NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
50 Years of ERIC
50 Years of ERIC
The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is celebrating its 50th Birthday! First opened on May 15th, 1964 ERIC continues the long tradition of ongoing innovation and enhancement.

Learn more about the history of ERIC here. PDF icon

Back to results
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ868634
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Oct
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
Reference Count: 66
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1094-3501
Comprehensibility and Prosody Ratings for Pronunciation Software Development
Warren, Paul; Elgort, Irina; Crabbe, David
Language Learning & Technology, v13 n3 p87-102 Oct 2009
In the context of a project developing software for pronunciation practice and feedback for Mandarin-speaking learners of English, a key issue is how to decide which features of pronunciation to focus on in giving feedback. We used naive and experienced native speaker ratings of comprehensibility and nativeness to establish the key features affecting comprehensibility of the utterances of a group of Chinese learners of English. Native speaker raters assessed the comprehensibility of recorded utterances, pinpointed areas of difficulty and then rated for nativeness the same utterances, but after segmental information had been filtered out. The results show that prosodic information is important for comprehensibility, and that there are no significant differences between naive and experienced raters on either comprehensibility or nativeness judgements. This suggests that naive judgements are a useful and accessible source of data for identifying the parameters to be used in setting up automated feedback. (Contains 1 figure and 4 notes.)
University of Hawaii National Foreign Language Resource Center. 1859 East-West Road #106, Honolulu, HI 96822. Tel: 808-956-9424; Fax: 808-956-5983; e-mail: llt@hawaii.edu; Web site: http://llt.msu.edu
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers: N/A