• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.512-520
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• 2019

It is quite useful to represent speeches visually for learners who study foreign languages as well as the hearing impaired who cannot directly hear speeches, and a number of researches have been presented in the literature. They remain, however, at the level of representing the characteristics of speeches using colors or showing the changing shape of lips and mouth using the animation-based representation. As a result of such approaches, those methods cannot tell the users how far their pronunciations are away from the standard ones, and moreover they make it technically difficult to develop such a system in which users can correct their pronunciation in an interactive manner. In order to address these kind of drawbacks, this paper proposes a speech visualization model based on the relative distance between the user's speech and the standard one, furthermore suggests actual implementation directions by applying the proposed model to the visualization of Korean vowels. The method extract three formants F1, F2, and F3 from speech signals and feed them into the Kohonen's SOM to map the results into 2-D screen and represent each speech as a pint on the screen. We have presented a real system implemented using the open source formant analysis software on the speech of a Korean instructor and several foreign students studying Korean language, in which the user interface was built using the Javascript for the screen display.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.235-250
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• 2012

This paper aims to find out whether or not elementary school students recognize and understand scientific units that they encounter in their everyday life. To select appropriate units for the survey, first, scientific units in elementary textbooks of science and other science related subjects were analyzed. Then it was examined how these units were related to the learners' daily life. The participants in the current survey were 320 elementary school 6th graders. A questionnaire consisted of 11 units of science, such as kg for mass, km for distance, L for volume, V for voltage, s for time, $^{\circ}C$ for temperature, km/h for speed, kcal for heat, % for percentage, W for electric power, pH for acidity, which can often be seen and used in daily life. The students were asked to do the following four tasks, (1) to see presented pictures and select appropriate scientific units, (2) to write reasons for choosing the units, (3) to answer what the units are used for, and (4) to check where to find the units. The data were analyzed in terms of the percentage of the students who seemed to well recognize and understand the units, using SPSS 17.0 statistical program. The results are as follows: Regarding the general use of the units, it was revealed that almost the same units were repeated in science and other subject textbooks from the same grade. With an increase of the students' grade more difficult units were used. As for the use of each unit, it was found that they seemed to relatively well understand what these units kg, km, L, $^{\circ}C$, kcal, km/h, and W stand for, showing more than 91% right. However, the units of V, s, in particular, %, and pH did not seem to be understood. With respect to the recognition of the units, most students did not recognize such units as L for volume and pH for acidity, probably because the units are difficult at the elementary level in comparison to other scientific units. The students indicated that schools were the best place where they could learn and find scientific units related to life, followed by shops/marts, newspapers/broadcasting, streets/roads, homes, and others in that order. The results show that scientific unit learning should be conducted in a systematic way at school and that teachers can play a major role in improving students' understanding and use of the units.