Training L2 learners’ pronunciation by using a controlled perception procedure has long been the mainstream of L2 speech pedagogy research. However, endeavors have also been done to explore more communicative teaching methods. The current study presents a paradigm that tests both communicative teaching methods’ renderings of pronunciation pedagogy and a form-focused instruction which is less us...

Recent research has found that there is an overlap in the processing of music and speech in certain aspects. This research focuses on the relationship between the pitch of tones in language and the melody of songs. We present an automatic music composition system based on the prosody rules of Mandarin and we hypothesize that songs generated with our proposed system can help non-native Mandarin ...

This paper presents a detailed examination of learning transfer from an English for Specific Academic Purposes course to authentic discipline-specific writing tasks. To enhance transfer practices, a new approach in planning writing tasks and materials selection was developed. Concerning the conventions of studies in learning transfer that acknowledge different learning preferences, the instruct...

Teaching and learning in the ambulatory setting have been described as inefficient, variable, and unpredictable. A model of ambulatory teaching that was piloted in three settings (1973-1981 in a university-affiliated outpatient clinic in Portland, Oregon, 1996-2000 in a community outpatient clinic, and 2000-2001 in an outpatient clinic serving Dartmouth Medical School's teaching hospital) that ...

This paper brings task-based language teaching (TBLT) curriculum development principles into the blended learning context, presenting processes and outcomes from a project to develop a task-based thematic unit — asking and giving directions — in a hybrid web-based university-level class focused on listening and speaking skills in Mandarin Chinese. The authors follow the principled task-based cu...

This paper investigates foreign accent by comparing vowel production of native speakers, heritage and non-native learners with data from a large corpus of spontaneous Chinese learner speech. Snippets were evaluated by untrained Mandarin raters on accent ratings and followed up with acoustic analysis of vowel qualities. The rating result showed a high correlation between accent and pronunciation...

Deletion errors are most usually occurred in connected Mandarin digit string speech recognition when speaking rate is fast, and are the main reasons leading to the increasing of the recognition error rate and the decline of the recognition accuracy. In this paper, a new training method named neighboring digits pattern is given based on sufficient statistics of recognition errors of the traditio...

introduction: in this study, the authors aimed to examine the effects of cooperative learning methods using web quest and team-based learning on students’ self-direction, self-regulation, and academic achievement. methods: this is a comparative study of students taking a course in mental health and psychiatric disorders. in two consecutive years, a group of students were trained using the web q...

Objectives: To assess whether the organization and structure of inpatient team rounds affects medical student perception of the overall quantity and quality of teaching on an inpatient general medicine service. Methods: A pilot project to improve inpatient care was launched at the Department of Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System (VAAAHS). General medicine attending physicians involved...