• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.187-192
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• 2019

Background and Objectives: Clear speech is an effective communication strategy used in difficult listening situations that draws on techniques such as accurate articulation, a slow speech rate, and the inclusion of pauses. Although too slow speech and improperly amplified spectral information can deteriorate overall speech intelligibility, certain amplitude of increments of the mid-frequency bands (1 to 3 dB) and around 50% slower speech rates of clear speech, when compared to those in conversational speech, were reported as factors that can improve speech intelligibility positively. The purpose of this study was to identify whether amplitude increments of mid-frequency areas and slower speech rates were evident in Korean clear speech as they were in English clear speech. Subjects and Methods: To compare the acoustic characteristics of the two methods of speech production, the voices of 60 participants were recorded during conversational speech and then again during clear speech using a standardized sentence material. Results: The speech rate and longterm average speech spectrum (LTASS) were analyzed and compared. Speech rates for clear speech were slower than those for conversational speech. Increased amplitudes in the mid-frequency bands were evident for the LTASS of clear speech. Conclusions:The observed differences in the acoustic characteristics between the two types of speech production suggest that Korean clear speech can be an effective communication strategy to improve speech intelligibility.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.67-74
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• 2017

An increase in speech intelligibility has been found in Clear Speech compared to conversational speech. Clear Speech is defined by decreased articulation rates and increased frequency and length of pauses. The objective of the present study was to investigate improvement in immediate speech intelligibility in 10 patients with Parkinson's disease (age range: 46 to 75 years) using Clear Speech. This experiment has been performed using the Phonatory Aerodynamic System 6600 after the participants read the first sentence of a Sanchaek passage and the "List for Adults 1" in the Sentence Recognition Test (SRT) using casual speech and Clear Speech. Acoustic and aerodynamic parameters that affect speech intelligibility were measured, including mean F0, F0 range, intensity, speaking rate, mean airflow rate, and respiratory rate. In the Sanchaek passage, use of Clear Speech resulted in significant differences in mean F0, F0 range, speaking rate, and respiratory rate, compared with the use of casual speech. In the SRT list, significant differences were seen in mean F0, F0 range, and speaking rate. Based on these findings, it is claimed that speech intelligibility can be affected by adjusting breathing and tone in Clear Speech. Future studies should identify the benefits of Clear Speech through auditory-perceptual studies and evaluate programs that use Clear Speech to increase intelligibility.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.3-11
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• 2010

The present study confirmed the intelligibility improvement benefit of clear speech by investigating the intelligibility of Korean stops produced in different speaking styles: conversational, citation-form, and clear speech. This finding supports the Hypo- & Hyper-speech theory that speakers adjust vocal effort to accommodate hearers' speech perception difficulty. A progressive intelligibility improvement was found for the three speaking styles investigated: clear speech was more intelligible than citation-form speech citation-form speech was more intelligible than conversational speech and clear speech was also more intelligible than conversational speech. These findings suggest that the manipulations to elicit three distinct speaking styles in a laboratory setting were successful. Korean lenis stops showed the least intelligibility improvement among the three Korean stop types, and this result suggests that lenis stops should be more resistant to intelligibility enhancement efforts in clear speech than aspirated and fortis stops.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.187-192
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• 2019

Background and Objectives: Clear speech is an effective communication strategy used in difficult listening situations that draws on techniques such as accurate articulation, a slow speech rate, and the inclusion of pauses. Although too slow speech and improperly amplified spectral information can deteriorate overall speech intelligibility, certain amplitude of increments of the mid-frequency bands (1 to 3 dB) and around 50% slower speech rates of clear speech, when compared to those in conversational speech, were reported as factors that can improve speech intelligibility positively. The purpose of this study was to identify whether amplitude increments of mid-frequency areas and slower speech rates were evident in Korean clear speech as they were in English clear speech. Subjects and Methods: To compare the acoustic characteristics of the two methods of speech production, the voices of 60 participants were recorded during conversational speech and then again during clear speech using a standardized sentence material. Results: The speech rate and longterm average speech spectrum (LTASS) were analyzed and compared. Speech rates for clear speech were slower than those for conversational speech. Increased amplitudes in the mid-frequency bands were evident for the LTASS of clear speech. Conclusions:The observed differences in the acoustic characteristics between the two types of speech production suggest that Korean clear speech can be an effective communication strategy to improve speech intelligibility.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.101-104
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• 2006

The present study examined two acoustic characteristics(duration and intensity) of vowels produced by 4 cerebral palsic adults and 4 nondisabled adults in conversational and clear speech. In this study, clear speech means: (1) slow one's speech rate just a little, (2) articulate all phonemes accurately and increase vocal volume. Speech material included 10 bisyllabic real words in the frame sentences. Temporal-acoustic analysis showed that vowels produced by two speaker groups in clear speech(in this case, more accurate and louder speech) were significantly longer than vowels in conversational speech. In addition, intensity of vowels produced by cerebral palsic speakers in clear speech(in this case, more accurate and louder speech) was higher than in conversational speech.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.08a
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• pp.177-183
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• 1998

보통 말씨와 clear speech에서, 영어 전설모음[ i, , , e ]를 일정한 강세를 갖도록 하고, 모음의 길이를 변화시켜 음향적 분석을 하였다. 그 결과, 모음의 음가가 주변의 자음과 비슷한 값으로 변화하였으며, 그 변화 정도는 모음의 길이와 직접적인 관련이 있었으며, 이러한 변화의 크기는 clear speech에서 더 적었다. 이러한 결과는 clear speech 가 단순히 보통 말씨보다 소리가 큰 것일 뿐 아니라, 체계적으로 모음축약 현상을 보상하기 위하여 음향적인 특성을 재구성하는 것임을 시사한다.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.33-37
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• 2018

Korean students with much exposure to the relatively slow and clear speech used in most English classes in Korea can be expected to have difficulty understanding the casual style that is common in the everyday speech of English speakers. This research attempted to investigate an effective way to utilize casual speech in English education, by exploring the way different speech styles (clear vs. casual) affect Korean learners' comprehension of spoken English. Twenty Korean university students and two native speakers of English participated in a listening session. The English utterances were produced in different speech styles (clear slow, casual slow, clear fast, and casual fast). The Korean students were divided into two groups by English proficiency level. The results showed that the Korean students achieved 69.4% comprehension accuracy, while the native speakers of English demonstrated almost perfect results. The Korean students (especially the low-proficiency group) had more problems perceiving function words than they did perceiving content words. Responding to the different speech styles, the high-proficiency group had more difficulty listening to utterances with phonological variation than they did listening to utterances produced at a faster speed. The low-proficiency group, however, struggled with utterances produced at a faster speed more than they did with utterances with phonological variation. The pedagogical implications of the results are discussed in the concluding section.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.107-117
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• 2006

This study examined how well Korean undergraduate students perceived linked or clear English speech and attempted to find areas of difficulty in their English listening caused by phonological variations. Thirty nine undergraduate students participated in listening sessions. They were divided into high and low groups by their TOEIC listening scores. Samples of linked speech included such phonological processes as linking, palatalization, flapping, and deletion. Results showed that the students had more problem perceiving linked speech than perceiving clear speech. Secondly, both the higher and the lower groups scored low on the linked speech. The lower group had more score difference between linked and clear speech. Thirdly, the students' scores increased from the speech with flapping, through deletion, palatalization, to linking. Finally, there was a strong positive correlation between their TOEIC listening scores and the perception scores. Further studies would be desirable on the level of improvement of TOEIC scores by training the students' listening ability using the linked speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.77-84
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to examine the acoustic characteristics of Parkinsonian speech, with respect to different utterance conditions, by employing acoustic/auditory-perceptual analysis. The subjects of the study were 15 patients (M=7, F=8) with Parkinson's disease who were asked to read out sentences under different utterance conditions (clear/casual). The sentences read out by each subject were recorded, and the recorded speech was subjected to cepstrum and spectrum analysis using Analysis of Dysphonia in Speech and Voice (ADSV). Additionally, auditory-perceptual evaluation of the recorded speech was conducted with respect to breathiness and loudness. Results indicate that in the case of clear speech, there was a statistically significant increase in the cepstral peak prominence (CPP), and a decrease in the L/H ratio SD (ratio of low to high frequency spectral energy SD) and CPP F0 SD values. In the auditory-perceptual evaluation, a decrease in breathiness and an increase in loudness were noted. Furthermore, CPP was found to be highly correlated to breathiness and loudness. This provides objective evidence of the immediate usefulness of clear speech intervention in improving the voice quality of Parkinsonian speech.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.43-50
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• 2017

These days voice models of speech recognition software are sophisticated enough to process the natural speech of people without any previous training. However, not much research has reported on the use of speech recognition tools in the field of pronunciation education. This paper examined Google speech recognition of a short English paragraph produced by Korean college students in clear and casual speech styles in order to diagnose and resolve students' pronunciation problems. Thirty three Korean college students participated in the recording of the English paragraph. The Google soundwriter was employed to collect data on the word recognition rates of the paragraph. Results showed that the total word recognition rate was 73% with a standard deviation of 11.5%. The word recognition rate of clear speech was around 77.3% while that of casual speech amounted to 68.7%. The reasons for the low recognition rate of casual speech were attributed to both individual pronunciation errors and the software itself as shown in its fricative recognition. Various distributions of unrecognized words were observed depending on each participant and proficiency groups. From the results, the author concludes that the speech recognition software is useful to diagnose each individual or group's pronunciation problems. Further studies on progressive improvements of learners' erroneous pronunciations would be desirable.