• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.153-169
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• 2012

This study reviews an English enhancement course implemented for medical and nursing college students of 2011 to improve their standardized English test scores. A total of 117 first-year students underwent the pre-test and the post-TOEIC in November 2011. After the pre-test, lectures on listening enhancement strategies and problem solving tactics on reading comprehension were supplemented with 4 times of enhancement-tests. Their pre- and post-TOEIC results were compared to see if such enhancement strategies were effective to improve their TOEIC scores. It was further to investigate, through survey questionnaires, how the subjects felt about a number of pre-test-type TOEIC exercise with what-to-listen and how-to-infer listening strategies and pattern-drill practices for reading comprehension. It was found that the scores of listening comprehension improved significantly for both major students whereas reading scores showed slight decrease among nursing majors. It is concluded that administering numerous pre-test-type-TOEIC exercise is effective for students to improve their listening scores supplemented with listening strategies Also, students' response showed positive toward the enhancement course.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.27-34
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• 2000

This paper deals with speech enhancement methods using the wavelet transform. A cycle-spinning scheme and undecimated wavelet transform are used for denoising of speech signals, and then their results are compared with that of the conventional wavelet transform. We apply soft-thresholding technique for removing additive background noise from noisy speech. The symlets 8-tap wavelet and pyramid algorithm are used for the wavelet transform. Performance assessments based on average SNR, cepstral distance and informal subjective listening test are carried out. Experimental results demonstrate that both cycle-spinning denoising(CSD) method and undecimated wavelet denoising(CWD) method outperform conventional wavelet denoising(UWD) method in objective performance measure as welt as subjective listening test. The two methods also show less "clicks" that usually appears in the neighborhood of signal discontinuities.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.12
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• pp.210-216
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• 2013

It is hard to listen to the music clearly in the presence of background noise. In this paper, a method that modifies the audio signal automatically to enhance the audio listening experience in adverse environment is proposed. Specifically, the method that amplifies the audio signal so that the perceived loudness of audio signal in each band becomes similar to that of the noiseless signal. The loudness perception model proposed by Moore et. al is utilized. Extending the previous work that is applied to speech reinforcement, the full band signal sampled at 48kHz is manipulated based on the loudness restoration principle. Moreover, based on the observation that the audio clarity is compromised even with loudness restored signal, a modification that intentionally boosts high frequency loudness more than lower band is also proposed. Experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm can enhance the audio listening experience in adverse environment.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.40 no.11
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• pp.39-54
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• 2002

The goal of this study is to develop a program which can improve couples' communication skills that serve to enhance their relationships and to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The summary of major result of the research were as follows; 1 The content of communication program for couples in the early marriage focused on improvement of communication skills, on enhancement of couples' intimacy and on coping ability for marriage life. 2. The developed program served to communication improvement for couples in the early marriage. Analyzing specifically the results of test before and after, the average scores of sub-areas such as listening, speaking and solving problems were all increased after the program than before the program. Significant differences of sub-areas appeared, either. 3. The developed program contributed to enhancement of couples' mutual understanding and their relationships.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.176-182
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• 2021

This paper evaluates and compares the performance of the Deep Nerual Network (DNN)-based speech enhancement models according to various loss functions. We used a complex network that can consider the phase information of speech as a baseline model. As the loss function, we consider two types of basic loss functions; the Mean Squared Error (MSE) and the Scale-Invariant Source-to-Noise Ratio (SI-SNR), and two types of perceptual-based loss functions, including the Perceptual Metric for Speech Quality Evaluation (PMSQE) and the Log Mel Spectra (LMS). The performance comparison was performed through objective evaluation and listening tests with outputs obtained using various combinations of the loss functions. Test results show that when a perceptual-based loss function was combined with MSE or SI-SNR, the overall performance is improved, and the perceptual-based loss functions, even exhibiting lower objective scores showed better performance in the listening test.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.2E
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• pp.87-92
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• 2003

In this paper, a new speech enhancement method using level adapted wavelet packet is presented. First, we propose a level adapted wavelet packet to alleviate a drawback of the conventional node adapted one in noisy environment. Next, we suggest an adaptive noise estimation method at each node on level adapted wavelet packet tree. Then, for more accurate noise component subtraction, we propose a new estimation method of spectral subtraction weight. Finally, we present a modified spectral subtraction method. The proposed method is evaluated on various noise conditions: speech babble noise, F-l6 cockpit noise, factory noise, pink noise, and Volvo car interior noise. For an objective evaluation, the SNR test was performed. Also, spectrogram test and a very simple listening test as a subjective evaluation were performed.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.197-202
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• 2013

Large gains in speech intelligibility can be obtained using the SNR-based binary mask approach. This approach retains the time-frequency (T-F) units of the mixture signal, where the target signal is stronger than the interference noise (masker) (e.g., SNR > 0 dB), and removes the T-F units, where the interfering noise is dominant. This paper introduces two alternative binary masks based on the distortion constraints to improve the speech intelligibility. The distortion constraints are induced by a gain function for estimating the short-time spectral amplitude. One binary mask is designed to retain the speech underestimated (T-F) units while removing the speech overestimated (T-F)units. The other binary mask is designed to retain the noise overestimated (T-F) units while removing noise underestimated (T-F) units. Listening tests with oracle binary masks were conducted to assess the potential of the two binary masks in improving the intelligibility. The results suggested that the two binary masks based on distortion constraints can provide large gains in intelligibility when applied to noise-corrupted speech.

• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.109-132
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• 2019

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between music listening and mood regulation. The effects of personality traits, music education, and sex on music use for mood regulation were also examined. Participants were 529 undergraduate students who completed the Korean Music in Mood Regulation Scale, Interpersonal Personality Item Pool (IPIP), Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule, and a questionnaire on their music education. Correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, and t tests were conducted to explore the relationship among the measured variables. The results showed that music listening was related to enhancement of positive mood but not improvement of negative mood. Participants who had received extracurricular music education were more likely to use music listening as a strategy to regulate their mood than were participants without music education. Women were more likely to use music for mood regulation than were men. The multiple regression results indicate that individuals who rated themselves highly on Agreeableness and Openness to Experience on the IPIP were more likely to listen to music for mood regulation. These findings stress that music listening can be an effective strategy for mood regulation, which is critical for one's emotional well-being. It also indicates that effective music use as a mood regulation strategy varies depending on one's personal characteristics and history of music education.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.36S no.7
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• pp.134-135
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• 1999

This paper presents a speech enhancement method with spectral subtraction using wavelet, wavelet packet and cosine packet transforms which are known as multiresolutional signal analysis method. The performance of each method is compared with the conventional spectral subtraction method. Performance assessments based on average SNR, cepstral distance and informal subjective listening test are carried out. Experimental result demonstrate that cosine packet shows the best result in objective performance measure as well as subjective shows less musical noise than the conventional spectral subtraction method after removing the noise components.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.374-379
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• 2002

In this paper, a nobel method to reduce noise using voice/unvoice classification is proposed. Voice and unvoice are an important feature of speech and the proposed method processes noisy speech differently for each voice/unvoice part. Speech is classified into voice/unvoice using zero-crossing rate and energy, and a modified speech/noise dominant-decision is proposed based on voice/unvoice classification. The proposed method was tested on conditions of white noise and airplane noise, and on the basis of comparing segmental SNR with the existing method and listening to the enhanced speech, a performance of the proposed method was superior to that of the existing method.