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Papers by George Smith
Critical CALL – Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL Conference, Padova, Italy, 2015
Despite their proven effectiveness, there is a need for up-to-date formal evaluations of TTS syst... more Despite their proven effectiveness, there is a need for up-to-date formal evaluations of TTS systems. The present study was an attempt to evaluate the language learning potential of an up-to-date TTS system at two levels: (1) speech quality (comprehensibility, naturalness, accuracy, and intelligibility) and (2) focus on a linguistic form (via a feature identification task). For Task 1, participants listened to and rated human-and TTS-produced stories and sentences on a 6-point scale (1); for Task 2, they listened to 16 human-and TTS-produced sentences to identify the presence of a target feature (English regular pasted). Results of paired samples t-tests indicated that for speech quality, the human samples earned higher ratings than the TTS samples. For the second task (past-ed perception), the TTS and human-produced samples were equivalent. The discussion of the findings will highlight how TTS can be used to complement and enhance the teaching of L2 pronunciation and other linguistic skills both inside and outside the classroom.
Critical CALL – Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL Conference, Padova, Italy, 2015
Despite their proven effectiveness, there is a need for up-to-date formal evaluations of TTS syst... more Despite their proven effectiveness, there is a need for up-to-date formal evaluations of TTS systems. The present study was an attempt to evaluate the language learning potential of an up-to-date TTS system at two levels: (1) speech quality (comprehensibility, naturalness, accuracy, and intelligibility) and (2) focus on a linguistic form (via a feature identification task). For Task 1, participants listened to and rated human-and TTS-produced stories and sentences on a 6-point scale (1); for Task 2, they listened to 16 human-and TTS-produced sentences to identify the presence of a target feature (English regular pasted). Results of paired samples t-tests indicated that for speech quality, the human samples earned higher ratings than the TTS samples. For the second task (past-ed perception), the TTS and human-produced samples were equivalent. The discussion of the findings will highlight how TTS can be used to complement and enhance the teaching of L2 pronunciation and other linguistic skills both inside and outside the classroom.
Critical CALL – Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL Conference, Padova, Italy, 2015
Despite their proven effectiveness, there is a need for up-to-date formal evaluations of TTS syst... more Despite their proven effectiveness, there is a need for up-to-date formal evaluations of TTS systems. The present study was an attempt to evaluate the language learning potential of an up-to-date TTS system at two levels: (1) speech quality (comprehensibility, naturalness, accuracy, and intelligibility) and (2) focus on a linguistic form (via a feature identification task). For Task 1, participants listened to and rated human-and TTS-produced stories and sentences on a 6-point scale (1); for Task 2, they listened to 16 human-and TTS-produced sentences to identify the presence of a target feature (English regular pasted). Results of paired samples t-tests indicated that for speech quality, the human samples earned higher ratings than the TTS samples. For the second task (past-ed perception), the TTS and human-produced samples were equivalent. The discussion of the findings will highlight how TTS can be used to complement and enhance the teaching of L2 pronunciation and other linguistic skills both inside and outside the classroom.
Critical CALL – Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL Conference, Padova, Italy, 2015
Despite their proven effectiveness, there is a need for up-to-date formal evaluations of TTS syst... more Despite their proven effectiveness, there is a need for up-to-date formal evaluations of TTS systems. The present study was an attempt to evaluate the language learning potential of an up-to-date TTS system at two levels: (1) speech quality (comprehensibility, naturalness, accuracy, and intelligibility) and (2) focus on a linguistic form (via a feature identification task). For Task 1, participants listened to and rated human-and TTS-produced stories and sentences on a 6-point scale (1); for Task 2, they listened to 16 human-and TTS-produced sentences to identify the presence of a target feature (English regular pasted). Results of paired samples t-tests indicated that for speech quality, the human samples earned higher ratings than the TTS samples. For the second task (past-ed perception), the TTS and human-produced samples were equivalent. The discussion of the findings will highlight how TTS can be used to complement and enhance the teaching of L2 pronunciation and other linguistic skills both inside and outside the classroom.