DOCSLIB.ORG

Pattern Recognition Based Method Used in Identifying Impaired Speech

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Pattern Recognition Based Method Used in Identifying Impaired Speech Recent Researches ιn Applied Informatics Pattern Recognition Based Method Used in Identifying Impaired Speech Valentin Velican, Ovidiu Grigore, Corina Grigore experiments/systems dedicated to a given language [3], [4] are Abstract— The article presents a method of identifying heavily not necessarily useful in other languages. It is obvious, that a impaired pronunciations of ‘r’ consonant in Romanian language final product capable of correcting all the existing using time domain signal processing techniques. The study focused mispronunciations is almost impossible to implement as most on words that contain ‘r’ as the first letter and used signals recorded likely a specific defect needs a specific identification and mainly from children as mispronunciations occur most of the time at young age persons. correction method. Therefore we concentrated our efforts on developing a Keywords— speech processing, impaired speech evaluation. method that can be applied in correcting mispronunciations of ‘r’ consonant, in Romanian. We chose to study this defect, also I. INTRODUCTION known as rhotacism, as it is one of the most common in Romanian. ERSONS with impaired pronunciation are often ignored Pwhen it comes down to developing speech processing based systems. There are numerous speech recognition, II. PROBLEM FORMULATION speaker recognition, voice coding, and voice control Mispronunciations occur in most of the cases on consonants, applications useful in many different fields but one can not sounds that contain less energy than vowels. The main find many solutions for impaired speech identification. problem encountered is that most of the signal processing Furthermore speech therapy is complicated and requires many techniques developed work best (in the case of speech) on visits to specialized cabinets thus increasing the need of an signals packing a good amount of energy – i.e. vowels [5], [6]. automated system that can be used at home. Finding common features for the correctly pronounced More exactly, the speech therapy practice is based on phoneme becomes rather difficult as the sounds analyzed in correct diagnosis of the pronunciation problems and on their our case are consonants. Obviously the incorrectly pronounced correction in conformity with a precise methodology. The phonemes are even harder to evaluate as these, in addition to speech therapist needs a large amount of time to precisely being altered consonants, categorize themselves in several identify not only problematic sounds, but also the problematic types (all probably with subtypes defined by different degrees phonemic combinations. The correct “emission” of affected of variation from the standard), decreasing the chances of sounds is made both isolated and in syllables and words. finding a common feature that could simplify the final Because of that, a computer application developed for evaluation and classification algorithm. evaluating mispronunciations can lighten the therapy and simplify the specialist effort, offering an etalon-mean for home III. PROBLEM SOLUTION exercises. The ‘r’ phoneme is in Romanian language a hard, rhotic Unfortunately automated methods are sparse and still in the consonant being also one of the most commonly research stage mostly due to the characteristics of the sounds mispronounced sounds. The defect is generally known as analyzed and also due to the large amount of pronunciations “rhotacism” and it can be observed from young age children to defects existing [1], [2]. Also due to the difference in adults. In the worst possible utterances the ‘r’ is replaced by pronunciations from language to language, research in this other sounds like ‘l’, ‘î’ or can completely miss from words field is inevitably divided and results from existing [7]. In the mild, linguistic acceptable mispronunciations, the phoneme is replaced with a guttural ‘r’, resembling the Manuscript received October 9, 2001. pronunciation of ‘r’ in French. This work was supported by CNCSIS project no.846/2009 and by CNCSIS project IDEI_1472/2008 A. Database of Recordings Valentin Velican is with Polytechnic University of Bucharest The database used in the study was recorded from 7 children Department of Applied Electronics and Information Engineering. Ovidiu Grigore is with Polytechnic University of Bucharest and 5 adults pronouncing words starting with ‘r’ like rac, Department of Applied Electronics and Information Engineering rană, ramă, rață, etc. – in English: crab, wound, frame, duck. (corresponding author, phone: +40(0)21.402.4897; fax: +40(0)21.402.4957; It was taken care to collect sounds that have the same “starting e-mail: ovidiu.grigore@ upb.ro). Corina Grigore is with Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy consonant – vowel” combination as transitions from the ISBN: 978-1-61804-034-3 190 Recent Researches ιn Applied Informatics consonant to the vowel influence the wave shape of the number of samples as the original ones due to the recorded signal [2]. From the entire batch, 30 (15 correct and interpolation. 15 incorrect pronunciations) different recordings were selected To further refine the signals in order to reduce a potential to test the method. It is also important to mention that all of the error (in the classification process) caused by the difference in adults had a correct pronunciation while only two children amplitude, the extracted envelopes are being normalized to correctly pronounced the words. one by dividing each sample in a current analyzed signal to the maximum sample value of that signal. B. Feature Extraction At this point and as expected the shape of the envelope for The core of this study is the feature extraction method. the correctly pronounced signals can only be described as Studying the shape of the signal in time domain it was sinusoidal whereas in the other case, the envelope’s amplitude observed that ‘r’, correctly pronounced, resembled very well is constant or modifies slowly in time. To use this observed an amplitude modulated signal with an envelope frequency of characteristic, we first decided to compute a moving average about 25 – 30Hz. Unlike this, all other phonemes and of of the envelope and then square the difference between the course the incorrectly pronounced ‘r’ lacks the AM shape of envelope and the mean vector just computed. the signal, resembling in most cases with vowels (though with less amplitude) – Fig. 1. It becomes obvious that a good feature by which correctly pronounced ‘r’ phonemes differ from their incorrect counterparts is the shape of the signal in time domain. More exactly, the clearest difference between these two classes is the signal’s envelope. Figure 1. Correctly (above) and incorrectly (below) pronounced ‘r’ I in ‘rac’. The samples belong to kindergarten children. Figure 2. Envelope extraction of a correctly (above) and an incorrectly (below, pronounced ‘r’ in ‘rac’. The graph is plotted in samples versus Extracting the signal’s envelope in a software manner can amplitude. be done in several ways: using the Hillbert Transform, using the square of the signal and then filtering the result, etc. For This step is described by the following expressions: this study we have chosen a simpler approach, extracting the 1 M−1 + k maximum signal value for every N sample intervals of length vectAvg() k = ⋅ ∑ Envelope() u L, where M u= k length _(Signal ) (3) N = (1) k = 1, 2, 3… L To be noticed that when And then linearly interpolating the resulting points knowing k = length_Envelope – M + 1 (4) that a straight line that contains P1(x1,y1) and P2(x2,y2) satisfies the equation the averaging window of length M overshoots the end of the y− y envelope vector. In this case we decided to reduce the length 2 1 of the window (M) by one unit for every increase of k such that ()()y− y1 = x− x1 (2) x2− x 1 the last M – 1 values of vectAvg will be computed using M – 1, M – 2, … , 1 values from the envelope. The result of applying the above “envelope detector” to both a correct and an incorrect signal can be seen in – Fig. 2. It is important to notice that the processed signals have the same ISBN: 978-1-61804-034-3 191 Recent Researches ιn Applied Informatics Then: right. The majority of these distances, if belonging to class 1, vectFeat() k = (vectAvg() k − Envelope() k )2 will decide that the current analyzed data belongs to the same class. Otherwise, the contrary will be decided. (5) k = 1, 2, 3 … Going a bit more into detail, (3) defines the continuous component of the signal or the mean value. Fig. 3 presents this next step in processing the signals of Fig.2. Now, the amplitude variation of the correct pronunciations becomes even more evident compared to the incorrect case. This is due to the fact that (3) overpasses the imperfections generated by the “envelope detector” and filters most of the spikes in the signal. Equation (5) defines the alternate component of the signal or, better said, a measure of how much does the envelope varies in amplitude with time [8] – Fig.4. Naturally, correctly pronounced samples of /r/ will have higher values in vectFeat than wrong pronunciations. Therefore vectFeat becomes the needed feature. Yet due to the fact that vectFeat is still a large array, running the classifier at this stage is not computationally efficient. Moreover, input signals have different lengths generating feature arrays of different lengths, all ending in a situation that is not desirable: the classifier has to test arrays of different lengths. Therefore a feature selection stage is implemented by dividing each vectFeat in the database into INT intervals of equal sizeINT length and calculating the mean on every such interval. 1 i⋅ sizeINT Figure 3. Continuous component extraction, from the envelope of a correctly vectMean( i) = vectFeat() k (6) (above) and an incorrectly (below) pronounced ‘r’ in ‘rac’. ∑ Notice the normalization to one. sizeINT k=( i − 1) ⋅ sizeINT + 1 Where i = 1, 2, … ,INT What can be noticed is that vectMean is now a feature array of equal length for any input signal, that contains the information of vectFeat condensed in much less coefficients; an excellent input for the classification stage - Fig.5.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Towards Understanding the Status of the Dual in Pre-Islamic Arabic
    Towards Understanding the Status of the Dual in Pre-Islamic Arabic MUHAMMAD AL-SHARKAWI (Wayne State University, Detroit) Abstract This article suggests that the dual suffix in pre-Islamic Arabic did not differentiate for case. Tamīm, one of the most trustworthy pre-Islamic dialects, treated the dual suffix invariably although it had a full case system. There are also tokens of the same invariable treatment in the Qurʾān. The article proposes that the suffix long vowel variation due to the phenomenon of ʾimāla makes the formal origin of the invariable dual suffix difficult to ascribe to the East and Northwest Semitic oblique dual allomorph. Keywords: Dual, pre-Islamic Arabic, ʾimāla, Classical Arabic, vowel harmony. Introduction This article discusses data on the dual suffix in pre-Islamic dialects from medieval Arab grammarians and manuals of qirāʾāt to suggest that the status of the dual suffix in the pre- Islamic Arabic linguistic situation was unique among the Semitic languages.1 The article does not, however, seek to take a comparative Semitic framework. It rather seeks to discuss the dual suffix behavior on the eve of the Arab conquests and probably immediately thereafter. Although attempts to understand particular structural concepts of pre-Islamic Arabic are forthcoming, the formal, functional and semantic shape of the dual system remains to be studied in detail. In addition, despite the limited and sporadic data about the morphological and syntactic aspects of pre-Islamic Arabic,2 the dual suffix3 is one of the features of pre-Islamic Arabic dialects that can shed light on both the position of grammati- cal case4 in the Arabic dialects in the peninsula, and how it came to be standardized after the emergence of Islam.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pronunciation of English Vowel Sounds by Foreigners It Is Necessary to Make So M E
    th e Stubs; of E ngl i sh i n M i c ro b y f orei g n W omen Stub ents , et am n b b al l . Lectures in th e English La nguage a n d Litera tur e b U r L u r a n d T y nive sity ect er s utors . An Exam ination three ti m es a year a t th e e nd of h rm d d b th e s for eac te , con ucte y As ociation th e Education of Wom en in Oxford . A Libr ar y in Norham Ha ll for th e u s e of Resident Students , Dates of com m encem ent a n d all particul ar s m ay be obta ined from T E E B R H N N . U C Mrs . O A C C S , N h a m H or all , x d O for . A Va ca ti on Cou r se l a sti ng f ou r weeks i s fiel d d u ri n t/ze m om! : o u / g f j y . Pronu nc iation Of English b Forei n r y g e s. ourse o f Lectur es to th e Students O f Norh a m Ha ll h e Ph h on t ysiology of Speec . F. R. S B A D Sc . URCH M . EOR E J . O G G , xon , ® gf o r b CO . LT D . O ALDEN , BOCARD PRESS .
    [Show full text]
  • Features of Arabic-French Code-Switching in Morocco
    Features of Arabic-French code-switching in Morocco A sociolinguistic case study on intra-sentential code-switching in Morocco Juhan Luomala Centre for Languages and Literature Lund University Sweden Supervisor: Maria Persson Examiner: Lena Ambjörn Acknowledgements I want to thank Maria Persson, supervisor for this study, for her guidance and supervision throughout this process, as well as assigning me as a representative of Lund University to conduct field work in Morocco. I want to thank The Birgit Rausing Language Programme, for a generous scholarship to make the required field work in Morocco possible. I want to thank Professor Yamina El Kirat and Laila Mounir, for receiving me as a guest at Mohammed V University of Rabat, and sharing their knowledge regarding Moroccan sociolinguistics and being of great help when organising the practical arrangements in order to make this study possible. I want to thank Souhaila Khamlichi, for being the moderator of the required focus group discussions. Without her help the recordings would not have been as authentic. I want to thank Taha El Hadari, Ismail Bardaoui and Mohamed Sabaoui, who were of great help when transliterating the recorded data. Without their effort and time this thesis would remain being in process. Finally, I want to thank my family and dear friends: Mehdi Bendkia, especially for his help with transliterations, as well as Ieanah Veronica Svensson and Edith Salminen for all the help and support, proof readings and feedback. !3 Abstract This Master’s thesis is a sociolinguistic case study about intra-sentential code-switching, also known as code-mixing, between colloquial Moroccan Arabic and French.
    [Show full text]
  • Alpha Mu Gamma Lexicon 2019 (Work in Progress—More to Come)
    Alpha Mu Gamma Lexicon 2019 (work in progress—more to come) Table of Contents Introduction Languages of the World Introduction The Romance Languages The Germanic Languages Phrasebook: Phrasebook of Languages Taught at Henderson French Spanish German Phrasebook of Languages Represented at Henderson Russian Ukrainian Italian Nepali Hindi Korean Portuguese Romanian Arabic Quechua Catalan Pidgin English Kishwali Ancient Languages and Other Alphabets Phoenician Alphabet (more to come) Other Resources, Websites, and Videos 2 | P a g e Foreword This phrasebook is intended to add flavor to Alpha Mu Gamma and strengthen the repertoire of its members. Seeing as AMG is an honors society centered on excellence and interest in foreign languages and cultures, it is only fitting, at least in my mind, that it should attempt to maintain a healthy knowledge base regarding the basics of the languages most used in the world, those taught here at Henderson, and those spoken by our international students. Having a rudimentary smattering of the geography of the major language families, from where they derive, and where they fit into the world is an important piece of the foundation of an educated and culturally informed worldview. A basic appreciation of the cornerstone languages of Western thought, Latin and Greek, also opens new avenues to explore our common hobby: the etymology of almost every word you will encounter in French and Spanish classes, as well as all mathematical and scientific terminology (and jargon), is derived from one of these two languages. Lastly, this is designed to be fun and easy to ingest! It is imperative that all future Lexicographers strive for inclusivity in creating future editions.
    [Show full text]
  • Sample Pages from the Book
    2 Afraid Arabic Idiom Transliteration Literal Meaning English Idiom or Meaning 1 biy-XAf al-la he is afraid [of] God he’s honest ِبيْخاف اهلل biy-XAf min Xa-yaa-lo he is afraid of his shadow he’s afraid of his own shadow ِ 2 ِبيْخاف من َخيالُه a-LEha min he fears on her from the breeze he’s overprotective of herع biy-XAf ِ 3 in-nis-me ِبيْخاف َعليـها من ِّالن ْسمة il-li biy-XAf min il-GHool he who is afraid of the demon it you have nothing to fear but ِ 4 lo comes out to him fear itself-عbyiT-la * ّإلي ِبيْخاف من الغول بْ ِي ْط َل ْع ُله (lit) he wets himself; (fig) he gets 5 biy-shuX taH-to he pees under himself terrified easily, he’s a coward ِبيْ ُشخ َتْ ُته jaa-je a chicken/hen coward * جاجة 6 his hair stood on end, 7 waq-qaf sha- ar rA-so the hair of his head stood up he was terrified ع َو َّقف َش َعر ُراسه D-ha his legs knock together he’s terrifiedعrij-LE bit-Xab-beT fi ba ِ ِ 8 ر ْجليه بتْ َخ ِّبط يف َب ْع ْضها he is putting his hand is on his a-la qal-bo he’s afraidع HA-TeT ee-do ِ 9 heart حاطط ُإيده َعلى َقلْ ُبه my heart fell down between my my heart was in my mouth, 10 qal-bi bEn rij-lay legs I was scared عwi-qe ِو ِقع َقلْبـي بيـن ِر ْج َلي .Close to the French r, sounding like a guttural r :(غ) LEGEND FOR VOWELS E: Sounds long and open as in the words fair, dare.
    [Show full text]
  • In Germanic Dialects – Tradition Or Innovation? (1)
    Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Bisiada, Mario (2009) [R] in Germanic dialects – tradition or innovation? (1). University of York Linguistic Society PDF. DOI Link to record in KAR http://kar.kent.ac.uk/33787/ Document Version Publisher pdf Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html [R] in Germanic Dialects— Tradition or Innovation? ___________________________________________________________________ MARIO BISIADA “ain hundts buchstab, wann er zornig die zene blickt und nerret, so die zung kraus zittert.” 1 0. ABSTRACT The quality of [R] in Germanic dialects is one of the most discussed phonological topics in Historical Linguistics, circling around one main question: Was it front or back? Scholars have proposed a back sound arisen through foreign influence as well as a native uvular trill. In this paper, I offer a comparative survey of the available literature, from the earliest superficial comments to modern in-depth dialect analysis, providing a synthesis of the arguments that have been proposed over time.
    [Show full text]
  • [R] in Germanic Dialects — Tradition Or Innovation?
    [R] in Germanic Dialects— Tradition or Innovation? ___________________________________________________________________ MARIO BISIADA “ain hundts buchstab, wann er zornig die zene blickt und nerret, so die zung kraus zittert.” 1 0. ABSTRACT The quality of [R] in Germanic dialects is one of the most discussed phonological topics in Historical Linguistics, circling around one main question: Was it front or back? Scholars have proposed a back sound arisen through foreign influence as well as a native uvular trill. In this paper, I offer a comparative survey of the available literature, from the earliest superficial comments to modern in-depth dialect analysis, providing a synthesis of the arguments that have been proposed over time. Though no definite answer can ever be found, I provide what I regard to be a plausible answer as the outcome of the research that underlies this essay. 1. INTRODUCTION The realisation of /r/ varies a lot among the Germanic (Gmc) languages of today: Afrikaans, Faroese, Frisian, Alveolar trill / tap ɾ [ r ] / ([ ]) Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish Uvular trill / fricative [ ʀ ] / [ ʁ] Danish, German Approximants British English, American ɹ ɻ (alveolar / retroflex ) [ ] / [ ] English TABLE 1: The various realisations of /r/ in Gmc languages based on Erickson (2002: 183f)2 1 Valentin Ickelsamer Teutsche Grammatica, 1534? [=’the sound of a dog, when it furiously bares its teeth and snarls, thus the curly tongue trembles.’], possibly the earliest attempt of a phonetic description of German /r/ (Runge 1974). Translations are given either in footnotes in single inverted commas, or after a block quote in square brackets and single inverted commas. 2 Some languages like Dutch, German, Norwegian and Swedish have both coronal and uvular realisations.
    [Show full text]
  • Manual for Linguistics I
    Manual for Linguistics 35 Some Descriptive Terms Contrast Relationship of sintagmatic nature There is a difference between two phonological adjacent units Fruta ≠ rfuta Plaza ≠ lpaza Defective Distribution Lack of /r/ in initial position (it is not neutralization) Dephonologization Two phonemes stop opposing themselves in all environments ll→y (malla→maya) The opposition has disappeared: two phonemes dephonologize in one phoneme. 2 phonemes >> 1 phoneme Distribution Several manifestations or variations (allophones) of the same phoneme (variant unit). a) Combinatory or contextual variants Complementary distribution (C.D.) b) Free Variants (F.V.) – stylistic or facultative. Realizations of a phoneme appear in the same environment More of less conscious choice of the speaker Equivalent or free distribution Neutralization The phonological opposition stops being pertinent in certain positions of the utterance. Opposition /r/→ /rr/ pero→perro Neutralization /R/ coRtaR It becomes an Archiphoneme (capital letters between slant bars): Group of distinctive features common to both phonemes in the neutralized opposition /r/ + /rr/ = /R/ Phonological Opposition Relationship of paradigmatic nature There is a difference between two or more distinctive units Minimal pairs are created: pero → perro Some Phonetic Phenomena Related to Phones ARTICULATORY ENERGY (muscular effort): strong vs. weak Lenition process. Weakening process VOICING (vocal cords): voiced vs. voiceless Sonorization process. Deafening process VOWEL ATTACK Soft Hard > glottal occlusion
    [Show full text]
  • Xptphonetic.TTF — English, French, Swedish Phonemes Phonetic Phonetic Symbol Symbol
    1 XPTPhonetic.TTF — English, French, Swedish phonemes Phonetic Phonetic symbol symbol stroke Phonetic stroke Phonetic Key- Examples: transcription Key- Examples: transcription Eng. | Fr. | Sv. Eng. | Fr. | Sv. Eng. | Fr. | Sv. Eng. | Fr. | Sv. Q at, cat | - | - p pan | panne | panna A bar | Bâle | ban r rat | raté | råtta a - | ouatte | satt % - | ils ronronneront | - 1@ - |sans commentaire |- s sit, sat | ceci | se b bet | bon | ben S ship, shop | chant | - d Dee | deux | du * - | - | Lars { - | - | bord, styrde $ - | - | sjuksköterska E set | cette| sätt t tap, ton | tape | ton e - | éviter | veta } - | - | kort, kort, borta ( murder | je le dis | - T thin thought| - | - 2 - | bain, jardin | - D this, that | - | - f for | faux | få Y but, cut | - | - g got | goût | gåta u boo | bout | bo 7 - | rogne, gagné | - U book, put | - | bott h him | - | han V - |- | en ful gud I sit still | - | sitt still 6 - | huit fruiteries | - i seen | signe | sin v vain| viens | Ven j yes| billet | ge w we | oui | - k cat| quoi | katt y - | une | byt, bytt C - | - | kär, kött z zip, zoo | zone | - l lea | lien | le Z leisure | jeu, gêne | - m man | homme |man Other phonetic symbols n no | non | nej : long vowel N song | parking | sång ! ‘ stress, e.g. [ v. [ o awe | eau
    [Show full text]
  • Manual for Linguistics I Linguistics I: Phonetics & Phonology 1º Year Instituto Superior De Lenguas Universidad Nacional De Asunción
    Manual for Linguistics I Linguistics I: Phonetics & Phonology 1º Year Instituto Superior de Lenguas Universidad Nacional de Asunción Phonetics & Phonology 1º Year Facultad de Lenguas Vivas Universidad Evangélica del Paraguay Applied Phonetics 1º Year Instituto Superior de Educación Ministerio de Educación y Cultura Susan Spezzini - Christian Cristoful Scappini 2013 [email protected] 2 “…and the whole earth was of one language and of one speech” Genesis 11:01 … …en aquel tiempo todos hablaban un mismo idioma …ɚ ...erat autem terra labii unius et sermonum eorundem ...naquele tempo toda a humanidade falava uma só língua ...Καὶ ἦν πᾶσα ἡ γῆ χεῖλος ἕν, καὶ φωνὴ μία πᾶσιν …Toute la terre avait une seule langue et les mêmes mots …온 땅의 구음이 하나이요 언어가 하나이었더라 …ora tutta la terra parlava la stessa lingua e usava le stesse parole ...nan konmansman, tout moun sou latè te pale yon sèl lang, yonn te konprann lòt …واحدة ول غة واحدا ل سان ا ك لها اﻻر ض وك ان ت ... 那時，天下人的口音言語，都是一樣。 ...hele Menneskeheden havde eet Tungemål og samme Sprog ...und die ganze Erde hatte ein und dieselbe Sprache und ein und dieselben Wörter … Ekuqalekeni uThixo wadala amazulu nehlabathi. אחדים׃ ודברים אחת שפה כל־הארץ ויהי 3 LESSON 1. INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS ................................................................................................................................. 1 LESSON 3. WHAT IS LANGUAGE? .................................................................................................................................................. 3 HUMAN/ANIMAL
    [Show full text]
  • Integrative Motivation in Second Language Acqusition
    BELONGINGNESS AND INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION by Robb Kvašňák A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The College of Education in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida December 2007 Copyright by Robb Kvašňák 2007 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sermos mensageiros da fala Comunicarmos com o coração Gritarmos a palavra pelas ruas Mostrarmos o poder da comunicação Translation: Let us be the messengers of speech Let us communicate with the heart Let us scream the words through the streets Let us show the power of communication. - Edmar Bernardes DaSilva (2001) This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of many people, among whom, just some of which: Dr. Penelope Fritzer, from the United States, my chair, but who more fittingly deserves the German title of Doktormutter. Dr. Angela Rhone, from Jamaica, who prepared me and guided me during my entire graduate program. Dr. John Morris, from the United States, who encouraged and carefully advised me with the study design. Dr. Hanizah Zainuddin, from Malaysia, who spent countless hours and enormous energy discussing and revising the theory and research of this study. Edmar Bernardes DaSilva, from Brazil, who brought me back to education, supported me in my hours of dissertational despair, and who constantly discussed my ideas and research with me. My parents, Alice and Neil Kvasnak, from the United States, who have lovingly supported me in every way possible on this arduous journey. iv Dr. Michael Bendixen, from South Africa, who patiently advised me and corrected my work over and over again.
    [Show full text]
  • How to Learn a Foreign Language
    Thank you for downloading Dr. Pimsleur’s How to Learn a Foreign Language Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers on Pimsleur Courses, news of upcoming languages, and other Pimsleur news. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP or visit us online to sign up at www.pimsleur.com Table of Contents Foreword Paul Pimsleur’s Life & Career Foreword to the First Edition The “Whys” of Language Learning 1. Everyone Can Learn Another Language 2. When Is a Language Easy to Learn? 3. How Long Does It Take to Learn a Language? 4. Which Language Should You Select? 5. Learning the “Tricks of the Trade” 6. Organic Learning 7. The Words and the Music The “Hows” of Language Learning 8. How to Practice Pronunciation 9. How to Master Grammar 10. How to Learn Vocabulary Conclusion 11. Beyond the Spoken Word Answer Key for Quiz on “Guessable” French Words Appendix 1: Languages of the World Appendix 2: Published Pimsleur Language Programs English as a Second Language Programs About Paul Pimsleur For Jean Foreword For me, this is the perfect book on learning a new language. It is all the things most language learning tools are not. It’s direct, full of useful pearls of wisdom that are easily incorporated into one’s day-to-day study of a new language. It’s clear and well written, and nowhere does “academic-speak” sneak into the text. Paul Pimsleur’s theories, as expressed in How to Learn a Foreign Language, are deceptively simple. In his own teaching, Dr. Pimsleur saw students repeatedly failing and being turned off of what to him was the most exciting challenge in the world: learning a new language.
    [Show full text]