• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.19-26
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• 2017

The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of utterance internal pause in English speaking evaluation. To avoid possible confusion with other errors caused by segmental and prosodic inaccuracy, stem utterances with two different length obtained from a native speaker were manipulated to make a set of stimuli tokens through insertion of pauses whose length and position vary. After a total of 90 participants classified into three proficiency groups rated the stimuli, the scored data set was statistically analyzed in terms of the mixed effects model. It was confirmed that predictors such as pause length, pause position and utterance length significantly influence raters' evaluation scores. Especially, a dominating effect was found in such a way that raters gradually deducted scores in accordance with the increase of pause duration. In another experiment, a tree-based statistical learning technique was utilized to check which of the significant predictors played a more influential role than others. The findings in this paper are expected to be practically informative for both the test takers who are preparing for an English speaking test and the raters who desire to develop more objective rubric of speaking evaluation.

• 한국콘텐츠학회논문지
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• 제20권1호
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• pp.573-580
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• 2020

본 연구는 대학의 말하기 교육 유형인 발표와 토론 수업을 중심으로 동료 및 자기 평가와 피드백을 통해 말하기 능력 함양을 위한 교육 방안을 탐색해보고, 그 효과를 확인하는데 목적이 있다. 연구대상 및 내용은 H대학교의 교양 필수인 <독서와 소통> 수업을 수강한 1학년 학생들로 '읽기, 말하기, 쓰기'의 통합 활동 중 말하기 활동과 그 효과에 한정하여 제시한 것이다. 말하기 교육에서 동료 및 자기 평가와 피드백은 학생들 간에 상호 공감대를 형성하고 협력 하에 말하기에 필요한 역량 함양과 자기 발견 및 소통을 통한 주도적인 학습이 가능하게 한다. 연구결과, 다양한 말하기 실습을 통해 말하기 태도 및 심리적 측면에 긍정적인 효과가 있었으며, 평가와 피드백 활동이 학생들에게 유의미한 학습 효과를 가져다 줬음을 확인할 수 있었다. 대학생의 의사소통 능력의 중요성이 강조되는 만큼 현실적이며 유용한 말하기 교육 및 지도 방안들이 지속적으로 연구 및 개발되어야 한다고 본다.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제6권2호
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• pp.9-20
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• 2014

In this paper, we propose an automatic fluency evaluation algorithm for English speaking tests. In the proposed algorithm, acoustic features are extracted from an input spoken utterance and then fluency score is computed by using support vector regression (SVR). We estimate the parameters of feature modeling and SVR using the speech signals and the corresponding scores by human raters. From the correlation analysis results, it is shown that speech rate, articulation rate, and mean length of runs are best for fluency evaluation. Experimental results show that the correlation between the human score and the SVR score is 0.87 for 3 speaking tests, which suggests the possibility of the proposed algorithm as a secondary fluency evaluation tool.

• 한국인터넷방송통신학회논문지
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• 제16권5호
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• pp.13-20
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• 2016

본 연구는 국내 영어 학습자들의 말하기 출력 활동을 활성화시킬 방안으로서 스마트폰과 음성합성(Text-to-Speech)이 지닌 장점을 활용하여 모바일 영어 학습의 한 형태인 영어 말하기 영상 과제 학습 모델을 개발, 적용한 후, 이 모델이 학습자들에게 미친 효과를 탐구하였다. 설문 조사 결과 모바일 기기를 활용한 영어 말하기 영상 과제는 학습자들의 전반적인 영어실력 뿐 아니라 발음, 말하기, 듣기, 쓰기 영역에서 자신감과 실력 향상에 긍정적인 영향을 미친 것으로 나타났다. 이런 결과를 기반으로 외국어로서 영어를 학습해야 하는 상황적 한계로 인해 충분한 영어 입력에 노출되지 못하고 말하기 출력활동이 부족한 국내 영어 학습자들의 영어 말하기 능력을 향상시킬 한 가지 방안으로써 말하기 영상 과제의 가능성과 한계를 논의한다.

• 공학교육연구
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.47-58
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to verify the education effects of program for engineering students and extract the essential components to be included in the learning contents. For this, we investigated the lecture contents critically and analyzed the evaluation result of questionnaire to examine the students' learning satisfaction and learners' needs concerning the effectiveness of course. The survey using two types of questionnaires was conducted with 210 junior and senior students taking lectures of ${\ll}$Presentation and Debate Skills${\gg}$ in the college of engineering at Pusan National University. According to the evaluation result, students experienced various speech education's effects concerning (1) verbal components, (2) non-verbal components, (3) problem solving competence, (4) teamwork skills, etc. On the other side there have been pointed out as problems in the ${\ll}$Presentation and Debate Skills${\gg}$ class, such as (1) a large number of assignments, (2) insufficiency of more refined evaluation method for the individuals and (3) a well-balanced arrangement between 'theory' and 'practice' was needed. However more importantly, the individual students can not do practice sufficiently owing to the large scale of class. Therefore the various and effective ways to help students improve their communicative competence have to be developed further. Finally, there have been extracted several essential components to be included in the class and implications for ameliorating the class were discussed and suggested in detail.

• 공학교육연구
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• 제19권1호
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• pp.21-30
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• 2016

Communication is for making a passage to communicate with various modern narratives or various people. Therefore, it needs to be reorganized by these changes and demands. Especially in case of country students learning natural science and engineering are appreciating the necessity of speaking education. So a program which contains both speaking and writing should be organized. In this writing writer used flipped learning and strategic text to fulfill evaluation items that engineering authentication requires. Also writer suggested how to lecture and planned to make a integration textbook which can foster literacy and liberal arts knowledge.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제7권1호
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• pp.1-19
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• 2001

The current status of in-service teacher development shows that teachers' awareness can be enhanced through critical reflection. This study shows how an English teacher improved her own teaching situation through action research. It reports back the action research the teacher-researcher carried out in the EFL classroom setting. Aiming to improve the pupils' English speaking ability, the teacher introduced 'Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT)' to the English class. The teacher and the pupils took part in the evaluation process of learning and teaching. It was found that the new approach to teaching speaking helped the pupils improve speaking ability and take an active role in learning process. It is further suggested that teacher-initiated action research can be done in collaboration with colleagues, administrators and researchers.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제7권2호
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• pp.149-156
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• 2015

We propose a new method for automatic fluency scoring of English speaking tests spoken by nonnative speakers in a free-talking style. The proposed method is different from the previous methods in that it does not require the transcribed texts for spoken utterances. At first, an input utterance is segmented into a phone sequence by using a phone recognizer trained by using native speech databases. For each utterance, a feature vector with 6 features is extracted by processing the segmentation results of the phone recognizer. Then, fluency score is computed by applying support vector regression (SVR) to the feature vector. The parameters of SVR are learned by using the rater scores for the utterances. In computer experiments with 3 tests taken by 48 Korean adults, we show that speech rate, phonation time ratio, and smoothed unfilled pause rate are best for fluency scoring. The correlation of between the rater score and the SVR score is shown to be 0.84, which is higher than the correlation of 0.78 among raters. Although the correlation is slightly lower than the correlation of 0.90 when the transcribed texts are given, it implies that the proposed method can be used as a preprocessing tool for fluency evaluation of speaking tests.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.47-54
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• 2023

This study attempted to test the hypothesis that Korean evaluators can score L2 speech appropriately, even when speech rate features are unavailable. Two perception experiments-preliminary and main-were conducted sequentially. The purpose of the preliminary experiment was to categorize English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) speakers into two groups-advanced learners and lower-level learners-based on the proficiency scores given by five human raters. In the main experiment, a set of stimuli was prepared such that the speech rate of all data tokens was modified to have a uniform speech rate. Ten human evaluators were asked to score the stimulus tokens on a 5-point scale. These scores were statistically analyzed to determine whether there was a significant difference in utterance production between the two groups. The results of the preliminary experiment confirm that higher-proficiency learners speak faster than lower-proficiency learners. The results of the main experiment indicate that under controlled speech-rate conditions, human raters can appropriately assess learner proficiency, probably thanks to the linguistic features that the raters considered during the evaluation process.

• 한국생활과학회지
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• 제16권4호
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• pp.677-690
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• 2007

This study has a goal to read a trend of language research by analysing evaluation tools and methods that researchers have used for assessing young children's language abilities. Thus the study has chosen 237 language ability evaluation methods out of 121 young child's language ability evaluation researches. The treatises were selected from 4 types of early childhood education journals registered on the Korea Research Foundation. The data analysis was employed for processing the frequency and percentage of the collected data. The results were as follows: First, of single age groups the subject group most selected was five-year-olders and of mixed-age groups the subject group most selected was from three to five, and the number of subjects in researches were mostly below fifty children. The researches were sorted into an 'experimental/ investigational researching' type that has been frequently re-utilized by others, an 'interview type' using a data collection method, and a 'difference verification' type using a data analysis method which has been used in majority of studies. Second, the number of treaties that required data analysis has increased since 1996. Concludingly, the analysis of young child's language ability evaluation tools shows that the purposes of many researches were concentrated on studying children's knowledge about language, children's language functions such as speaking, reading, writing and listening, while evaluation contents were focused on speaking and writing.