Academic literature on the topic 'Language (speech)'

<p> The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative study was to explore the practices of speech-language pathologists in conducting bilingual assessments with interpreters. Data were obtained regarding the assessment tools and practices used by speech-language pathologists, the frequency with which they work with interpreters, and the procedures they employ prior to, during, and at the conclusion of assessments of English language learners (ELLs). Also explored were the skills and proficiencies that speech-language pathologists believe interpreters need in order to be effective in interpreting for assessments. </p><p> Data for the study were obtained from surveys completed by a sample of speech-language pathologists working in a large, diverse public school district in the mid-Atlantic region. The survey consisted of rating scales, forced choice questions, and open ended questions. Results were reported via descriptive statistics and through description of participants' responses to open-ended questions. </p><p> Results of the study indicated that the participants engaged in best practices in bilingual assessment as defined by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (2004a, 1999) to a greater extent than has been previously reported in the literature. However, considerable variation existed among participants regarding adherence to best practices, including the decision regarding whether or not to work with an interpreter when assessing ELLs. Study results indicated that participants continue to rely heavily on the use of formal measures standardized on monolingual, English-speaking children when assessing ELLs. Participants were also found to employ identical assessment procedures (assessing first in English without an interpreter, and then bringing in an interpreter for a subsequent testing session) regardless of the English language proficiency of the child. Participants in large measure valued the skills and proficiencies cited in the literature as desirable for interpreters to have, yet they did not express confidence that their interpreters possess these skills. </p><p> The implications of the findings are discussed and recommendations are offered for clinical practice, the school districts, graduate schools, and professional development training aimed at improving bilingual assessment practices. Finally, suggestions are offered for future research on bilingual assessment.</p>

The purpose of this thesis was to administer a survey to obtain information on practicing Speech-Language Pathologists’ (SLPs) knowledge of bilingual issues, while also considering whether any academic background on bilingualism guides SLP’s diagnostic and treatment options. This was done by comparing survey results of practicing SLPs with different academic backgrounds on bilingualism with current Master’s students registered at the Communication Sciences and Disorders Masters’ program at Florida International University (FIU). The survey consisted of 26 questions that examined participant’s history, and bilingual knowledge. Data was collected from 89 surveys. Data analyses showed that students and SLPs with a strong educational background on bilingualism had a tendency to prefer answers that correspond to recent research findings on bilingualism than students and SLPs with no or little educational background on bilingualism. These results suggest that academic background on bilingualism guides assessment interpretations and treatment options of bilingual clients.

Thesis (S.B. and M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1998.<br>Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-48).<br>by Sadiki Pili Mwanyoha.<br>S.B.and M.Eng.

The present study addresses a core issue in the study of speech perception, the question of how stable phonological representations are accessed from an inherently variable speech signal. In particular, the research investigates the perception of accented English speech by native and non-native listeners. It is known from previous research that foreign-accented speech is harder for native listeners to process than native-accented speech. The reason for this lies in not only qualities of the input (deviation from native production norms, for example) but also in qualities of the listener. Specifically, listeners' speech perception systems are tuned from an early age to pay attention to useful distinctions in the language environment but to attenuate differences which are not useful. This quality of the listeners' speech processing system suggests that in addition to being native speakers of a language or languages, we are also native listeners. However, what is a liability for native listeners (non-native input) may be a benefit for non-native listeners. When the foreign accent is derived from a single language shared between the speaker and the listener, application of native-language processing strategies to the accented input may result in more efficient processing of the input. The experiments in this dissertation address this possibility. In an experiment involving Dutch listeners processing Dutch-accented and American English-accented sentence materials, a reaction time advantage was observed for the mutually-accented materials. Experiments testing the main hypothesis with native Spanish-listening participants showed a different pattern of results. These participants, who had more experience with English overall that the Dutch participants, performed similarly to native-listening controls in displaying faster verification times for native accented materials than mutually-accented materials. These experiments lead to the conclusion that native-like listening, as assessed by the sentence verification paradigm employed in these experiments, can be achieved by non-native listeners. In particular, non-native listeners with little experience processing spoken English benefit from hearing input produced in a matching accent. Non-native listeners with sufficiently more experience processing spoken English, however, perform similar to native listeners, displaying an advantage for native accented input.

ABSTRACT Context: Communication is a primary human need and language is the medium for this. Most people have the ability to listen and speak and they use different languages like Swedish, Urdu and English etc. to communicate. Hearing impaired people use signs to communicate. Pakistan Sign Language (PSL) is the preferred language of the deaf in Pakistan. Currently, human PSL interpreters are required to facilitate communication between the deaf and hearing; they are not always available, which means that communication among the deaf and other people may be impaired or nonexistent. In this situation, a system with voice recognition as an input and PSL as an output will be highly helpful. Objectives: As part of this thesis, we explore challenges faced by deaf people in everyday life while interacting with unimpaired. We investigate state of art work done in this area. This study explores speech recognition and Machine translation techniques to devise a generic and automated system that converts English speech to PSL. A prototype of the proposed solution is developed and validated. Methods: Three step investigation is done as part of thesis work. First, to understand problem itself, interviews were conducted with the domain experts. Secondly, from literature review, it is investigated whether any similar or related work has already been done, state of the art technologies like Machine translation, speech recognition engines and Natural language processing etc. have been analyzed. Thirdly, prototype is developed whose validation data is obtained from domain experts and is validated by ourselves as well as from domain experts. Results: It is found that there is a big communication gap between deaf and unimpaired in Pakistan. This is mainly due to the lack of an automated system that can convert Audio speech to PSL and vice versa. After investigating state of the art work including solutions in other countries specific to their languages, it is found that no system exists that is generic and automated. We found that there is already work started for PSL to English Speech conversion but not the other way around. As part of this thesis, we discovered that a generic and automated system can be devised using speech recognition and Machine translation techniques. Conclusion: Deaf people in Pakistan lack a lot of opportunities mainly due to communication gap between deaf and unimpaired. We establish that there should be a generic and automated system that can convert English speech to PSL and vice versa. As part of this, we worked for such a system that can convert English speech to PSL. Moreover, Speech recognition, Machine translation and Natural language processing techniques can be core ingredients for such a generic and automated system. Using user centric approach, the prototype of the system is validated iteratively from domain experts.<br>This research has investigated a computer based solution to facilitate communication among deaf people and unimpaired. Investigation was performed using literature review and visits to institutes to gain a deeper knowledge about sign language and specifically how is it used in Pakistan context. Secondly, challenges faced by deaf people to interact with unimpaired are analyzed by interviews with domain experts (instructors of deaf institutes) and by directly observing deaf in everyday life situations. We conclude that deaf people rely on sign language for communication with unimpaired people. Deaf people in Pakistan use PSL for communication, English is taught as secondary language all over Pakistan in all educational institutes, deaf people are taught by instructors that not only need to know the domain expertise of the area that they are teaching like Math, History and Science etc. but they also need to know PSL very well in order to teach the deaf. It becomes very difficult for deaf institutes to get instructors that know both. Whenever deaf people need to communicate with unimpaired people in any situation, they either need to hire a translator or request the unimpaired people to write everything for them. Translators are very difficult to get all the time and they are very expensive as well. Moreover, using writing by unimpaired becomes very slow process and not all unimpaired people want to do this. We observed this phenomena ourselves as instructors of the institutes provided us the opportunity to work with deaf people to understand their feelings and challenges in everyday life. In this way, we used to go with deaf people in shopping malls, banks, post offices etc. and with their permission, we observed their interaction. We have concluded that sometimes their interaction with normal people becomes very slow and embarrassing. Based on above findings, we concluded that there is definitely a need for an automated system that can facilitate communication between deaf and unimpaired people. These factors lead to the subsequent objective of this research. The main objective of this thesis is to identify a generic and an automated system without any human intervention that converts English speech into PSL as a solution to bridge the communication gap between deaf and unimpaired. It is identified that existing work done related to this problem area doesn’t fulfill our objective. Current solutions are either very specific to a domain, e.g. post office or need human intervention i.e. not automatic. It is identified that none of the existing systems can be extended towards our desired solution. We explored state of the art techniques like Machine translation, Speech recognition and NLP. We have utilized these in our proposed solution. Prototype of the proposed solution is developed whose functional and non functional validation is performed. Since none of existing work exactly matches to our problem statement, therefore, we have not compared the validation of our prototype to any existing system. We have validated prototype with respect to our problem domain. Moreover, this is validated iteratively from the domain experts, i.e. experts of PSL and the English to PSL human translators. We found this user centric approach very useful to help better understand the problem at the ground level, keeping our work user focused and then realization of user satisfaction level throughout the process. This work has opened a new world of opportunities where deaf can communicate with others who do not have PSL knowledge. Having this system, if it is further developed from a prototype to a functioning system; deaf institutes will have wider scope of choosing best instructors for a given domain that may not have PSL expertise. Deaf people will have more opportunities to interact with other members of the society at every level as communication is the basic pillar for this. The automatic speech to sign language is an attractive prospect; the impending applications are exhilarating and worthwhile. In the field of Human Computer Interface (HCI) we hope that our thesis will be an important addition to the ongoing research.<br>Ahmed Abdul Haseeb & Asim ilyas, Contact no. 00923215126749 House No. 310, Street No. 4 Rawal town Islamabad, Pakistan Postal Code 44000

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.<br>Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-68).<br>Since 1989, the Spoken Language Systems group has developed an array of applications that allow users to interact with computers using natural spoken language. A recent project of interest is to develop an interactive conversational system to assist students in mastering a foreign language. The Spoken Language Learning System (SLLS), the first such system developed in SLS, has many impressive capabilities and shows great potential to be used as a model for language learning. This thesis further develops and expands on SLLS towards the goal of a more sophisticated conversational system. We make extensive use of Genesis, a language generation tool, to complete a variety of natural language generation and translation tasks. We aim to generate natural, well-formed, grammatically correct sentences and produce high quality synthesized waveforms for language students to emulate. We hope to develop a system that will engage the user in a natural and realistic way, and our goal is to mimic human-to-human conversant interactions as closely as possible.<br>by Julia Zhang.<br>M.Eng.

Background: Policy and practice in early years provision in education, health and social care has advanced in recent times to emphasise parents as partners in supporting children’s learning. Speech and language therapists (SLT) work closely with parents of pre-school children with language learning difficulties to enable them to promote language development in the home. There is growing evidence that indicates that parents can be taught how to become effective facilitators of language skills. Nevertheless, little is known about parents’ or SLTs’ conceptions of their roles when working together, and how these may change during intervention. Aims: To explore parents’ and SLTs’ conceptions of their respective roles in intervention for pre-school children with primary speech and language needs and to determine the extent to which parents’ conceptions of roles change whilst working with SLTs . Methods: A two phase, mixed methods study was conducted using semi structured interviews and questionnaires, with parents and SLTs in England. A smaller subset of parents participated in a longitudinal study to track any changes in their conceptions during intervention. The data were analysed using thematic network analysis for first level themes, framework analysis for comparing themes over time and statistical analysis for the questionnaire responses. Over 65 parents and 70 SLTs participated in the study during both phases, providing the perspectives of a wide range of participants. Results: Findings suggested that before involvement with speech and language therapy, parents had a clear conception of their advocacy role, which prompted them to secure help. However, they did not have a firm conception of their role in supporting their children’s language learning and did not anticipate adopting an intervener role. Parents expressed considerable variation in their conception of their intervener role. During intervention, some parents described changing this conception and adopting an increasingly involved role as implementer and adaptor of intervention. Moreover, in some cases, they described substantial changes in their approach to parenting, suggesting wider changes in their conception of role. SLTs had clearly formulated conceptions of their own roles as assessor, intervener and negotiator, but varied in the extent to which they involved parents as co-workers in intervention. SLTs had two conceptions of their own role as intervener: treat and plan and advise/coach. SLTs expressed intentions to help parents change their understanding of their role, but the parent education role remains largely implicit in SLT practice. Conclusions and implications: Parents described conceptions of their roles as advocate, intervener and taking responsibility. They described important changes in their conceptions of roles, suggesting that a process of conceptual change occurred associated with greater involvement in intervention. SLTs varied in their own role conception, with intervener roles that related to lower or high level of parent involvement. Implications for the SLT practice include developing a more explicit role as parent educators, in order to enhance parental understanding as well as behaviour in supporting their children’s language development. This report presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) reference number RP-PG-0109-10073. The views and opinions expressed by author in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the NHS, the NIHR, NIHR CCF, the Programme Grants for Applied Research programme or the Department of Health. The views and opinions expressed by the interviewees in this publication are those of the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect those of the author, those of the NHS, the NIHR CCF Programme Grants for Applied Research programme or the Department of Health.