• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.23-42
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• 2006

This paper reports a preliminary result of an acoustic study on the stress and intonational system in Lakhota, a native American language. It investigates how the stress and intonation in Lakhota are phonetically manifested; and how the stress interacts with other prosodic factors. The results preliminarily obtained from one native Lakhota speaker suggest that the primary cue of the stress is relatively high F0 which is often accompanied by higher intensity (for the vowel) and longer VOT (for aspirated stops). The results also indicate that stress is not reliably marked by duration. The stress system, however, interacts with the intonational pattern, such that, for example, intonational peak falls on the stressed syllable with a general pattern of L+H* and that it interacts with the boundary tone L%, resulting in mid tone utterance-finally. This paper can be viewed largely as a qualitative study on an understudied native American language, Lakhota and as forming a basis for further development of its stress and intonation system whose acoustic properties of its prosodic system have not been investigated before.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 2017

The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of utterance internal pause in English speaking evaluation. To avoid possible confusion with other errors caused by segmental and prosodic inaccuracy, stem utterances with two different length obtained from a native speaker were manipulated to make a set of stimuli tokens through insertion of pauses whose length and position vary. After a total of 90 participants classified into three proficiency groups rated the stimuli, the scored data set was statistically analyzed in terms of the mixed effects model. It was confirmed that predictors such as pause length, pause position and utterance length significantly influence raters' evaluation scores. Especially, a dominating effect was found in such a way that raters gradually deducted scores in accordance with the increase of pause duration. In another experiment, a tree-based statistical learning technique was utilized to check which of the significant predictors played a more influential role than others. The findings in this paper are expected to be practically informative for both the test takers who are preparing for an English speaking test and the raters who desire to develop more objective rubric of speaking evaluation.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.251-255
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of using songs for the acquisition of English Prosody in elementary school. For the purpose, 8 classes were chosen to teach songs for four months, and listening tests and reading test were performed for analyzing the effect. The result is as follows : (1) The result of listening test showed that the average scores of the experimental classes were higher than those of comparative classes, and it was more effective in lower grades than in upper grades. (2) In pronunciation tests, the pronunciations of experimental classes were more similar to native speaker's pronunciation that those of comparative classes in intonation, lexical stress and sentence stress. (3) Singing songs repeatedly is more important than learning many songs. It means that to give the chances to sing as many times as possible is advisable for teaching pronunciation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Interior Design Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.281-282
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• 2005

The present design, which is the result of English Zone Project for 'I' Girls' High School in Yeonsu dong, Incheon, purposed to produce atmosphere like a cafe so that students can attempt more comfortable and diverse learning methods, breaking away from the structure and atmosphere of traditional language labs while providing functions such as experiential learning, teaching learning and native speaker conversation. In addition, it applied colors close to primary colors so that students throw away their fixed idea of language lab as a special class and access it easily at any time. Moreover, it was designed for the maximum changeability using foldable and portable furniture so that various types of group study can be performed. Ultimately the design project is expected to suggest methods of experiential learning distinguished from existing knowledge delivering education as it provides teaching learning methods beyond simple interior design.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.43-51
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• 2004

The convergence of mobile communications and handheld computers offers the opportunity to develop technology that will assist individuals and groups to learn anytime, anywhere. In this thesis, we suggest a learning model for educational mobile contents, and implement a mobile contents for English vocabulary learning. The mobile contents consist of two parts: vocabulary learning and vocabulary evaluation. The vocabulary learning provides the mobile learner not only the display of English vocabulary but also the pronunciation of native speaker. The degree of learning achievement is evaluated by the quiz program of game style. Accordingly, the proposed prototype system for English vocabulary learning is designed and implemented, as an exemplar of personal mobile systems for edutainment mobile learning.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.48-58
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• 2024

This paper presents the development of language tutoring systems for nonnative speakers by leveraging advanced end-to-end automatic speech recognition (ASR) and proficiency evaluation. Given the frequent errors in non-native speech, high-performance spontaneous speech recognition must be applied. Our systems accurately evaluate pronunciation and speaking fluency and provide feedback on errors by relying on precise transcriptions. End-to-end ASR is implemented and enhanced by using diverse non-native speaker speech data for model training. For performance enhancement, we combine semisupervised and transfer learning techniques using labeled and unlabeled speech data. Automatic proficiency evaluation is performed by a model trained to maximize the statistical correlation between the fluency score manually determined by a human expert and a calculated fluency score. We developed an English tutoring system for Korean elementary students called EBS AI Peng-Talk and a Korean tutoring system for foreigners called KSI Korean AI Tutor. Both systems were deployed by South Korean government agencies.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.323-332
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• 2016

A robot's recognition and diagnosis of pronunciation and its speech are the most important interactions in RALL(Robot Assisted Language Learning). This study is to verify the effectiveness of robot TTS(Text to Sound) technology in assisting Korean English language learners to acquire a native-like accent by correcting the prosodic errors they commonly make. The child English language learners' F0 range and speaking rate in the 4th grade, a prosodic variable, will be measured and analyzed for any changes in accent. We compare whether robot with the currently available TTS technology appeared to be effective for the 4th graders and 1st graders who were not under the formal English learning with native speaker from the acoustic phonetic viewpoint. Two groups by repeating TTS of RALL responded to the speaking rate rather than F0 range.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.133-145
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• 2006

In order to understand the various groups' perceptual pattern in both VCV trochee and iambus, this study examined the identification correctness and cue robustness for the unit intervals in light of background language, age, and English listening ability. The 4 groups of Native Speakers of English, Korean College Students of High Listening Achievement, Korean College Students of Low Listening Achievement, and Korean Elementary Students took part in the experiments. Tokens of $/d{\ae}per,\;d{\ae}per,\;d{\ae}per,\;d{\ae}per,\;d{\ae}per,\;d{\ae}per$ in trochee and of $/{\eth}{\partial}\;p{\ae}d,\;{\eth}{\partial}\;b{\ae}d,\;{\eth}{\partial}\;t{\ae}d,\;{\eth}{\partial}\;d{\ae}d,\;{\eth}{\partial}\;k{\ae}d,\;{\eth}{\partial}\;g{\ae}d/$ in iambus were extracted and modified into experimental signals composed of two digits(voiced-1, voiceless-0) by following the temporal intervals, in which the signals consisted of preceding vowel, closure, VOT, and post-vowel. In the first experiment of identification correctness in VCV iambus environment, all groups showed almost 100% correctness rate, while in trochee environment all groups were different(native speaker 87%, college high 74%, college low 70%, elementary 65%). In the second experiment of cue robustness, all groups showed the similar perceptual pattern in both environments. There was the order of robustness cues in VCV trochee: pre-vowel ${\gg}$ closure ${\gg}$ VOT ${\gg}$ post-vowel, while the order in VCV iambus: VOT ${\gg}$ post-vowel ${\gg}$ closure ${\gg}$ pre-vowel. In some condition, however, we found moderately different perceptual pattern depending on language, age and listening level.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.274-274
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• 1996

This presents the preliminary results from work in progress of a paired study of the acquisition of voiceless stops by Spanish speakers learning English, and American English speakers learning Spanish. For this study the hypothesis was that the American speakers would have no difficulty suppressing the aspiration in Spanish unaspirated stops; the Spanish speakers would have difficulty acquiring the aspiration necessary for English voiceless stops, according to Eckman's Markedness Differential Hypothesis. The null hypothesis was proved. All subjects were given the same set of disyllabic real words of English and Spanish in carrier phrases. The tokens analyzed in this report are limited to word-initial voiceless stops, followed by a low back vowel in stressed syllables. Tokens were randomized and then arranged in a list with the words appearing three separate times. Aspiration was measured from the burst to the onset of voicing(VOT). Both the first language (Ll) tokens and second language (L2) tokens were compared for each speaker and between the two groups of language speakers. Results indicate that the Spanish speakers, as a group, were able to reach the accepted target language VOT of English, but English speakers were not able to reach the accepted range for Spanish, in spite of statistically significant changes of p<.OOl by speakers in both groups of learners. A closer analysis of the speech samples revealed wide variability within the speech of native speakers of English. Not only is variability in English due to the wide range of VOT (120 msecs. for English labials, for example) but individual speakers showed different patterns. These results are revealing for the demands requied in experimental designs and the number of speakers and tokens requied for an adequate description of different languages. In addition, a simple report of means will not distinguish the speakers and the respective language learning situation; measurements must also include the RANGE of acceptability of VOT for phonetic segments. This has immediate consequences for the learning and teaching of foreign languages involving aspirated stops. In addition, the labelling of spoken language in speech technology is shown to be inadequate without a fuller mathematical description.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.159-168
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• 2016

Objective: This study investigated the age at which monolingual children can understand that different languages are different conventional systems of communication. In particular, we investigated when children can suspend using the mutual exclusivity (ME) assumption that a label solely refers to one category when interpreting novel words from foreign languages. Methods: Two-year-olds (n = 16) and 3-year-olds (n = 16) participated in the procedure, which consisted of three blocks. In the first block, a Korean speaker taught the children a novel word, muppi, referring to a novel object. The children were presented with two objects, muppi and another novel object. The Korean speaker then asked the children to find a referent of either muppi or the other novel Korean label, kkati. In the second block, a foreign language (either English or Spanish) speaker asked children to find the object for a foreign novel word, sefo, presenting two objects: muppi and the third novel object, which had not been presented before. The procedure of the third block was identical to that of the first block. Results: Three-year-olds exploited the ME assumption when interpreting a Korean novel word but not when interpreting a foreign novel word. In contrast, 2-year-old children did not use the ME assumption when interpreting native and foreign words. Conclusion: Children acquire an understanding that native and foreign languages have different words for an object at least by 3 years of age.