Teacher Information
I. Qualitative Speech Analysis Speech is by far the most used way to communicate. We hear speech with our ears and analyse it. Other ways to analyse speech are now developed. Think about speech analysis when you try to get information by telephone and get connected to a computer.
In this module we analyse sound files by sight. You get to see the graphs of some sound files and using this, you can decide which words are spoken. Of course we connect the graphs we see with the actual sounds that were spoken. In this module we only use qualitative analysis, we work with graphs but focus on the shape of the graphs rather then on the quantitative data.
This module contains several student activities, it is not necessary to do all the activities. The teacher can decide which activities are mandatory and which are optional. An advice to choose between the different activities is given in the paragraph 'Learning paths'.
Student and discipline level: This module is meant as an introduction to speech analysis. It can be done with students aged 12 - 15. The students work with graphs but only in a qualitative way.
Estimated duration: Two hours at least, if all the activities are done it will take approximately five hours. It is also possible to do only parts of the presented materials, therefore there is a wide range of the estimated duration.
II. IBSE character
The qualitative research starts as an interactive demonstration but some parts of the module are more open. The teacher can choose what fits for the students and there are a lot of possibilities to differentiate. Teachers are strongly advised to differentiate, give the students that need it some repetition and let other students work with the material in a more creative way (activity 4 and 5). Of course, the student that do other things have to present their work one way or another to the fellow students.
Page 1 of 18 III. Content Knowledge For this module, no special knowledge is required. Of course, the students have seen graphs before, this module takes a closer look at the use of graphs. Students will find out that in this project there is no direct need to get data from the graphs only looking at the shapes should be enough. This module is therefore a good introduction to the use of graphs.
IV. Pedagogical Knowledge The module is designed to work with graphs in a qualitative way, from different perspectives. There is no need to ask the students about amplitude, frequency or sinuses. However, when students have their questions on the graphs, the teacher should know where he (or she) is talking about. With this module, students will get familiar with sound graphs. This is the basis for further use in general and especially in the module ‘Human Speech’. Because graphs are used a lot in science, it is important to offer our students different kinds of graphs during their school career.
With this project, students will see that they will get somewhere using proper straightforward thinking. The type of questions trigger the students to take a close look at the different graphs and to find ways to identify properties of the sound graphs.
In this project, the students will use scientific method (comparing results) to find an answer to a question (identify words). In some cases this is very easy but in some cases it is difficult. When the student has an answer, it is not always clear that this is the right answer. This is an aspect of science that students have to find out about during their school career.
V. Industrial Content Knowledge Speech-recognition technology is now in full development and most of the students will be familiar with some forms of speech analysis. This module does not give the clue on how this works but students get to realize that a lot of things can be said about a word on basis of the sound graph. On the other hand they see that some combinations of sounds are difficult to distinguish from each other. This means that students see both the possibilities and the difficulties on speech analysis in this module.
In other modules the students will come back to this subject.
Page 2 of 18 VI. Learning paths
All of the 5E learning paths will appear in the learning activities and are described in more detail further on. In accordance with the Guide for developing Teaching and Learning Units, the three foreseen student activities are typified both as ‘type of inquiry activity’ and as part of the 5E learning cycle. Because some activities consist of different sub-activiies, the teacher can decide where to put the emphasis. If the teacher wants to differentiate, it is very well possible to let most of the students do activity 1, 2 and 3 and let some students skip activity 3. These students can do activity 4 (or 5) and present them to the other students.
Activity Student task Inquiry type E-emphasis
1 Papa_mama Interactive demonstration Engagement - exploration
2 Three in a row Guided discovery Exploration
Guided discovery -> 3 Time table Explanation bounded inquiry
Guided discovery -> 4 NATO alphabet Explanation bounded inquiry Recognizing sounds and 5 words Open inquiry Extend - evaluate
VII. Assessment
The advised way to asses this module is to let the students present some things or develop a project based on speech analysis. The main goal is to let the students get interested in speech and develop some understanding on sound graphs. The more quantitative approach towards sound files will be presented in the module on Human Speech. Because the whole module is based on heuristics it is difficult to develop a test for this subject.
Page 3 of 18 Classroom materials
VIII. Student learning activities
Activity 1: Papa mama Learning aim: Introducing sound graphs, recognizing characteristics (based on shape). Materials: PC with sound, optional voice recorder Suggestions for use: Start with the basic worksheet. Try to let the students make their own recordings. Think of different words that are just as easy (or slightly more difficult) to analyse.
Worksheet (with examples and answers) It seems that the words 'mama' and 'papa' are the first words that most babies learn to speak. These words seem therefore very suitable to start our speech analysis with. In the next picture, you can see a graph of the sound that is produced by a person who speaks these words. As you can see, there are five words spoken.
Can you tell which words are the same?
The first, second and fourth word are the same. The other words (third and fifth) are also similar to each other.
Can you tell when the word 'mama' and when the word 'papa' is spoken?
The words 1,2 and 4 start with a blast and fall silence halfway. This is characteristic for the 'p' sound. So, word 1, 2 and 4 are 'papa' . The word 'mama' (3 and 5) starts more fluently and there is no silence in the middle.
You can check these answers with the soundfile 'papa_mama.mp3'
With these two syllables, other words can be formed.
How many different words can be made when you use two syllables: 'pa' and 'ma'
This will make four words: mama, mapa, pama and papa
In the graph below, the new words are spoken (perhaps some words are spoken twice).
Page 4 of 18 Name the six words that are spoken here (in the right order).
mapa, pama, mapa, pama, papa, mama
You can check these answers with the soundfile 'papa pama mapa mama.mp3'
Make your own recording of the words 'papa' and 'mama' and analyse this with the use of audacity. Mix this with the combinations 'pama' and 'mapa'
Try to think of two other words that might be easy to analyse. Record these words and check if it is indeed possible to identify these two words.
Page 5 of 18 Activity 2: Three in a row Learning aim: further introduction to speech analysis, applying the ‘rules’ from activity 1, discovering new rules Materials: PC with sound, optional voice recorder Suggestions for use: Start with the basic activity and then let the students use their own creativity to develop new assignments
Worksheet (with examples and answers) In this document, you see the graph of four recordings. In each recording, three known words are spoken. Above the graph, you can read which words but these words are not necessarily in the given order. It is up to you to name the right order for these three words.
o Write the three words given at the right place under the graph.
Huey, Dewy, Louie
Huey Dewy Louie
Knife, Fork, Spoon
Knife Spoon Fork
Page 6 of 18 Father, Son, Holey Ghost
Father Holey Gost Son
Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry
Vanilla Chocolate Strawberry
You can check your answers by listening to the original recording (3_in_a_row.mp3).
It is not necessary to recognize all of the words above but there certainly will be some characteristics that you can recognise.
o Write down characteristics for two different characters or words
Before a ‘p’ (and ‘k-sound’ and ‘b’) in the middle of a word, there is a short silence (see chocolate, spoon, papa).
The ‘s’ and ‘f’ sound start with silence and get louder, like the point of an arrow pointing to the left (see strawberry, spoon, fork)
In most cases, it is possible to distinguish the number of syllables in a word.
Page 7 of 18 o Give two pairs of characters that are hard to distinguish from each other
f and s p and k h, j and l o Think of other combinations of three words, record these and present them to your fellow students.
Page 8 of 18 Activity 3: Time Table A person reads a time table of school courses. This is recorded and the sound file is presented in a graphical way by the program audacity. In this exercise, you see three recordings of time tables. Two time tables are the same.
Time table A
Time table B
Time table C
Name the time tables that are the same.
A and C are the same
In alphabetic order, the courses mentioned in the schedule are: biology, chemistry, English, math and physics.
Can you recognize one or two of the given courses on the basis of this graphical presentation?
The one-syllable word ‘math’ seems easy to recognize. For other options see the answers to the next question.
For example: do you think the course mentioned in recording B at t = 6,2 s is math?
Try to find the whole time table. Ask your teacher for the right answers.
math, biology, English, physics, chemistry
Page 9 of 18 Knowing the right answers for the time table that is recorded twice, can you find the schedule that is recorded once?
English, biology, physics, chemistry, math
Activity 3.1 Time table revisited The time table that was introduced in the first activity, is read by ten persons. Every person reads the time table three times. Two times in the given order (math, biology, English, physics, chemistry) and one time in a random order.
See appendix for the graphs of these recordings
Analyzing by sight You have sheets with graphs of these 30 recordings.
The questions in this activity all can be answered by looking at these graphs.
1. Name six time tables where the order is exactly as given (math, biology, English, physics, chemistry) 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 29, 32, 34 (six answers is enough)
2. File 19 and 27 are recordings of the same person. Name the courses in the order as they were recorded in file 27. Physics, biology, math, English, chemistry
3. At which place is ‘physics’ in file 3? Physics is the second course in file 3
4. At which place is ‘chemistry’ in file 10? Chemistry is the second course in file 10
5. Try to find the other two recordings by the person that recorded file 9. 12 and 25 (this is a difficult one)
The teacher can decide to give the right answers or to present them to the students by playing the sound files.
Page 10 of 18 Analyzing by sound You now are going to listen to four recordings of four different persons. Each recording is played twice. Try to write down as much properties (gender, age, native speaker) as possible from the speaker.
Write down the properties of the speaker.
File 3 Female, age around 20 – 25 , no native speaker
File 6 Male, age around 40, no native speaker
File 12 Female, age around 50, native speaker
File 13 Male, age around 40, no native speaker (not the same as 6 though)
You are now going to hear some other files. Write down if this is the same speaker that you have heard before or if you have not heard this speaker before.
File 5 Is the same person as file 3 / 6 / 12 / 13 this person is unknown so far.
File 14 Is the same person as file 3 / 6 / 12 / 13 this person is unknown so far.
File 28 Is the same person as file 3 / 6 / 12 / 13 this person is unknown so far.
File 23 Is the same person as file 3 / 6 / 12 / 13 this person is unknown so far.
Page 11 of 18 Activity 3.3 Editing time table, make a new word With editing you can manipulate recordings. For this activity we use the freeware program audacity. You can download audacity from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (or look with google for alternatives).
Choose a recording that you want to use Try to copy and past the words ‘biology’ and ‘physics’ to a new word: ‘biophysics’
In the steps 1, 2 and 3 you can listen to your results during the process.
Use extra facilities to try to make the sound natural (changing pitch, use fade in and fade out) Present your new word to the fellow students.
Now, for step 5, it is not allowed to listen to your results during the process.
Go through step 1 – 3 again without listening to your recording. Listen for the first time to your new word.
See for a manual on audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/tutorials.html
When you search youtube with the terms ‘audacity tutorial’ you get more than 5000 hits. See http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=audacity+tutorial&aq=f
This specific activity is also demonstrated on youtube, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- ZT9Vm_HdT8
It is recommended to play this video full screen at 480 p. Even then, it is not possible to read the exact texts in the program but you can see where the mouse is going and when it is clicked.
Page 12 of 18 Activity 4: NATO alphabet
Learning aim: students learn to find and formulate their own research question without strict guidance of their teacher. They learn to setup and successfully finish (possibly adjust along the way) their own practical experiment. With their conclusions, they practice critical thinking. Finally, they get a good picture of the content and (societal, industrial) applications of speech analysis.
Materials: sensors, data acquisition and data analysis software (Coach).
Suggestions for use: the research questions mentioned give an idea of the scope of possibilities in this subject, they are not meant to share with the students beforehand, as finding their own research question is an important element of this assignment.
Worksheet The NATO alphabet is developed to communicate between soldiers. Because it is very important that there are no mistakes in the communication there is a prescribed word to define each character of the alphabet. Instance, the character 'A' has to be spelled as 'alpha' and the character 'Z' has to be spelled as 'zulu'.
In the figure below we see the 26 words, one word for each character.
Sound graphs of these words (divided into five groups of four words and one group of two words) are given below.
Page 13 of 18 Put these sound graphs in the right order
Spelled characters Soundgraph Alpha – Bravo – Charlie – Delta 3 Echo – Foxtrot – Golf - Hotel 6 India – Juliet – Kilo - Lima 1 Mike – November – Oscar - Papa 5 Quebec – Romeo – Sierra - Tango 2 Uniform- Victor – Whiskey -X-ray 7 Yankee - Zulu 4
1
India Juliette Kilo Lima 2
Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango 3
Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta 4
Yankee Zulu
Page 14 of 18 5
6
Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel 7
Uniform Victor Whisky X-ray
Page 15 of 18 Spelling words with the NATO-alphabet
In the following graphs, a word is spelled using the NATO-alphabet. Each recording starts with a beep and then the word is spelled directly. This is followed by another beep and then the whole word is spoken.
Can you identify these five words?
Spelled word 1
Hello 2
Welcome 3
Football 4
Holland 5
Guitar
Try to use some of the following steps:
How many syllables has the spoken word? How many characters has the word? Are some of the characters in a word identical? Identify the spelled characters one by one (compare them to the recordings of the previous item) One clue that can be given is that the teacher gives ten words (for example) and tells that these words are part of them.
Page 16 of 18 You might know some of these words (for instance from movies or television series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVq4_HhBK8Y )
Some things can go very wrong when there is misunderstanding in the communication: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOTpIVxji8
Because all these words were chosen, one would expect that these words are easy to recognize.
Record the whole NATO alphabet (that is, reading the 26 words)
Analyse these words and make screenshots with the use of audacity
Make a complete wordlist, wit character, word and screenshot of the sound file in an organized way
Spell some well-known, short English words in the correct way, using the NATO alphabet, make recording of this.
Present the graphs of the sound files to your fellow students and let them decide which words you are spelling.
Page 17 of 18 Activity 5: Recognizing sounds and words Based on the first four activities of this module you have some ideas on how you can use qualitative speech analysis. Now it is up to you to design an activity or to do a research. Think about the possibilities you have with the use of audacity and some editing. Make a plan what you want to do and talk about this with your teacher.
Some suggestions on what seems possible:
5.1 Alphabet on characters Record the sounds of all the characters in the alphabet and try to edit new words with this in audacity (compare this to activity 3.3)
5.2 Character chart Make a chart with all the characters in the alphabet. Record some words (five? seven?) and see if students can recognize these words with the use of the character chart.
5.3 Classify characters Make a classification on the different sounds there are (for instance, the ‘p’ and ‘b’ sound have some similarities. Find information on this subject and make your own text about this. Illustrate this with your own measurements.
Perhaps you can start to find information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonants
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