Speaking is the earliest skill among other language skills acquired by children and serves as medium most frequently used in communication. Nevertheless, speaking becomes a difficult when performed public, especially for elementary school. This study aims at describing how use of video media role playing teaching to school students can improve their ability speaking. qualitative using classroom...

This study investigates whether working memory capacity (WMC) varies across languages and in the course of L2 speech proficiency levels. Following suggestions in Finardi and Weissheimer (2009) and Prebianca (2010), who found that WMC varied as a function of L2 speech proficiency, the present study assessed three proficiency levels (elementary, intermediate and advanced) and two languages (L1-Po...

This paper presents an approach to realizing various emotional expressions and speaking styles in synthetic speech using HMM-based speech synthesis. We show two methods for modeling speaking styles and emotions. In the first method, called “style dependent modeling,” each speaking style and emotion is individually modeled. On the other hand, in the second method, called “style mixed modeling,” ...

Language comprehension is vital to social and educational development but few pediatric tests are available for its assessment. To approach this problem, two versions of the Token Test (TT), "TT short form" (DeRenzi & Faglioni, 1978) and "Revised Token Test" (RTT), were first compared. Using a sample of 88 normally developing Spanish-speaking children, the tests were compared on their: (a) esta...

Objectives: The Percentage of vowel correct (PVC) is one of the indices in the development of articulation and phonological skills in children that can be measured with speech samples that could be extracted from the single word or connected speech tests. The aim of this study is to introduce the PVC scale in Persian speaking children and investigate its validity and reliability. Methods: Th...

The assessment of second language (L2) speaking has long been an important yet challenging area of research in language testing. L2 testers are often concerned with designing authentic speaking tasks that resemble real-life speaking activities so that score interpretations are generalizable to non-test contexts. The conversational nature of speaking skills has promoted the widespread integratio...

Recently, speaking has played an increasingly important role in second/foreign language settings. However, in many Chinese universities, EFL students rarely communicate in English with other people effectively. The existing behavioristic role plays on New Horizon College English (NHCE) e-learning do not function successfully in supplementing EFL speaking classes. The present study aims at inves...

The two Cantonese rising tones, high-rising and low/mid-low rising tones, are found to maintain their distinct slopes of F0(fundamental frequency)-rise and offset F0 under different speaking rates. This suggests the two as possible acoustic cues for rising tone discrimination. The rising contours, under whichever speaking rate, reside in area temporally near the syllable offset. Furthermore, th...