VISUAL CUES AND RATER PERCEPTIONS OF SECOND LANGUAGE COMPREHENSIBILITY, ACCENTEDNESS, AND FLUENCY

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Aki Tsunemoto ◽  
Rachael Lindberg ◽  
Pavel Trofimovich ◽  
Kim Mcdonough
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Personal Story ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Static Image ◽  
Speech Assessment

Abstract This study examined the role of visual cues (facial expressions and hand gestures) in second language (L2) speech assessment. University students (N = 60) at English-medium universities assessed 2-minute video clips of 20 L2 English speakers (10 Chinese and 10 Spanish speakers) narrating a personal story. They rated the speakers’ comprehensibility, accentedness, and fluency using 1,000-point sliding scales. To manipulate access to visual cues, the raters were assigned to three conditions that presented audio along with (a) the speaker’s static image, (b) a static image of a speaker’s torso with dynamic face, or (c) dynamic torso and face. Results showed that raters with access to the full video tended to perceive the speaker as more comprehensible and significantly less accented compared to those who had access to less visually informative conditions. The findings are discussed in terms of how the integration of visual cues may impact L2 speech assessment.

THE OCCURRENCE AND PERCEPTION OF LISTENER VISUAL CUES DURING NONUNDERSTANDING EPISODES

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 1151-1165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim McDonough ◽  
Pavel Trofimovich ◽  
Libing Lu ◽  
Dato Abashidze
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Research Report ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Video Condition

AbstractThis research report examines the occurrence of listener visual cues during nonunderstanding episodes and investigates raters’ sensitivity to those cues. Nonunderstanding episodes (n = 21) and length-matched understanding episodes (n = 21) were taken from a larger dataset of video-recorded conversations between second language (L2) English speakers and a bilingual French-English interlocutor (McDonough, Trofimovich, Dao, & Abashidze, 2018). Episode videos were analyzed for the occurrence of listener visual cues, such as head nods, blinks, facial expressions, and holds. Videos of the listener’s face were manipulated to create three rating conditions: clear voice/clear face, distorted voice/clear face, and clear voice/blurred face. Raters in the same speech community (N = 66) were assigned to a video condition to assess the listener’s comprehension. Results revealed differences in the occurrence of listener visual cues between the understanding and nonunderstanding episodes. In addition, raters gave lower ratings of listener comprehension when they had access to the listener’s visual cues.

Production of Subject-Verb Agreement in Spanish as a Second Language

2003 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Nicol ◽  
Delia Greth
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Error Patterns ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Semantic Variables ◽  
Advanced Proficiency

Abstract. In this paper, we report the results of a study of English speakers who have learned Spanish as a second language. All were late learners who have achieved near- advanced proficiency in Spanish. The focus of the research is on the production of subject-verb agreement errors and the factors that influence the incidence of such errors. There is some evidence that English and Spanish subject-verb agreement differ in susceptibility to interference from different types of variables; specifically, it has been reported that Spanish speakers show a greater influence of semantic factors in their implementation of subject-verb agreement ( Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Garrett, 1996 ). In our study, all participants were tested in English (L1) and Spanish (L2). Results indicate nearly identical error patterns: these speakers show no greater influence of semantic variables in the computation of agreement when they are speaking Spanish than when they are speaking English.

The visual signature of non-understanding: A systematic replication of McDonough, Trofimovich, Lu, and Abashidze ()

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Kim McDonough ◽  
Rachael Lindberg ◽  
Pavel Trofimovich ◽  
Oguzhan Tekin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Replication Study ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Visual Cue ◽  
Systematic Replication ◽  
Dynamic Movement

Abstract This replication study seeks to extend the generalizability of an exploratory study (McDonough et al., 2019) that identified holds (i.e., temporary cessation of dynamic movement by the listener) as a reliable visual cue of non-understanding. Conversations between second language (L2) English speakers in the Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca Interaction (CELFI; McDonough & Trofimovich, 2019) with non-understanding episodes (e.g., pardon?, what?, sorry?) were sampled and compared with understanding episodes (i.e., follow-up questions). External raters (N = 90) assessed the listener's comprehension under three rating conditions: +face/+voice, −face/+voice, and +face/−voice. The association between non-understanding and holds in McDonough et al. (2019) was confirmed. Although raters distinguished reliably between understanding and non-understanding episodes, they were not sensitive to facial expressions when judging listener comprehension. The initial and replication findings suggest that holds remain a promising visual signature of non-understanding that can be explored in future theoretically- and pedagogically-oriented contexts.

scholarly journals How much do visual cues help listeners in perceiving accented speech?

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
YI ZHENG ◽  
ARTHUR G. SAMUEL
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Apparent Distance ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Accented Speech ◽  
Compressed Speech ◽  
Degraded Speech

AbstractIt has been documented that lipreading facilitates the understanding of difficult speech, such as noisy speech and time-compressed speech. However, relatively little work has addressed the role of visual information in perceiving accented speech, another type of difficult speech. In this study, we specifically focus on accented word recognition. One hundred forty-two native English speakers made lexical decision judgments on English words or nonwords produced by speakers with Mandarin Chinese accents. The stimuli were presented as either as videos that were of a relatively far speaker or as videos in which we zoomed in on the speaker’s head. Consistent with studies of degraded speech, listeners were more accurate at recognizing accented words when they saw lip movements from the closer apparent distance. The effect of apparent distance tended to be larger under nonoptimal conditions: when stimuli were nonwords than words, and when stimuli were produced by a speaker who had a relatively strong accent. However, we did not find any influence of listeners’ prior experience with Chinese accented speech, suggesting that cross-talker generalization is limited. The current study provides practical suggestions for effective communication between native and nonnative speakers: visual information is useful, and it is more useful in some circumstances than others.

scholarly journals Native English speakers learning Arabic: The influence of novel orthographic information on second language phonological acquisition

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
CATHERINE E. SHOWALTER ◽  
RACHEL HAYES-HARB
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Phonological Acquisition ◽  
Talker Variability

ABSTRACTRecent research has indicated that learners exposed to second language words’ orthographic forms of words can often use this information to make inferences about the words’ phonological forms. Here we asked, do learners benefit even when the orthography is unfamiliar? We taught native English speakers minimal nonword pairs differentiated by the Arabic velar–uvular contrast (e.g., [kubu], [qubu]) and manipulated the quality of orthographic input. We found that participants were consistently unable to associate the novel phonemes with novel words. Results are discussed in terms of (a) the role of orthographic input in second language word form learning, (b) the influence of orthographic familiarity in moderating the role of orthographic input, and (c) the issue of talker variability in word learning.

Second-language spoken word identification: Effects of perceptual training, visual cues, and phonetic environment

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEBRA M. HARDISON
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Perceptual Training ◽  
Korean Learners ◽  
Gating Paradigm ◽  
Korean Learners Of English

Experiments using the gating paradigm investigated the effects of auditory–visual (AV) and auditory-only perceptual training on second-language spoken-word identification by Japanese and Korean learners of English. Stimuli were familiar bisyllabic words beginning with /p/, /f/, //, /l/, and /s, t, k/ combined with high, low, and rounded vowels. Results support the priming role of visual cues in AV speech processing. Identification was earlier with visual cues and following training, especially for words beginning with // and /l/, which also showed significant effects of adjacent vowel. For the Japanese, the AV advantage in identifying //- and /l/-initial words was accentuated following training. Findings are discussed within a multimodal episodic model of learning.

DISCOVERING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONTEXT AND ALLOPHONES IN A SECOND LANGUAGE

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine E. Shea ◽  
Suzanne Curtin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
English Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Native Spanish Speakers ◽  
Conditioning Factors ◽  
Word Position ◽  
Distributional Information ◽  
Word Onset

The identification of stressed syllables by adult second-language (L2) Spanish learners was examined for evidence of influence of an allophonic alternation driven by word position and stress. The Spanish voiced stop-approximant alternation, whereby stops occur in stressed-syllable and word onsets, was utilized. If L2 learners track the distribution of this alternation, they should tend to link stops to stressed syllables in word-onset position and approximants to unstressed, word-medial position. Low- and high-intermediate-level first-language English learners of Spanish as well as native Spanish and monolingual English speakers listened to a series of nonce words and determined which of the two consonant-vowel (CV) syllables they perceived as stressed. In Experiment 1, onset allophone and vowel stress were crossed. In Experiment 2, the onset allophone alternated and a vowel unmarked for prominence was used. The results show that the monolingual English and low-intermediate groups were more likely to perceive syllables with stressed vowels as stressed, regardless of the allophone onset. In contrast, listeners with greater Spanish proficiency performed similarly to native Spanish speakers and were more likely to perceive stress on syllables with stop onsets, a pattern that follows the distributional information of Spanish. This finding suggests that learning the interplay between allophonic distributions and their conditioning factors is possible with experience and that knowledge of this relationship plays a role in the acquisition of L2 allophones.

scholarly journals Vowel Space Area of Minangkabau Learners of English

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-164
Author(s):  
Rudha Widagsa ◽  
Arum Perwitasari ◽  
Mezia Kemala Sari
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Formant Frequencies ◽  
Vowel Space ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Production Experiment

Vowel spacearea (VSA) represents kinematic movements of the articulators and measures speech intelligibility. By looking at the vowel space area, the current study intends to examine the role of Minangkabau in the acquisition of English as a second language. We conducted a speech production experiment involving ten English monophthongs in isolated sentences. We measured the formant frequencies (F1/F2) values and computed the vowel quadrilateral. The results showed that the Minangkabau learners of English did not have similar VSA pattern when compared to the native English speakers. They did not open the jaws and move the tongues as similar as the native English speakers in pronouncing English vowels. The results were discussed in the area of second language acquisition.

Access to verb bias and plausibility information during syntactic processing in adult Spanish–English bilinguals

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Patricia Román ◽  
Edith Kaan ◽  
Paola E. Dussias
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Verb Bias ◽  
Second Language Speakers

Abstract In two experiments, we examine how proficient second language speakers integrate verb bias and plausibility information during online sentence comprehension. Spanish–English speakers and native English speakers read sentences in English in which a post-verbal noun phrase (NP) could be interpreted as a direct object or a sentential subject. To examine the role of verb bias, the post-verbal NP was preceded by a verb that is preferentially followed by a direct object (DO-bias verbs) or a sentential complement (SC-bias verbs). To assess the role of plausibility, the semantic fit between the verb and the post-verbal NP was either congruent or incongruent with the direct object interpretation. The results show that both second language speakers and native speakers used verb bias information to assign a grammatical role to the post-verbal ambiguous NP with small differences. Syntactic revision of an initially incorrect DO interpretation was facilitated by the presence of an implausible NP.

Some observations on the acquisition of evidentiality in bulgarian as a second language by native english speakers

Proglas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandrina Raykova ◽  
◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Current Analysis

Second language acquisition of grammatical evidentiality in Bulgarian is studied through analyzing the spoken language use of a number of native English speakers. The category is found unstable at the higher levels of language proficiency, which indicates incomplete acquisition. There are cases of probable full acquisition which the current analysis cannot confirm. Suggestions regarding the role of the linguistic worldview are put forward.

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