2015 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Improving English speaking with parsing training
| Project/Area Number |
15K16799
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| Research Institution | The University of Aizu |
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Principal Investigator |
Heo Younghyon 会津大学, コンピュータ理工学部, 准教授 (10631476)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
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| Keywords | English speaking / parsing |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Experiments were conducted to test the knowledge of English syntactic parsing and intonation patterns of Japanese university students enrolled in Listening and Speaking classes. Approximately eighty students of the University of Aizu enrolled in two sections of English Listening and Speaking class participated in this experiment. Reading passages were selected to test their parsing in careful speaking. First, students were asked to read prepared reading passages. Data were recorded using the recording software Audacity and uploaded on the university Moodle website. After the recording session, students were asked to identify the boundaries of chunks that are bigger than “word” in the texts that they recorded. The recorded data were analyzed for boundary marking (parsing) and intonation using Praat (software analyzing speech data). Then for each participant, marking results in the test were compared with their pause insertion in speech to examine whether their marking pattern is reflected in their speech, if so, to what extent they mark bigger chunks in their speech. Also, data on different parsing units in English (e.g., different types of prepositional phrases and different types of clause boundaries) and English sentences for the experiments in 2016 were collected.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
We could collect interesting data and the analysis/results of it were reported at a conference (13th annual conference of the French Phonology Network) under the title “Syntactic boundary marking in L2 speech: Pause and pitch reset by Japanese learners of English.” It was shown that Japanese speakers are good at marking clausal boundaries while the ability to mark English prepositional phrases vary depending on the fluency of speakers. We could observe another interesting phenomenon, which we call post-be-verb pause insertion. We speculated that this is probably due to the native pattern of marking subjects with a topic/subject particle wa/ga. With the analysis made in 2015, we are ready to experiment different methods of parsing/intonation practice in 2016 as we confirmed the student’s knowledge of syntactic parsing and tested how it is reflected in their performance.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
In 2016, different methods of parsing/intonation practice will be implemented in different section of classes to evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of the technique. Specifically, different combinations of visual (text and pictures) and aural information will be implemented to test which technique helps learners the most to understand the parsing units and intonations. I am planning to recruit more participants than planned because I teach more sections of Listening and Speaking in 2016. By recruiting more subjects, I can collect more data, which will provide me with more accurate results. As I teach three sections of Listening and Speaking, various combinations of visuals, audio and text can be tested. Depending on the setting of the class, combination can be further divided even within the same class. If the results of the initial experiments do not seem to vary much depending on various combinations, I will just focus on testing two or three combinations which seem most effective.
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| Causes of Carryover |
Purchase of a computer and other computing devices were postponed to 2016. I came up with the conclusion that it is not necessary to purchase a computer for the experiments in 2015. It is more important to have a good quality computer for the preparation of parsing materials in 2016. Therefore, with the saved budget in 2015, better quality computers and devices will be purchased in 2016 for developing good quality visuals/audio materials for parsing practice.
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| Expenditure Plan for Carryover Budget |
In 2016, good quality computers and devices will be purchased for developing good quality visuals/audio materials for parsing practice.
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Research Products
(1 results)
