• Journal of Korean Ophthalmic Optics Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.333-338
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• 2011

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate eye dominance and reading performance based on eye movements and reading speed. Methods: The eye dominance of 30 subjects was determined using the sighting test (hole formed by hands). The subjects were asked to read the numerical reading material aloud in English from left to right and from right to left at random. The number of saccades, regressions, and inter-fixations per minute was calculated using Visual-Oculography (VOG) and the reading speed was recorded as number of characters per minute using stopwatch. Results: No significant differences in reading speed among right and left eye dominant subjects as they read from left to right and right to left directions (p>0.05). However, left eye dominant subjects were found to read significantly faster compared to right eye dominant subjects in both directions of reading (p<0.05). In term of eye movement patterns, no significant differences in saccades, regressions, and inter-fixations per minute were found between subjects with right eye dominance and left eye dominance for both reading directions (p>0.05). Conclusions: Reading performance in term of eye movement and speed was not affected by eye dominance, but subjects with left eye dominance read faster than subjects with right eye dominance.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.121-126
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• 2012

This study deals with how stuttering changes in its frequency in a situation where adult participants who stutter are exposed to one type of background noise, that is, multi-talker babble noise. Eight American English-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study. Each of the subjects read aloud sentences under each of three speaking conditions (i.e., typical solo reading (TSR), typical choral reading (TCR), and multi-talker babble noise reading (BNR)). Speech fluency was computed based on a percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) and speaking rate was also assessed to examine if there was significant change in rates as a measure of vocal change under each of the speaking conditions. The study found that participants read more fluently both during BNR and during TCR than during TSR. The study also found that participants did not show significant changes in speaking rate across the three speaking conditions. Some discussion was provided in relation to the effect of multi-talker babble noise on the frequency of stuttering and its further speculation.

• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.95-105
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• 2015

We developed a test of English silent word reading, following work by Mather, Hammill, Allen and Roberts (2004) and Bell, McCallum, Krik, Fuller, and McCane-Bowling (2007), in order to tap Hong Kong Chinese children's reading of English as a foreign language. We created one subtest of individual word reading and another of word reading contextualized within sentences; together, these tests require no more than 10 minutes for administration. In Study 1, we administered the entire test to 552 second grade Hong Kong Chinese children between the ages of 70 and 121 months old, from five different primary schools. The association between the subtests of English silent word reading and contextual reading was positively correlated (.78). In Study 2, 77 Hong Kong Chinese second graders were tested on our newly developed English silent word reading test, together with non-verbal IQ, an English word reading and a Chinese character recognition test (both read aloud). With age and non-verbal IQ statistically controlled, there was a significant correlation between English silent word reading and the more standard English word reading, read aloud, (.78); the association between English silent word reading and Chinese character recognition was also positively correlated (.49). This newly created test is a quick and reliable measure, suitable for both educators and researchers to use to identify poor readers who learn English as a foreign or second language.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2009.01a
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• pp.773-777
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• 2009

In recent years, the field of synthesizing voice has been developed rapidly, and the technologies such as reading aloud an email or sound guidance of a car navigation system are used in various scenes of our life. The sound quality is monotonous like reading news. It is preferable for a text such as a novel to be read by the voice that expresses emotions wealthily. Therefore, we have been trying to develop a system reading aloud novels automatically that are expressed clear emotions comparatively such as juvenile literature. At first it is necessary to identify emotions expressed in a sentence in texts in order to make a computer read texts with an emotionally expressive voice. A method on the basis of the meaning interpretation that utilized artificial intelligence technology for a method to specify emotions of texts is thought, but it is very difficult with the current technology. Therefore, we propose a method to determine only emotion every sentence in a novel by a simpler way. This method determines the emotion of a sentence according to an emotion that words such as a verb in a Japanese verb sentence, and an adjective and an adverb in a adjective sentence, have. The emotional characteristics that these words have are prepared beforehand as a emotional words dictionary by us. The emotions used here are seven types: "joy," "sorrow," "anger," "surprise," "terror," "aversion" or "neutral."

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.157-169
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• 2014

This study sought to explore the types of predictable pattern books are suitable for reading aloud, the differences between English and translated Korean picture books in terms of their characteristics of speakability and the meaning of sentences. This study investigated a total of 112 picture books. The predictable pattern types were analyzed specifically, compared with onomatopoeia, mimetic words, repetition, rhyme, the shift of sentence and style types. The results indicated that predictable pattern books could be classified into eight types and the number of sentences in translated books increased owing to the difference of sentence structure. In terms of speakability, words in repetition, onomatopoeia and mimetic words represented higher frequency except rhyme because of the difference of characteristics of the two languages. Furthermore, translations used strategies of the shift in sentence and style types for speakability. These findings demonstrate that predictable pattern books can serve as good materials to read aloud for young children not only in terms of English picture books but also translated books regardless of concerns regarding their speakability.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.15-22
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• 2016

This study aims to examine whether the fundamental frequency (F0) varies depending on languages or distinguishes between L1 (first language) and L2 (second language) speech and whether the type of materials which vary in control of consonant voicing affects the use of F0-especially, mean F0. For this purpose, we compared productions of two languages produced by Korean L2 learners of English to those of Korean-English bilingual speakers. Twelve Korean L2 speakers of English and twelve Korean-English bilingual speakers participated in this study. The subjects read aloud 22 declarative sentences-balanced and unbalanced-once in English and once in Korean. Mean F0 of Korean was higher than that of English for both speaker groups, and the difference in the value of mean F0 between the Korean and English sentences was different depending on the type of materials that the participants read. With regard to F0 range, the L2 speakers had a larger F0 range in English than in Korean; however, the effect of language on F0 range was not statistically significant for the bilingual speakers. These results indicate that language-specific properties may affect the use of F0, in particular, mean F0.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.19-34
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• 2010

This study investigates how EFL learners' chunking ability both in oral and silent reading affects reading comprehension, and how the chunking ability in silent reading relates to that of oral reading. The participants of this study consisted of 30 Korean university students taking a required 'English Reading' course. Chunking is a technique of grouping words into meaningful syntactic units for better understanding. Chunking was measured from pauses in oral reading. Results of this study suggest that the participants who can chunk properly both orally and silently display better comprehension of texts in general. However, chunking in silent reading was found to be a stronger indicator of improved reading comprehension. Also, the chunking skills in silent reading showed a statistically strong correlation with those observed in oral reading, suggesting that the chunking ability in silent reading may develop in parallel with that of oral reading. Oral as well as silent reading should be continuously practiced to improve reading comprehension of all levels of EFL learners, including low levels of learners. There is also a need to encourage students to read aloud with appropriate prosodic cues to help them read in meaningful units of words, therefore increasing EFL learners' comprehension not only in reading but also in listening.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.761-772
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• 2020

This paper presents an automatic proficiency assessment method for a non-native Korean read utterance using bidirectional long short-term memory (BLSTM)-based acoustic models (AMs) and speech data augmentation techniques. Specifically, the proposed method considers two scenarios, with and without prompted text. The proposed method with the prompted text performs (a) a speech feature extraction step, (b) a forced-alignment step using a native AM and non-native AM, and (c) a linear regression-based proficiency scoring step for the five proficiency scores. Meanwhile, the proposed method without the prompted text additionally performs Korean speech recognition and a subword un-segmentation for the missing text. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method with prompted text improves the performance for all scores when compared to a method employing conventional AMs. In addition, the proposed method without the prompted text has a fluency score performance comparable to that of the method with prompted text.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 1990

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of parents' repeated reading of the same storybook on young children's independent reading. The subjects were forty five- and six-year-old children and their parents. The children attended four preschools and kindergartens in three cities, Ann Arbor, Northville, and Jackson, Michigan, U.S.A. The family SES varied. Observation of parent-child verbal interaction during storybook reading was carried out in a naturalistic way. The storybook used for this study was The Berenstain Bears visit the dentist(Berenstain & Berenstain, 1981). The parents were asked to read the stroybook aloud to the target child, as they usually did, four times within 2 weeks, but to audiotape the first and fourth reading. The paired t-test was employed to test for the difference in the frequency of the child's taking over of storybook reading between the fir-st and fourth reading. The results showed that children took over storybook reading more frequently in the fourth reading than in the first reading, irrespective of the family SES. Implications for future research in the area of storybook reading were discussed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.187-193
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• 2009

For this study, the external laryngeal lengths of 9 females and 9 males with normal voices were measured together with their ages, heights, and weights, and after they read aloud sentences for 3 minutes, their habitual speaking fundamental frequencies, speaking low pitches, speaking high pitches, and vocal fold closed quotients were measured. The Spearman rank correlation analysis on these data showed a significant negative correlation between the external laryngeal length and the habitual speaking fundamental frequency for both females and males, a significant negative correlation between the external laryngeal length and the speaking high pitch for only males, a significant negative correlation between the external laryngeal length and the speaking low pitch for both females and males, and a significant positive correlation between the external laryngeal length and the vocal fold closed quotient for only males.