•The Intelligibility approach enhances the speaking skills of the foreign-language students.•The Intelligibility group gained more than the Nativeness group on the Accentedness scale.
The present ...study investigates the relative contribution of the Nativeness vs. Intelligibility approach in prosody instruction for developing English speaking skills by Iranian interpreter trainees. Three groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups at random. The speaking skill pretest scores revealed that the three groups were homogeneous before starting the training program. The Control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English, and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies, and did exercises to improve speaking skills without receiving prosody training. The Nativeness approach group instead spent part of the time on the theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises in, English prosody with the overall aim to train students to acquire native-like speaking skills. The Intelligibility approach group spent part of the time on the theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises in, English prosody emphasizing the requirement that students produce intelligible speech. The total instruction time was the same for all three groups, i.e., 18 h. Students then took a posttest in speaking skills. The results show that both experimental groups performed better than the control group. Moreover, the Intelligibility approach group outperformed the Nativeness approach group in developing speaking skills.
► Both cerebral hemispheres are necessary for adequate emotional and linguistic prosodic perception. ► The right hemisphere is more important than the left hemisphere for emotional prosodic ...perception. ► Prosodic processing is under bihemispheric control with relative right hemispheric lateralization for emotional perception.
It is unclear whether there is hemispheric specialization for prosodic perception and, if so, what the nature of this hemispheric asymmetry is. Using the lesion-approach, many studies have attempted to test whether there is hemispheric specialization for emotional and linguistic prosodic perception by examining the impact of left vs. right hemispheric damage on prosodic perception task performance. However, so far no consensus has been reached. In an attempt to find a consistent pattern of lateralization for prosodic perception, a meta-analysis was performed on 38 lesion studies (including 450 left hemisphere damaged patients, 534 right hemisphere damaged patients and 491 controls) of prosodic perception. It was found that both left and right hemispheric damage compromise emotional and linguistic prosodic perception task performance. Furthermore, right hemispheric damage degraded emotional prosodic perception more than left hemispheric damage (trimmed g=−0.37, 95% CI −0.66; −0.09, N=620 patients). It is concluded that prosodic perception is under bihemispheric control with relative specialization of the right hemisphere for emotional prosodic perception.
With the advent of neuroimaging considerable progress has been made in uncovering the neural network involved in the perception of emotional prosody. However, the exact neuroanatomical underpinnings ...of the emotional prosody perception process remain unclear. Furthermore, it is unclear what the intrahemispheric basis might be of the relative right-hemispheric specialization for emotional prosody perception that has been found previously in the lesion literature. In an attempt to shed light on these issues, quantitative meta-analyses of the neuroimaging literature were performed to investigate which brain areas are robustly associated with stimulus-driven and task-dependent perception of emotional prosody. Also, lateralization analyses were performed to investigate whether statistically reliable hemispheric specialization across studies can be found in these networks. A bilateral temporofrontal network was found to be implicated in emotional prosody perception, generally supporting previously proposed models of emotional prosody perception. Right-lateralized convergence across studies was found in (early) auditory processing areas, suggesting that the right hemispheric specialization for emotional prosody perception reported previously in the lesion literature might be driven by hemispheric specialization for non-prosody-specific fundamental acoustic dimensions of the speech signal.
► The bilateral temporofrontal cortex is robustly involved in emotional prosody perception. ► The mid-STG was most robustly involved in the stimulus-driven processing of emotional prosody. ► The posterior STG was most robustly involved in the task-driven processing of emotional prosody.
The present study investigates the relative contribution of computer assisted prosody training (CAPT) vs. instructor based prosody teaching (IBPT) on developing speaking skills by interpreter ...trainees. Three groups of student interpreters were formed. All were native speakers of Farsi who studied English translation and interpreting at the BA level at the University of Applied Sciences in Tehran, Iran. Participants were assigned to groups at random. No significant differences in speaking skills could be established between the groups prior to the experiment. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies and did exercises based on these tasks for developing speaking skills. The first experimental group spent part of the time on theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises with, English prosody by an instructor. The second experimental group instead spent part of the time on English prosody instruction and practice through the Accent Master software for Farsi speakers (Bo & Bo 2005). The total instruction time was the same for all three groups, i.e. 12 h. Students then took a posttest in speaking skills. The results showed that the second experimental group (CAPT) performed better than the other groups in developing speaking skills. These results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreter training programs, and all who are involved in language study and pedagogy.
The present study examines the effect of feedback (FB) and feedforward (FF) in prosody instruction for developing listening comprehension skills in the nonnative language by interpreter trainees, ...using a pretest–posttest–delayed posttest design. Three groups of 25 interpreter trainees at Bu‐Ali Sina University in Iran took part in the study, all groups receiving the same amount of instruction (10 h over 5 weeks). The control group listened to/viewed authentic audio recordings and movies in English, discussed their contents, and completed a variety of listening comprehension tasks but received no prosody instruction. The first experimental group spent part of the time on theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises with, English prosody by an instructor by providing FB when teaching prosody while the second experimental group was provided FF when teaching prosody. Versions of Longman's Test of English as a Foreign Language English proficiency test (paper‐based) were used to assess listening comprehension at pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest. The findings revealed that the prosody instruction by providing FB enhanced the listening comprehension skills of the interpreter trainees more than by providing FF. The practical implications of the study would be that in the given circumstances where only limited curricular time is available for instruction and practice, a judicious choice can be made to lend priority to providing FB in prosody instruction for developing listening comprehension skills by interpreter trainees rather than to the providing FF.
The Challenge
Few studies have examined the extent to which targeted instruction may help L2 students to take advantage of the subtle meanings communicated through prosodic features. The present study shows that prosody instruction by providing feedback enhances the listening comprehension skills of the interpreter trainees more than by providing feedforward.
This study investigates the effect of explicit teaching of segmentals vs. prosody on the quality of interpreting by Farsi-to-English interpreter trainees. Participants were native speakers of Farsi ...and BA students of English translation and interpreting in Iran, who were assigned to one of three groups. No differences in English language skills were found between the groups prior to the experiment. The control group listened to and discussed English audio and video recordings and did exercises in consecutive interpreting. One experimental group instead spent part of the time on explanation of, and exercises with, English prosody. The second experimental group spent part of the time on explanation of, and exercises with, English segmentals. Total instruction time was 12 hours for each group. The students' performance in consecutive interpreting was then rated independently by three experts. Results showed that both experimental groups performed better than the control group. Moreover, teaching prosody had a larger positive effect on the overall quality of interpreting from Farsi into English than segmental instruction. We argue that the interpreting curriculum can be strengthened by devoting a small portion of the time to explicit instruction on segmental and (especially) prosodic differences between source and target language.
The present study investigated the training benefits of segmental vs. suprasegmental aspects for the intelligibility and comprehensibility of spoken English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Five groups ...of lower intermediate EFL learners were formed by random assignment. A pretest of the speaking skills, intelligibility, and comprehensibility of the learners’ speech confirmed that the five groups were homogeneous before starting the training program. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English, and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies, and did exercises to improve speaking skills without receiving explicit segmental and suprasegmental explanations and exercises. The experimental groups received an explanation of segmental or suprasegmental features (during one-sixth of the teaching time) followed by production-focused or perception-focused practice (during another one-sixth of the teaching time). The total instruction time was the same for all five groups, i.e., 15 h. Students then took a posttest in speaking skills targeting their speech intelligibility and comprehensibility. The findings revealed that the speech intelligibility of learners who received segmental training followed by production-focused practice was better than that of all other groups. Learners who received suprasegmental instruction followed by production-focused practice outperformed all other groups in terms of comprehensibility.
We administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text ...matching task at the paragraph level. The scores on these functional tests were compared with each other and with intersubjective measures obtained for the same materials through opinion testing, i.e., estimated and perceived intelligibility. The native language of the speakers and listeners belonged to one of three groups of European language families, i.e., Germanic (Danish, Dutch, English, German, Swedish, yielding 20 within-family pairs of different speaker and listener languages), Romance (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, yielding 20 language pairs) and Slavic (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, i.e., 30 pairs). Results from 13,566 participants were analyzed for the 70 within-family combinations of speaker and listener languages. The word recognition test and the cloze test revealed similar patterns of intelligibility but correlated poorly with the picture-to-text matching scores. Both measures of judged intelligibility (estimated and perceived) correlated highly with one another and with the functional test scores, especially those of the cloze test. We conclude that lay listeners are able to judge the intelligibility of a non-native test language from within their own language family. Moreover, participants understood written language better than the spoken forms. Advantages and disadvantages of the various intelligibility measures we used are discussed. We conclude that the written cloze procedure which we developed is the optimal cross-language intelligibility test in the European language area.
In the present study, three groups of interpreter trainees were formed, two experimental groups, i.e., blended prosody instruction (BPI) and computer-assisted prosody training (CAPT), and one control ...group (CON). In this experiment the participants took part in a four-week teaching program for 16 sessions (60 minutes per session), i.e., 16 hours in all. The participants were native Persian speakers who studied English interpreting at the BA level in Iran. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks or watched authentic English movies, discussed their contents, and did exercises based on these tasks for developing listening comprehension skills during the full 16 hours. The CAPT group spent one-third of the time (320 minutes) instead on prosody training using Accent Master Software. The BPI group did this for only 160 minutes but spent the other 160 minutes on theoretical explanations of prosody, and did practical exercises with prosodic structures supervised by an expert human instructor. Students then took a posttest in listening comprehension skills. The results revealed that the BPI group outperformed the other groups in developing listening comprehension skills. This conclusion may have pedagogical implications for interpreter training programs, foreign language instructors, and interpreting practitioners.
•Isolated naturally produced monosyllabic Chinese words in citation form contain enough information for native listeners to identify their own subregional dialect well above chance (54% correct, ...where chance is 33% correct, see Table 4).•Although listeners are primarily sensitive to their own sub-dialect, they still perform better than chance (37% correct, see Table 4), be it only just, for the two non-native sub-dialects.•Agreeing with the folk idiom, both the vowels and tones contributed significantly to subregional dialect perception.•The vowels, especially /a/, provide the major cue for listeners to identify the subregional dialects, whereas tone contributed only a secondary cue. This finding just reversed the order of perceptual importance of tones versus vowels as suggested by the previous descriptive studies of Ye (2010) and Lü (2014). Some exceptions remain, i.e., NXD T4 is strongly attended by nonnative listeners as NXD markers (see section 2).•A robust role of lexical tones is found by the present identification experiments.
The aim of the present perceptual study is to weight tones and vowels as acoustic cues in Chinese subregional dialect identification, and to test the credibility of the subregional dialect classification that has been proposed in the literature. Our findings show that listeners are able to pinpoint speakers’ subregional dialect even when only given monosyllabic Chinese word stimuli, either natural or tone-transplanted. The results agree with the impressionistic claim that both vowels and tones contribute to perceptual subregional dialect identification. However, vowel quality differences make a greater contribution than the tone differences – which contradicts the order of importance predicted in the impressionistic literature. Strong interactions between vowels and tones are also found.
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