Browse > Article
http://dx.doi.org/10.13064/KSSS.2022.14.4.025

Relationships between rhythm and fluency indices and listeners' ratings of Korean speakers' English paragraph reading  

Hyunsong Chung (Department of English Education, Korea National University of Education)
Publication Information
Phonetics and Speech Sciences / v.14, no.4, 2022 , pp. 25-33 More about this Journal
Abstract
This study investigates the relationships between rhythm and fluency indices and listeners' ratings of the rhythm and fluency of Korean college students' English paragraph reading. 17 university students read and recorded a passage from "The North Wind and the Sun" twice before and after three months of English pronunciation instruction. Seven in-service and pre-service English teachers in graduate school assessed the rhythm and fluency of the utterances. In addition, the values of 14 indices of rhythm and fluency were extracted from each speech and the relationships between the indices and the listeners' ratings were analyzed. The rhythm indices of the speakers in this study did not differ significantly from those of native English speakers presented in previous studies in %V, VarcoV, and nPVIV, but were higher in ΔV, ΔC, and VarcoC and lower in speech rate. The level of rhythm and fluency demonstrated by Korean college students was comparable, at least in terms of objective values for certain indices. The fluency indices, such as percentage of pauses, articulation rate, and speech rate, significantly contributed more to predicting both rhythm and fluency ratings than the rhythm indices.
Keywords
rhythm; fluency; rhythm index; fluency index;
Citations & Related Records
Times Cited By KSCI : 2  (Citation Analysis)
연도 인용수 순위
1 Bates, D., Machler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1-48.
2 Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2022). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (version 6.2.17) [Computer program]. Retrieved from https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
3 Chakrabarti, A., & Ghosh, J. K. (2011). AIC, BIC and recent advances in model selection. In P. S. Bandyopadhyay, & M. R. Forster (Eds.), Philosophy of statistics: Handbook of the philosophy of science (pp. 583-605). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier.
4 Choe, W. K. (2019). The realization of English rhythm by Busan Korean speakers. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 11(4), 81-87.   DOI
5 Chung, H. (2013). A study on the rhythm of Korean English learners' interlanguage talk. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 5(3), 3-10.   DOI
6 Chung, H., Jang, T. Y., Yun, W., Yun, I., & Sa, J. (2008). A study on automatic measurement of pronunciation accuracy of English speech produced by Korean learners of English. Language and Linguistics, 42, 165-196.
7 Dellwo, V. (2006). Rhythm and speech rate: A variation coefficient for deltaC. In P. Karnowski & I. Szigeti (Eds.), Language and language processing: Proceedings of the 38th Linguistic Colloquium(pp. 231-241). Frankfurt, Germany.
8 Derwing, T. M., Rossiter, M. J., Munro, M. J., & Thomson, R. I. (2004). Second language fluency: Judgments on different tasks. Language Learning, 54(4), 655-679.   DOI
9 Deterding, D. (2001). The measurement of rhythm: A comparison of Singapore and British English. Journal of Phonetics, 29(2), 217-230.   DOI
10 Grabe, E., & Low, E. L. (2002). Durational variability in speech and the rhythm class hypothesis. In C. Gussenhoven, & N. Warner (Eds.), Laboratory phonology 7 (pp. 515-546). Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Mouton.
11 Hothorn, T., Hornik, K., van de Wiel, M. A., & Zeileis, A (2008). Implementing a class of permutation tests: The coin package. Journal of Statistical Software, 28(8), 1-23.
12 Isaacs, T., & Thomson, R. I. (2013). Rater experience, rating scale length, and judgments of L2 pronunciation: Revisiting research conventions. Language Assessment Quarterly, 10(2), 135-159.   DOI
13 Kim, M. S., & Jang, T. Y. (2019). Pauses and speech rates in assessing fluency of English speech. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 44(3), 315-339.   DOI
14 Kim, S. (2021). Foreign accentedness rating and rhythm in L2 English. The Mirae Journal of English Language and Literature, 26(4), 101-120.   DOI
15 Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., & Christensen, R. H. B. (2017). lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software, 82(13), 1-26.
16 Ling, L. E., Grabe, E., & Nolan, F. (2000). Quantitative characterizations of speech rhythm: Syllable-timing in Singapore English. Language and Speech, 43(4), 377-401.   DOI
17 Mariano, P., & Romano, A. (2011). Rhythm metrics for 21 languages. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 1318-1321). Hong Kong, China.
18 Pinheiro, J., Bates D., & R Core Team, (2022). nlme: Linear and nonlinear mixed effects models (version 3.1-157) [Computer software]. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/nlme/
19 R Core Team (2022). R: A language and environment for statistical computing (version 4.2.1) [Computer software]. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from https://www.R-project.org/
20 Ramus, F., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (1999). Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Cognition, 73(3), 265-292.   DOI
21 Revelle, W. (2022). psych: Procedures for personality and psychological research (version 2.2.9) [Computer software]. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University. Retrieved from https://CRAN.R-project. org/package=psych
22 The International Phonetic Association. (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the international phonetic alphabet. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
23 Thomson, R. I. (2015). Fluency. In M. Reed, & J. M. Levis (Eds.), The handbook of English pronunciation (pp. 209-226). Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
24 White, L., & Mattys, S. L. (2007). Calibrating rhythm: First language and second language studies. Journal of Phonetics, 35(4), 501-522.   DOI