachers’ knowledge and skills as well as encourage them to develop listening assessment through a more specific, practical and comprehensive assessment teacher training. The present study tries to train nine English fellow teachers of Senior High Schools of Amanatul Ummah in Mojokerto and Surabaya. The training focuses on the knowledge of basic concept of assessment, principles of designing a good assessment, basic types of listening assessment, tips in selecting authentic materials and the skills involving the trainee teachers’ practices in developing listening assessment. Data were collected through pre and post-tests, pre-lesson notes, worksheets, reflective journal entries, and pre and post-projects. The finding shed light on the teachers’ changes in knowledge, skills, and disposition to develop listening assessment during the process and afterwards.
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Berardo, Marcellino. "How Proficient is Proficient Enough?: A Look at Proficiency in ESL for Academic Success." Issues in Language Instruction 2 (December 19, 2017): 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.17161/ili.v2i0.6930.
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We teach English to international students for the purpose of academic achievement at the University of Kansas. The assumption is that students cannot be successful in university classes without the ability to use academic English well. This is most obvious at the lower levels. If the student cannot understand any spoken or written English, then s/he cannot take notes, read textbook chapters, write papers, take exams, or participate in class discussion. This assumption also implies that as the student’s English improves, proficiency will become less of a factor in academic success.This essay is intended to help us discuss assumptions associated with language proficiency and academic success and to identify how well students need to be able to use English in order to fulfill the university’s ESL requirement and be successful in their chosen academic program, at least as far as language is concerned. To this end, I begin by characterizing different kinds of proficiency. Then I highlight the literature reviews in this issue, one by Jennifer Hornbaker and one by Parul Sood, that bring up issues related to using proficiency tests as the sole indicators of linguistic readiness for academic success at the university.
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Berardo, Marcellino. "How Proficient is Proficient Enough?: A Look at Proficiency in ESL for Academic Success." Issues in Language Instruction 2, no. 3 (December 19, 2017): 4–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.17161/ili.v2i3.6930.
Full textAbstract:
We teach English to international students for the purpose of academic achievement at the University of Kansas. The assumption is that students cannot be successful in university classes without the ability to use academic English well. This is most obvious at the lower levels. If the student cannot understand any spoken or written English, then s/he cannot take notes, read textbook chapters, write papers, take exams, or participate in class discussion. This assumption also implies that as the student’s English improves, proficiency will become less of a factor in academic success.This essay is intended to help us discuss assumptions associated with language proficiency and academic success and to identify how well students need to be able to use English in order to fulfill the university’s ESL requirement and be successful in their chosen academic program, at least as far as language is concerned. To this end, I begin by characterizing different kinds of proficiency. Then I highlight the literature reviews in this issue, one by Jennifer Hornbaker and one by Parul Sood, that bring up issues related to using proficiency tests as the sole indicators of linguistic readiness for academic success at the university.
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Bitter, Gary Glen, and Dr Rusen Meylani. "Effect of an m-Learning English Speaking Software App on Students in the Chiang Rai Municipality Schools 6 and 7 in Thailand." International Journal for Innovation Education and Research 4, no. 11 (November 30, 2016): 82–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.31686/ijier.vol4.iss11.9.
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Thailand is beginning to emphasize the teaching of elementary, junior and senior high students to speak English. One of the key problems has been the availability of an effective English learning program. This research study evaluated the effects of a mobile English speaking software app (Qooc o Kids English) for two schools using mobile devices in which 95% of the phones were Android, The research questions’ focus was on English speaking ability. Qooco Kids English is an online program delivered via a mobile device. The Qooco Kids English App w as used to teach children to speak English fluently by providing English audio models and frequent speaking practice with immediate actionable feedback on the English speaking of the students. Qooco Kids English has twelve instant feedback lesson modules w ith gamified, progressive lessons which result in faster and more engaging learning lessons. Through a pre post experimental design, the researchers studied the speaking ability of 192 grade 5 and grade 6 students in Chiang Rai Municipality School 6 and 89 Junior and senior high students in Chiang Rai Municipality School 7 for one semester in Thailand. Specifically, effects on students' English speaking ability after one semester were measured through the iTest pre and post tests. The significant statistic al findings indicated that the Qooco software English speaking app increases student achievement in both spoken and written English for Grades 5 and 6 as well as junior and senior high school students.
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Bitter, Gary Glen. "Effect of an m-Learning English Speaking Software App on Students in the Chiang Rai Municipality Schools 6 and 7 in Thailand." International Journal for Innovation Education and Research 4, no. 12 (December 31, 2016): 154–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.31686/ijier.vol4.iss12.71.
Full textAbstract:
Thailand is beginning to emphasize the teaching of elementary, junior and senior high students to speak English. One of the key problems has been the availability of an effective English learning program. This research study evaluated the effects of a mobile English speaking software app (Qooco Kids English) for two schools using mobile devices in which 95% of the phone s were Android, The research questions’ focus was on English speaking ability. Qooco Kids English is an online program delivered via a mobile device. The Qooco Kids English App was used to teach children to speak English fluently by providing English audio models and frequent speaking practice with immediate actionable feedback on the English speaking of the students. Qooco Kids English has twelve instant feedback lesson modules with gamified, progressive lessons which result in faster and more engaging learning lessons. Through a pre post experimental design, the researchers studied the speaking ability of 192 grade 5 and grade 6 students in Chiang Rai Municipality School 6 and 89 Junior and senior high students in Chiang Rai Municipality School 7 for one semester in Thailand. Specifically, effects on students' English speaking ability after one semester were measured through the iTest pre and post-tests. The significant statistical findings indicated that the Qooco software English speaking app increases student achievement in both spoken and written English for Grades 5 and 6 as well as junior and senior high school students.
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Lee, Yun Kyung, and Jeon Gue Park. "Multimodal Unsupervised Speech Translation for Recognizing and Evaluating Second Language Speech." Applied Sciences 11, no. 6 (March 16, 2021): 2642. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app11062642.
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This paper addresses an automatic proficiency evaluation and speech recognition for second language (L2) speech. The proposed method recognizes the speech uttered by the L2 speaker, measures a variety of fluency scores, and evaluates the proficiency of the speaker’s spoken English. Stress and rhythm scores are one of the important factors used to evaluate fluency in spoken English and are computed by comparing the stress patterns and the rhythm distributions to those of native speakers. In order to compute the stress and rhythm scores even when the phonemic sequence of the L2 speaker’s English sentence is different from the native speaker’s one, we align the phonemic sequences based on a dynamic time-warping approach. We also improve the performance of the speech recognition system for non-native speakers and compute fluency features more accurately by augmenting the non-native training dataset and training an acoustic model with the augmented dataset. In this work, we augment the non-native speech by converting some speech signal characteristics (style) while preserving its linguistic information. The proposed variational autoencoder (VAE)-based speech conversion network trains the conversion model by decomposing the spectral features of the speech into a speaker-invariant content factor and a speaker-specific style factor to estimate diverse and robust speech styles. Experimental results show that the proposed method effectively measures the fluency scores and generates diverse output signals. Also, in the proficiency evaluation and speech recognition tests, the proposed method improves the proficiency score performance and speech recognition accuracy for all proficiency areas compared to a method employing conventional acoustic models.
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Natvig, David. "Heritage Norwegian Vowel Phonology and English Dialect Formation." Heritage Language Journal 13, no. 2 (August 31, 2016): 245–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.46538/hlj.13.2.8.
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I present an acoustic analysis of the English and Norwegian spoken by contemporary heritage Norwegian-English bilinguals from northwestern Minnesota to evaluate claims of Norwegian substrate influence on the development of Upper Midwestern American English dialects. Specifically, this paper focuses on the English /o/ vowel, as in ‘goat’ or ‘boat,’ with a flat or falling trajectory (i.e., monophthongal /o/), that is a regional feature of the English of Minnesota and North Dakota (Allen, 1973–1976, vol. 3, pp. 22–23; Moen, 1988; Purnell, Raimy, & Salmons, in press; Thomas, 2001). Thomas (2001, p. 72) points to transfer from the Scandinavian languages’ (primarily Norwegian and Swedish) long [oː] vowels, which in many varieties of Norwegian are typically monophthongal (cf. Endresen, 1988, p. 84), as the source for monophthongal English /o/ in the region. Thomas (2001) relies on the relatively large settlements of Scandinavian immigrants in the Upper Midwest to support the Scandinavian source of this feature, yet so far we lack tests of this hypothesis. This paper seeks to fill this gap by providing both acoustic and phonological data from heritage Norwegian speakers. These data are situated in a discussion of how vowel productions reflect dialect differences within Norwegian-American communities, which enriches analyses of the adoption of substrate features into this regional variety of American English.
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BYBEE, JOAN, and RICARDO NAPOLEÃO DE SOUZA. "Vowel duration in English adjectives in attributive and predicative constructions." Language and Cognition 11, no. 4 (September 16, 2019): 555–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2019.32.
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abstractUsing ten English adjectives, this study tests the hypothesis that the vowels in adjectives in predicative constructions are longer than those in attributive constructions in spoken conversation. The analyses considered a number of factors: occurrence before a pause, lexical adjective, vowel identity, probability given surrounding words, and others. Two sets of statistical techniques were used: a Mixed-effects model and the Random Forest Analysis based on Conditional Inference Trees (CIT). Both analyses showed strong effects of predicative vs. attributive constructions and individual lexical adjectives on vowel duration in the predicted direction, as well as effects of many of the phonological variables tested. The results showed that the longer duration in the predicative construction is not due to lengthening before a pause, though it is related to whether the adjective is internal or final in the predicative construction. Nor is the effect attributable solely to the probability of the occurrence of the adjective; rather construction type has to be taken into account. The two statistical techniques complement each other, with the Mixed-effects model showing very general trends over all the data, and the Random Forest / CIT analysis showing factors that affect only subsets of the data.
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Lai, Mee Ling. "Power redistribution of languages in Hong Kong under a new national flag." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 25, no. 1 (June 15, 2015): 141–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.25.1.08lai.
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Four years after the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned from Britain to China, a Matched-guised Test (MGT) was conducted to examine the subjective reactions of students to speakers of the three major spoken languages used in the city (i.e. Cantonese, English and Putonghua). Respondents were the first cohort of students under the mandatory mother tongue education policy, which was implemented one year after the political handover. Eight years after, when further socio-economic changes had taken place in Hong Kong, the MGT was administered again to find out the attitudes of the younger generation towards the three languages. Although English and Cantonese distinctly excelled in different domains in the first test, the second MGT shows signs of power redistribution among the languages. This paper is to report a comparison between the two tests and thereby uncover the directions of language shift in Hong Kong.
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GOLLAN, TAMAR H., GALI H. WEISSBERGER, ELIN RUNNQVIST, ROSA I. MONTOYA, and CYNTHIA M. CERA. "Self-ratings of spoken language dominance: A Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) and preliminary norms for young and aging Spanish–English bilinguals." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15, no. 3 (August 1, 2011): 594–615. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728911000332.
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This study investigated correspondence between different measures of bilingual language proficiency contrasting self-report, proficiency interview, and picture naming skills. Fifty-two young (Experiment 1) and 20 aging (Experiment 2) Spanish–English bilinguals provided self-ratings of proficiency level, were interviewed for spoken proficiency, and named pictures in a Multilingual Naming Test (MINT); in Experiment 1, the Boston Naming Test (BNT) was also used. Self-ratings, proficiency interview, and the MINT did not differ significantly in classifying bilinguals into language-dominance groups, but naming tests (especially the BNT) classified bilinguals as more English-dominant than other measures. Strong correlations were observed between measures of proficiency in each language and language-dominance, but not degree of balanced bilingualism (index scores). Depending on the measure, up to 60% of bilinguals scored best in their self-reported non-dominant language. The BNT distorted bilingual assessment by underestimating ability in Spanish. These results illustrate what self-ratings can and cannot provide, illustrate the pitfalls of testing bilinguals with measures designed for monolinguals, and invite a multi-measure goal-driven approach to classifying bilinguals into dominance groups.
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Mahurin-Smith, Jamie, Monique T. Mills, and Rong Chang. "Rare Vocabulary Production in School-Age Narrators From Low-Income Communities." Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 52, no. 1 (January 18, 2021): 51–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2020_lshss-19-00120.
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Purpose This study was designed to assess the utility of a tool for automated analysis of rare vocabulary use in the spoken narratives of a group of school-age children from low-income communities. Method We evaluated personal and fictional narratives from 76 school-age children from low-income communities ( M age = 9;3 [years;months]). We analyzed children's use of rare vocabulary in their narratives, with the goal of evaluating relationships among rare vocabulary use, performance on standardized language tests, language sample measures, sex, and use of African American English. Results Use of rare vocabulary in school-age children is robustly correlated with established language sample measures. Male sex was also significantly associated with more frequent rare vocabulary use. There was no association between rare vocabulary use and use of African American English. Discussion Evaluation of rare vocabulary use in school-age children may be a culturally fair assessment strategy that aligns well with existing language sample measures.
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Davidson, Kathryn. "Scalar implicatures in a signed language." Sign Language and Linguistics 17, no. 1 (June 6, 2014): 1–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sll.17.1.01dav.
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This paper tests the calculation of scalar implicatures in American Sign Language (ASL) in one of the first experimental pragmatic studies in the manual/visual modality. Both native signers of ASL and native speakers of English participated in an automated Felicity Judgment Task to compare implicatures based on two traditional scales as well as “ad hoc” scales in their respective languages. Results show that native signers of ASL calculate scalar implicatures based on a prototypical scale <all, some> in ASL in the same pattern as native speakers of English, within the same experimental paradigm. There are similarly high rates of exact interpretations of numbers <three, two> in ASL as in English, despite the iconicity of the numerals in ASL. Finally, an ad hoc scale was tested showing fewer implicatures in English than on the conventionalized scales. In ASL, there was a trend toward increased implicatures on the ad hoc scale which made use of the unique ability of ASL to convey spatial information using the classifier system. Taken together, these results show that conventionalized scales in ASL have the same semantic/pragmatic scalar properties as in spoken languages, although in non-conventionalized scales the inclusion of additional information such as spatial location may affect pragmatic interpretation.
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Goyak, Flora, Mazura Mastura Muhammad, Farah Natchiar Mohd Khaja, Muhamad Fadzllah Zaini, and Ghada Mohammad. "Conversational Mental Verbs In English Song Lyrics." Asian Journal of University Education 17, no. 1 (March 8, 2021): 222. http://dx.doi.org/10.24191/ajue.v17i1.12619.
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This corpus-driven study explores the linguistics phenomenon of mental verbs in English song lyrics from 1960s until 2000s. This study aims to identify the frequency distributions of lexical verbs, mental verbs, and to analyze the language uses of mental verbs in the Diachronic Corpus of English Song Lyrics (DCOESL). Quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis were implemented to complement each other. First, quantitative data covering frequency distributions of general verbs was produced via LancsBox. Top three mental verbs in song lyrics were selected for analysis and discussion. The frequency distributions of mental verbs and collocations were produced via LancsBox. Collocational patterns are illustrated through collocational graphs constructed via LancsBox. Frequency distributions of mental verbs were compared to reference corpus Contemporary Corpus of American English (COCA) for the purpose of generalizing the findings from this study as representative of English language. The statistical data were submitted for four statistical tests of significance namely Chi-square, Mutual Information, Log-likelihood, and t-score. Second, qualitative data are composed of corpus annotations. Corpus annotations were conducted via CLAWS for assigning part-of-speech C7 tagset to identify verbs. Semantic categories of mental verbs were identified via UCREL Semantic Analysis System (USAS). Findings uncovered the significantly high frequencies of mental verbs know, want, and love in English song lyrics through 1960s until 1990s. These three mental verbs possess high inclination to occur alongside personal pronouns I and you, depict social actions, high predilection for simple present tense, and simple sentence structure. These attributes illuminate that song lyrics emulate spoken English, predominantly the informal conversation register.
Keywords: Corpus Linguistics, Corpus Driven, Computational Corpus Linguistics, Mental Verbs, Song Lyrics.
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Gibbons, Chris, Barry Oken, and Melanie Fried-Oken. "Augmented Input Reveals Word Deafness in a Man with Frontotemporal Dementia." Behavioural Neurology 25, no. 2 (2012): 151–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/264927.
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We describe a 57 year old, right handed, English speaking man initially diagnosed with progressive aphasia. Language assessment revealed inconsistent performance in key areas. Expressive language was reduced to a few short, perseverative phrases. Speech was severely apraxic. Primary modes of communication included gesture, pointing, gaze, physical touch and leading. Responses were 100% accurate when he was provided with written words, with random or inaccurate responses for strictly auditory/verbal input. When instructions to subsequent neuropsychological tests were written instead of spoken, performance improved markedly. A comprehensive audiology assessment revealed no hearing impairment. Neuroimaging was unremarkable. Neurobehavioral evaluation utilizing written input led to diagnoses of word deafness and frontotemporal dementia, resulting in very different management. We highlight the need for alternative modes of language input for assessment and treatment of patients with language comprehension symptoms.
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LI, LI, and BARRETT R. BRYANT. "AN EFFICIENT PARSING MODEL FOR UNIFICATION CATEGORIAL GRAMMAR WITH OBJECT-ORIENTED KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION AND SELECTION SETS." International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools 07, no. 02 (June 1998): 143–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0218213098000093.
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This paper describes an object-oriented lexical representation language based on Unification Categorial Grammar (UCG) that encodes linguistic and semantic information uniformly as classes and objects and an efficient bottom-up parsing method for UCG using selection sets technique. The lexical representation language, implemented in the logic and object-oriented programming language LIFE, introduces several new information sharing mechanisms to enable natural, declarative, modular and economial construction of large and complex computational lexicons. The selection sets are deduced from a transformation between UCG and Context-Free Grammar (CFG) and used to reduce search space for the table-driven algorithm. The experimental tests on a spoken English corpus show that the hierarchical lexicon achieves a dramatic reduction on redundant information and that selection sets significantly improve parsing UCG with a polynomial time complexity.
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Shiri, Sepideh, and Hassan Abdilah. "The Influence of Topic Management on the Speaking Ability of Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners." International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 9, no. 3 (May 31, 2020): 62. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.3p.62.
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In English as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings where English is not the spoken language, Topic Management has been recognised as one of the factors that influence the speaking ability of learners (Du-Babcock, 1999). In Iran, many intermediate EFL learners find it very difficult to manage the speech aspect of the English language. The present study examines the influence of Topic Management on the speaking ability of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. It provides useful insights on teaching speaking skills through Topic Management to improve the speaking ability of learners. In this study, quasi-experimental design was used. 40 intermediate learners were selected and divided into two groups, the Control Group and the Experimental Group. Three tests were administered to obtain data from the participants. These were a proficiency test to check the English proficiency level of the participants, a speaking pre-test to check their speaking ability before the treatment, and a speaking post-test to check their speaking ability after the treatment. The results indicate that Topic Management has an influence on the speaking ability of Iranian EFL learners. That is, the more the student is confident in managing the topic the more he/she is able to sustain the conversation. The study concludes that Topic Management can be a facilitative approach to improving Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ speaking ability.
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I Alhojailan, Ahmad. "The Effect of Interviewers’ Genders on the Quantity and Quality of Their Interviewees’ Output: A Comparative Inquiry among Saudi Students." International Journal of English Language Education 8, no. 2 (July 20, 2020): 137. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijele.v8i2.17377.
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Gender segregation is widely established in Saudi Arabia, and this may affect the interviewing dynamic in conducting spoken tests. Such an effect could pose significant consequences for interviewees; for example, it might affect their ability to obtain high scores in the speaking sections of standardized tests (e.g., the IELTS). This could prevent them from enrolling in universities in English speaking countries (e.g., United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada) as well as other universities that require such tests for enrollment purposes. As such, this study attempts to explore whether the gender of an interviewer can affect how a respondent forms their answer in terms of both depth and length. In this study, two interviewers (a male and a female) interviewed six Saudis of both genders, comprising a total of 12 interviews. The results showed that when both the interviewer and the interviewee were of the same gender, interviewees’ responses tended to be lengthy, and they were more likely to expand their response to other related topics. On the other hand, when both the interviewer and the interviewee were not of the same gender, brevity and/or avoidance characterized their answers.
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SHENG, LI, YING LU, and TAMAR H. GOLLAN. "Assessing language dominance in Mandarin–English bilinguals: Convergence and divergence between subjective and objective measures." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17, no. 2 (September 24, 2013): 364–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728913000424.
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This study examines the convergence and divergence between subjective and objective measures of language proficiency for assessing language dominance in Mandarin–English bilinguals. Sixty-two young adults (Experiment 1) and 27 children (Experiment 2) provided self-ratings of proficiency level (or were rated by their parents), were interviewed for spoken proficiency, and named pictures in the Multilingual Naming Test (MINT) and (in Experiment 1 only) the Boston Naming Test. In Experiment 1, the four measures converged in the number of people classified into different dominance groups but both naming tests indicated greater English dominance than self-report and interview measures. In Experiment 2, parent report and interview measures converged in dominance classifications but the MINT indicated higher degrees of English dominance. To a large extent bilinguals were able to classify themselves (or their children) into dominance groups but some mismatches between measures in dominance classification were observed for all age and dominance groups. These results, together with previous findings with Spanish–English bilingual adults (Gollan et al., 2012), suggest that bilinguals may shift to English dominance in confrontation naming before they do so in conversational fluency, and that dominance shifts persist throughout the lifespan but may be relatively more pronounced in children. These findings caution against the use of self-reports as the sole means of classifying bilinguals into dominance groups and support a multi-measure approach including direct assessment of the relevant linguistic domain.
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Ginther, April, Slobodanka Dimova, and Rui Yang. "Conceptual and empirical relationships between temporal measures of fluency and oral English proficiency with implications for automated scoring." Language Testing 27, no. 3 (June 15, 2010): 379–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0265532210364407.
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Information provided by examination of the skills that underlie holistic scores can be used not only as supporting evidence for the validity of inferences associated with performance tests but also as a way to improve the scoring rubrics, descriptors, and benchmarks associated with scoring scales. As fluency is considered a critical, perhaps foundational, component of speaking proficiency, temporal measures of fluency are expected to be strongly related to holistic ratings of speech quality.This study examines the relationships among selected temporal measures of fluency and holistic scores on a semi-direct measure of oral English proficiency. The spoken responses of 150 respondents to one item on the Oral English Proficiency Test (OEPT) were analyzed for selected temporal measures of fluency. The examinees represented three first language backgrounds (Chinese, Hindi, and English) and the range of scores on the OEPT scale. While strong and moderate correlations between OEPT scores and speech rate, speech time ratio, mean length of run, and the number and length of silent pauses were found, fluency variables alone did not distinguish adjacent levels of the OEPT scale. Temporal measures of fluency may reasonably be selected for the development of automated scoring systems for speech; however, identification of an examinee’s level remains dependent on aspects of performance only partially represented by fluency measures.
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Parasar, Krutika, James L. Morgan, and Lori Rolfe. "The Relationship between Alternate Language Exposure and English Comprehension in Infants." Journal of Student Research 1, no. 2 (July 14, 2012): 87–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.47611/jsr.v1i2.84.
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Most language acquisition research to date focuses on monolingual infants. In American society there is a burgeoning population of bilingual families where infants must learn the nuances of two languages simultaneously. To extend understanding of language development to this population, research specific to bilingual infants is needed. This study investigates 19-20 month old infants’ abilities to understand English when exposed to varying levels of alternate languages, including Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Punjabi, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Urdu. Participants included 26 babies whose language exposure consisted of at least 99% English, and 22 babies exposed to English and at least 15% of an alternate language. Infants’ English noun comprehension was measured using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm. During a four minute session, infants’ gazes were tracked while they looked at simultaneous images, one of which corresponded to a spoken English noun. Before or afterwards, parents identified which of the 16 trial words they believed their infants were able to understand and say. Comparisons were made through two-tailed t-tests that assumed unequal variances. Results showed that infants whose daily language exposure consists of 15-39% of an alternate language understood more English nouns than infants exposed to 40-90% of an alternate language and more than monolinguals. Comparisons of parental reports of infants’ speech similarly showed that infants exposed to higher levels of alternate language said fewer English nouns than infants exposed to lower levels of alternate language and fewer than monolingual infants. Validity of parental reports was evaluated through comparisons of parental estimations and experimental results. Monolingual parents reported higher levels of English comprehension than infants showed in the experimental task, while parents of bilinguals did not demonstrate this effect. Possible explanations for these results are discussed in light of past research and implications for English acquisition of bilingual children are considered.
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Gooskens, Charlotte, and Femke Swarte. "Linguistic and extra-linguistic predictors of mutual intelligibility between Germanic languages." Nordic Journal of Linguistics 40, no. 2 (October 2017): 123–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0332586517000099.
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We report on a large-scale investigation of the mutual intelligibility between five Germanic languages: Danish, Dutch, English, German and Swedish. We tested twenty language combinations using the same uniform methodology, making the results commensurable for the first time. We first tested both written and spoken language by means of cloze tests. Next we calculated linguistic distance at the levels of lexicon, orthography, phonology, morphology and syntax. We also quantified exposure and attitudes towards the test languages. Finally, we carried out a regression analysis to determine the relative importance of these linguistic and extra-linguistic predictors for the mutual intelligibility between Germanic languages. The extra-linguistic predictor exposure was the most significant factor in predicting intelligibility in the Germanic language area. The effect of attitude was very small. Lexical distance, orthographic and phonetic distances were the most important linguistic predictors of intelligibility.
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Stewart, Jesse, Felicity Meakins, Cassandra Algy, and Angelina Joshua. "The Development of Phonological Stratification: Evidence from Stop Voicing Perception in Gurindji Kriol and Roper Kriol." Journal of Language Contact 11, no. 1 (January 18, 2018): 71–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19552629-01101003.
Full textAbstract:
This study tests the effect of multilingualism and language contact on consonant perception. Here, we explore the emergence of phonological stratification using two alternative forced-choice (2afc) identification task experiments to test listener perception of stop voicing with contrasting minimal pairs modified along a 10-step continuum. We examine a unique language ecology consisting of three languages spoken in Northern Territory, Australia: Roper Kriol (an English-lexifier creole language), Gurindji (Pama-Nyungan), and Gurindji Kriol (a mixed language derived from Gurindji and Kriol). In addition, this study focuses on three distinct age groups: children (group i, 8>), preteens to middle-aged adults (groupii, 10–58), and older adults (groupiii, 65+). Results reveal that both Kriol and Gurindji Kriol listeners in groupiicontrast the labial series [p] and [b]. Contrarily, while alveolar [t] and velar [k] were consistently identifiable by the majority of participants (74%), their voiced counterparts ([d] and [g]) showed random response patterns by 61% of the participants. Responses to the voiced stimuli from the preteen-adult Kriol group were, however, significantly more consistent than in the Gurindji Kriol group, suggesting Kriol listeners may be further along in acquiring the voicing contrast. Significant results regarding listener exposure to Standard English in both language groups also suggests constant exposure to English maybe a catalyst for setting this change in motion. The more varied responses from the Gurindji, Kriol, and Gurindji Kriol listeners in groupsiiandiii, who have little exposure to English, help support these findings.
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Gomes Gonsalez, Maria Angeles. "A Corpus-based Analysis of Extended Multiple Themes in PresE." International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 3, no. 1 (January 1, 1998): 81–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.3.1.05gom.
Full textAbstract:
This corpus-based study reformulates Halliday's (1994: 55) notion of Multiple Theme, i.e., textual and/or interpersonal items occurring before a simple Topical Theme (or clause initial transitivity/mood element) (e.g., Well, but then, Ann, surely, wouldn't the best idea be to join the group?) (cf. Berry 1982, 1995; Lautamatti 1978; Young 1980; Vasconcellos 1992). Firstly, the label Extended Multiple Theme is here proposed as a cover-term for Topical Themes co-occurring with pre-topical and/or post-topical textual and/or interpersonal elements. And secondly, Extended Multiple Themes are suggested to: (i) allow for recursiveness within the three functional slots; (ii) tend to abide by Dik's (1989: 342) Principle of Centripetal Organisation; and (iii) substantiate the layering hypothesis posited for example in Dik 's Functional Grammar or in Role and Reference Grammar (cf. Hengeveld 1989; Van Valin Jr. 1993). These claims were deduced from the application of three multivariate statistical tests, namely, the Logistic Regression Technique, the Fisher's Exact Test, and the x2 Test, to the tokens of Extended Multiple Themes found in real Present-day English texts, that is to say, in the Lancaster Spoken English Corpus.
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Haug, Laura. "Introducing integrated language skills assessment at the language department of a Czech university." Language Learning in Higher Education 11, no. 1 (May 1, 2021): 253–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/cercles-2021-2010.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Integrated assessment evaluates language proficiency through tasks that require the test-taker to produce a written or spoken output based on listening or reading comprehension (reading or listening-into-writing or speaking). Since integrated assessment aims at reflecting the communicative and cognitive requirements of academic life and other professions, it is considered a means of assessment that is both authentic and valid. Examples of integrated tests can be found in high-stakes examinations at universities with English as the medium of instruction, and in the standardised high-stakes examinations offered by ETS, Pearson Education and Trinity College London. This report provides an example of integrated assessment in action by describing a currently used integrated test developed at the Language Department of the Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia in the Czech Republic. Since 2018, this particular integrated test has served as the entrance examination for Biological Chemistry (EEBC), a bachelor’s degree course delivered entirely in English. By detailing the rationale behind the examination and the design process, this report aims to show that integrated assessment can provide a valid alternative to independent assessment at the tertiary level.