Francesca Nicora | University of Galway (original) (raw)
Conference Presentations by Francesca Nicora
This paper aims at investigating the efficacy of a perception-production training on the producti... more This paper aims at investigating the efficacy of a perception-production training on the production of Italian-L2 yes/no questions by Hiberno-English learners. Our hypotheses are that an intensive prosodic training improves the production of Italian-L2 prosody regarding both 1) the lexical stress patterns and 2) the intonation patterns, in terms of both their phonological composition and the phonetic details of their implementation. Though results are preliminary, the comparison of productions by trained and control subjects shows that, as hypothesized, only the former were able to change the prosodic features of yes/no questions in Italian-L2, improving as for both the lexical stress and the intonation patterns.
Papers by Francesca Nicora
Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 2024
Prosodic skills are a fundamental component of language learning but are notoriously difficult to... more Prosodic skills are a fundamental component of language learning but are notoriously difficult to develop due the highly variable nature of prosody itself. In the burgeoning research field of didactic audiovisual translation, free commentary (FC) appears to be a less-studied modality of revoicing in the foreign language (FL) classroom. The main aim is to investigate the suitability of FC as a reinforcement activity for improving FL intonation skills. This paper presents an experimental study conducted at the University of Galway with undergraduate students studying Italian as a FL. The research design has a multi-stage structure. It consists of explicit prosodic-pragmatic training sessions, during which the experimental group learnt how to pronounce a polar question to ask for information, while the control group attended traditional conversation classes. A discourse completion task (DCT) was administered before and after the training. Secondly, both groups were required to complete FC to reinforce their intonation skills. Data analysis of DCT and FC was carried out within the autosegmentalmetrical theoretical framework and the tone and break indices system. The results corroborate previous studies on the effectiveness of training and highlight the didactic value of FC in reinforcing FL intonation skills. The novelty of this study lies in the combination of the disciplines of prosody in FL acquisition, didactic audiovisual translation, and intonational phonology.
Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos
Este artículo explora la estructura de un curso de idiomas basado en Traducción Audiovisual (TAV)... more Este artículo explora la estructura de un curso de idiomas basado en Traducción Audiovisual (TAV) con el objetivo de adecuarlo para su impartición a niños en un entorno virtual. Dado el potencial de los programas audiovisuales, ricos en información contextualizada, las varias prácticas de TAV se presentan como herramientas poderosas para mantener un nivel alto de motivación entre los discentes, promover su bienestar y facilitar la adquisición de la lengua extranjera. No obstante, el uso de la TAV en estos contextos ha recibido escasa atención y son pocos los estudios realizados con estudiantes jóvenes. No sorprende, pues, que escaseen los recursos didácticos para profesores y que estos informen de dificultades a la hora de gestionar entornos virtuales y de diseñar experiencias efectivas de aprendizaje, especialmente durante el periodo de la pandemia. Presentamos aquí el primer estudio en el que se evalúan las percepciones de los niños sobre el uso tanto de Zoom como de tareas basada...
Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, 2022
This paper examines the reshaping of an audiovisual translation (AVT)-focused language course to ... more This paper examines the reshaping of an audiovisual translation (AVT)-focused language course to make it suitable for children in an online context. Captioning and revoicing have shown to be powerful tools, given the potential of rich, contextualised audiovisual input to keep learners' motivation high, promote well-being and facilitate foreign language acquisition. Nonetheless, the use of combined AVT modes has received scant attention, and the number of studies devoted to young people is very limited. Therefore, resources available are understandably lacking for teachers who continue to report difficulties in managing online contexts and designing effective learning experiences in the extended pandemic period. This is the first study appraising children's perceptions of the use of both Zoom and AVT-based tasks in the learning of Italian online. It also proposes a theoretical framework and provides a practical example for moving an AVT-focused language course online. After two years from its initial blended implementation, the course entitled 'Impariamo coi cartoni! Learning Italian by captioning and revoicing cartoons' conducted as part of the Youth Academy programme at the University of Galway, Ireland, was rethought to be moved online. The 6-week course ran three times and involved 38 children, aged 9-12 years. Data have been collected from an end-module questionnaire, a final interview and inclass observations. Findings reveal the suitability of an AVT-focused language course online for children who show a positive attitude towards Zoom and both AVT modalities. They prefer revoicing as an online synchronous collaborative activity, which prevents isolation and fosters sociability. Captioning was perceived as the most difficult AVT task, although some had fun experimenting as remote independent learners. Results show that young people are able to use the Aegisub software autonomously but also need parental support at home. The benefits and challenges identified during the learning process were crucial for formulating recommendations for teachers and call for further research on AVT in early educational contexts.
International Journal on Integrating Technology in Education
This paper discusses a conceptual framework for the design of Open Educational Resources (OERs) f... more This paper discusses a conceptual framework for the design of Open Educational Resources (OERs) for online language teacher training including an example of practical implementation. The authors identify in the principles of micro- and macro- learning, cognitive load theory and Threshold Concepts (TCs), the key elements that lead to the creation of effective OERs designed for the Lilac Project which aims to support language teachers in managing online learning environments. Data from questionnaires and focus groups were utilised to establish a set of TCs connected to online language teaching. These were then crossreferenced with existing TCs, and utilised to create micro learning content that does not negatively impact the cognitive load, but, at the same time, is positioned within a larger macro structure that allows for the development of deeper knowledge and competences. The structure of Lilac OERs will be presented as a practical example of how the potential of technologies to s...
TEANGA, the Journal of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics
The past years have witnessed the collection of various corpora for the study of Irish English (I... more The past years have witnessed the collection of various corpora for the study of Irish English (IE). Most have been developed and driven by diverse research foci with a specific aim in mind, however, at present data sources consist of unavailable and/or outdated audio files of English spoken primarily in Dublin and Belfast. Additionally, a very limited number of investigations on the prosodic features of IE varieties have been conducted to date. As a result, a comprehensive overview of IE prosodic diversity is still missing and existing speech corpora do not allow for the analysis of intonation patterns, which requires more controlled, purpose-built data sets. A prosodic corpus devoted to the analysis of IE varieties needs to be incorporated into the research agenda. This contribution presents the corpus of Irish English Speech (IES) with the following objectives: to collect recordings of spoken IE across present-day Ireland under a unified protocol in order to guarantee comparisons...
Virtual PSLLT
This work investigates the production of Italian dental affricates /ts dz/ by Irish English learn... more This work investigates the production of Italian dental affricates /ts dz/ by Irish English learners at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Dental affricates are sounds that are difficult for non-native speakers to acquire, and they vary greatly across Italian dialects. Previous works on the topic have demonstrated that learners tend to reduce affricates to fricatives, and that the voiced /dz/ is often substituted with the voiceless in every context. This survey investigates the production of 7 speakers divided into A2 and B1 levels. Participants were asked to compile a background questionnaire and to read a list of 47 sentences containing 52 dental affricates in different phonological contexts. Phonetic annotation was manually conducted on PRAAT, and the analysis focused on durational cues and realization of voicing. The results showed that voiced affricates were rarely produced and were often substituted with their voiceless counterpart, thus leading to the general non-acquisition of voicing for this class of phoneme. Furthermore, the length of the occlusive segment was shorter than the fricative one, particularly in the post-sonorant context; a gap between the occlusive and fricative portion has also been detected. No substantial differences between the A2 and B1 levels emerged.
International Journal on Integrating Technology in Education, 2022
This paper discusses a conceptual framework for the design of Open Educational Resources (OERs) f... more This paper discusses a conceptual framework for the design of Open Educational Resources (OERs) for online language teacher training including an example of practical implementation. The authors identify in the principles of micro-and macro-learning, cognitive load theory and Threshold Concepts (TCs), the key elements that lead to the creation of effective OERs designed for the Lilac Project which aims to support language teachers in managing online learning environments. Data from questionnaires and focus groups were utilised to establish a set of TCs connected to online language teaching. These were then crossreferenced with existing TCs, and utilised to create micro learning content that does not negatively impact the cognitive load, but, at the same time, is positioned within a larger macro structure that allows for the development of deeper knowledge and competences. The structure of Lilac OERs will be presented as a practical example of how the potential of technologies to support learning can be embedded in online contexts.
La questione ortografica della lingua bulgara venne presentata per la prima volta a Brašov, in Ro... more La questione ortografica della lingua bulgara venne presentata per la prima volta a Brašov, in Romania, dalla “Società filologica” di Vasil Nenovič all’inizio degli anni venti del XIX secolo. Già durante il XVIII secolo si erano gettate le basi per un risveglio culturale e politico dello Stato Bulgaro. Grazie a due figure chiave dell’epoca, Paisij Hilendarski e Sofronij Vračanski, che si fecero portatori del glorioso passato storico della Bulgaria, venne alimentato nell’animo del popolo bulgaro la necessità e soprattutto il desiderio di rendersi indipendente sia politicamente che culturalmente. Ciò accadde il 3 marzo del 1878 con la Liberazione dal giogo ottomano, frutto del cosidetto “Văzraždane bulgaro”, che portò il Paese ad una rinascita politico-culturale. L’idea di costruire un’ortografia unica andava di pari passo con la ricostruzione della lingua letteraria bulgara. I primi tentativi furono portati avanti dalle prime scuole ortografiche degli anni ’30-’40 dell’800 (la scuola...
Associazione Italiana Scienze della Voce (AISV) and Officinaventuno, 2018
Italiano LinguaDue, 2022
Negli ultimi anni si è assistito a un progressivo interesse riguardo all’impiego delle arti perfo... more Negli ultimi anni si è assistito a un progressivo interesse riguardo all’impiego delle arti performative in campo glottodidattico. Tale tendenza è dovuta ad approcci didattici sempre più orientati alla dimensione sociale e non verbale della comunicazione. Tuttavia, per il momento ci sono ancora pochi studi nell’ambito glottodidattico sull’utilizzo del corpo, immobile o in movimento, e della danza nella lezione di lingua straniera. Il contributo intende presentare il progetto Tra-balliamo, un percorso formativo incentrato sulla didattica ludico-performativa e finalizzato alla promozione della lingua e cultura italiana nelle scuole secondarie di Galway, in Irlanda. Dopo una breve introduzione sulla DPLS, viene delineato l’approccio fenomenologico che sottende a una glottodidattica di tipo esperienziale che promuove la danza come strumento di apprendimento linguistico e ponte metaforico tra culture. Una seconda sezione viene poi dedicata alla struttura della proposta didattica, alla pr...
Speech Prosody 2018, 2018
This paper aims at investigating the efficacy of a perceptionproduction training on the productio... more This paper aims at investigating the efficacy of a perceptionproduction training on the production of Italian-L2 yes/no questions by Hiberno-English learners. Our hypotheses are that an intensive prosodic training improves the production of Italian-L2 prosody regarding both 1) the lexical stress patterns and 2) the intonation patterns, in terms of both their phonological composition and the phonetic details of their implementation. Though results are preliminary, the comparison of productions by trained and control subjects shows that, as hypothesized, only the former were able to change the prosodic features of yes/no questions in Italian-L2, improving as for both the lexical stress and the intonation patterns.
TEANGA, The Journal of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, 2022
The past years have witnessed the collection of various corpora for the study of Irish English (I... more The past years have witnessed the collection of various corpora for the study of Irish English (IE). Most have been developed and driven by diverse research foci with a specific aim in mind, however, at present data sources consist of unavailable and/or outdated audio files of English spoken primarily in Dublin and Belfast. Additionally, a very limited number of investigations on the prosodic features of IE varieties have been conducted to date. As a result, a comprehensive overview of IE prosodic diversity is still missing and existing speech corpora do not allow for the analysis of intonation patterns, which requires more controlled, purpose-built data sets. A prosodic corpus devoted to the analysis of IE varieties needs to be incorporated into the research agenda. This contribution presents the corpus of Irish English Speech (IES) with the following objectives: to collect recordings of spoken IE across present-day Ireland under a unified protocol in order to guarantee comparisons among different datasets; to obtain an initial phonological inventory of each variety examined; to compare the phonological systems of diverse IE varieties; and to provide researchers with accessible and open data sources. The core of the corpus has been gathered in accordance with the guidelines of the Interactive Atlas of Romance Intonation project (Prieto, Borràs-Comes & Roseano, 2011-2014) via a questionnaire based on the Discourse Completion Task, which was translated and readapted for Irish English speakers, and a Map Dialogue Task designed to obtain spontaneous speech productions. This method has yielded the collection of a wide range of intonation patterns concerning different types of context-specific utterances, such as statements, questions, imperatives and vocatives. After an overview of the segmental phonology of IE, previous studies on the prosodic features of IE varieties and the speech corpora of IE will be examined with the purpose of identifying the gaps in existing literature, which will then be followed by a detailed outline of the development of the corpus of IES. This contribution will provide an illustrative example for fully exploiting the potential of the IES database and call for further in-depth investigations on IE prosody.
Visual Literacy and Digital Communication: The Role Of Media in New Educational Practices., 2022
This study address the need to re-design the future of Higher Education curricula to enhance lang... more This study address the need to re-design the future of Higher Education curricula to enhance language students' career planning skills and offer programmes of study that comply with new trends in the digitalised labour market. Students should be required to complete task whose outcomes are usable in the real world, so that learning experiences mirror the complexities and ambiguities of real life in accordance with the principles of authentic learning. To this purpose, an innovative module was devised for third-year undergraduate students of the Bachelor of Arts in Global Languages at the National University of Ireland, Galway. It focuses on the use of language technology to source, critique and develop activities for online language learning. It draws upon Open Educational Resources, and includes virtual training, tasks, interactive activities, and a new combination of assessment models. A pre-/post-test and a final questionnaire were carried out to gather data on students' progress and their perceptions of the learning experience. Results show an overall improvement of skill sets and a positive attitude of students towards a hand-on approach.
This paper aims at investigating the efficacy of a perception-production training on the producti... more This paper aims at investigating the efficacy of a perception-production training on the production of Italian-L2 yes/no questions by Hiberno-English learners. Our hypotheses are that an intensive prosodic training improves the production of Italian-L2 prosody regarding both 1) the lexical stress patterns and 2) the intonation patterns, in terms of both their phonological composition and the phonetic details of their implementation. Though results are preliminary, the comparison of productions by trained and control subjects shows that, as hypothesized, only the former were able to change the prosodic features of yes/no questions in Italian-L2, improving as for both the lexical stress and the intonation patterns.
Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 2024
Prosodic skills are a fundamental component of language learning but are notoriously difficult to... more Prosodic skills are a fundamental component of language learning but are notoriously difficult to develop due the highly variable nature of prosody itself. In the burgeoning research field of didactic audiovisual translation, free commentary (FC) appears to be a less-studied modality of revoicing in the foreign language (FL) classroom. The main aim is to investigate the suitability of FC as a reinforcement activity for improving FL intonation skills. This paper presents an experimental study conducted at the University of Galway with undergraduate students studying Italian as a FL. The research design has a multi-stage structure. It consists of explicit prosodic-pragmatic training sessions, during which the experimental group learnt how to pronounce a polar question to ask for information, while the control group attended traditional conversation classes. A discourse completion task (DCT) was administered before and after the training. Secondly, both groups were required to complete FC to reinforce their intonation skills. Data analysis of DCT and FC was carried out within the autosegmentalmetrical theoretical framework and the tone and break indices system. The results corroborate previous studies on the effectiveness of training and highlight the didactic value of FC in reinforcing FL intonation skills. The novelty of this study lies in the combination of the disciplines of prosody in FL acquisition, didactic audiovisual translation, and intonational phonology.
Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos
Este artículo explora la estructura de un curso de idiomas basado en Traducción Audiovisual (TAV)... more Este artículo explora la estructura de un curso de idiomas basado en Traducción Audiovisual (TAV) con el objetivo de adecuarlo para su impartición a niños en un entorno virtual. Dado el potencial de los programas audiovisuales, ricos en información contextualizada, las varias prácticas de TAV se presentan como herramientas poderosas para mantener un nivel alto de motivación entre los discentes, promover su bienestar y facilitar la adquisición de la lengua extranjera. No obstante, el uso de la TAV en estos contextos ha recibido escasa atención y son pocos los estudios realizados con estudiantes jóvenes. No sorprende, pues, que escaseen los recursos didácticos para profesores y que estos informen de dificultades a la hora de gestionar entornos virtuales y de diseñar experiencias efectivas de aprendizaje, especialmente durante el periodo de la pandemia. Presentamos aquí el primer estudio en el que se evalúan las percepciones de los niños sobre el uso tanto de Zoom como de tareas basada...
Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, 2022
This paper examines the reshaping of an audiovisual translation (AVT)-focused language course to ... more This paper examines the reshaping of an audiovisual translation (AVT)-focused language course to make it suitable for children in an online context. Captioning and revoicing have shown to be powerful tools, given the potential of rich, contextualised audiovisual input to keep learners' motivation high, promote well-being and facilitate foreign language acquisition. Nonetheless, the use of combined AVT modes has received scant attention, and the number of studies devoted to young people is very limited. Therefore, resources available are understandably lacking for teachers who continue to report difficulties in managing online contexts and designing effective learning experiences in the extended pandemic period. This is the first study appraising children's perceptions of the use of both Zoom and AVT-based tasks in the learning of Italian online. It also proposes a theoretical framework and provides a practical example for moving an AVT-focused language course online. After two years from its initial blended implementation, the course entitled 'Impariamo coi cartoni! Learning Italian by captioning and revoicing cartoons' conducted as part of the Youth Academy programme at the University of Galway, Ireland, was rethought to be moved online. The 6-week course ran three times and involved 38 children, aged 9-12 years. Data have been collected from an end-module questionnaire, a final interview and inclass observations. Findings reveal the suitability of an AVT-focused language course online for children who show a positive attitude towards Zoom and both AVT modalities. They prefer revoicing as an online synchronous collaborative activity, which prevents isolation and fosters sociability. Captioning was perceived as the most difficult AVT task, although some had fun experimenting as remote independent learners. Results show that young people are able to use the Aegisub software autonomously but also need parental support at home. The benefits and challenges identified during the learning process were crucial for formulating recommendations for teachers and call for further research on AVT in early educational contexts.
International Journal on Integrating Technology in Education
This paper discusses a conceptual framework for the design of Open Educational Resources (OERs) f... more This paper discusses a conceptual framework for the design of Open Educational Resources (OERs) for online language teacher training including an example of practical implementation. The authors identify in the principles of micro- and macro- learning, cognitive load theory and Threshold Concepts (TCs), the key elements that lead to the creation of effective OERs designed for the Lilac Project which aims to support language teachers in managing online learning environments. Data from questionnaires and focus groups were utilised to establish a set of TCs connected to online language teaching. These were then crossreferenced with existing TCs, and utilised to create micro learning content that does not negatively impact the cognitive load, but, at the same time, is positioned within a larger macro structure that allows for the development of deeper knowledge and competences. The structure of Lilac OERs will be presented as a practical example of how the potential of technologies to s...
TEANGA, the Journal of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics
The past years have witnessed the collection of various corpora for the study of Irish English (I... more The past years have witnessed the collection of various corpora for the study of Irish English (IE). Most have been developed and driven by diverse research foci with a specific aim in mind, however, at present data sources consist of unavailable and/or outdated audio files of English spoken primarily in Dublin and Belfast. Additionally, a very limited number of investigations on the prosodic features of IE varieties have been conducted to date. As a result, a comprehensive overview of IE prosodic diversity is still missing and existing speech corpora do not allow for the analysis of intonation patterns, which requires more controlled, purpose-built data sets. A prosodic corpus devoted to the analysis of IE varieties needs to be incorporated into the research agenda. This contribution presents the corpus of Irish English Speech (IES) with the following objectives: to collect recordings of spoken IE across present-day Ireland under a unified protocol in order to guarantee comparisons...
Virtual PSLLT
This work investigates the production of Italian dental affricates /ts dz/ by Irish English learn... more This work investigates the production of Italian dental affricates /ts dz/ by Irish English learners at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Dental affricates are sounds that are difficult for non-native speakers to acquire, and they vary greatly across Italian dialects. Previous works on the topic have demonstrated that learners tend to reduce affricates to fricatives, and that the voiced /dz/ is often substituted with the voiceless in every context. This survey investigates the production of 7 speakers divided into A2 and B1 levels. Participants were asked to compile a background questionnaire and to read a list of 47 sentences containing 52 dental affricates in different phonological contexts. Phonetic annotation was manually conducted on PRAAT, and the analysis focused on durational cues and realization of voicing. The results showed that voiced affricates were rarely produced and were often substituted with their voiceless counterpart, thus leading to the general non-acquisition of voicing for this class of phoneme. Furthermore, the length of the occlusive segment was shorter than the fricative one, particularly in the post-sonorant context; a gap between the occlusive and fricative portion has also been detected. No substantial differences between the A2 and B1 levels emerged.
International Journal on Integrating Technology in Education, 2022
This paper discusses a conceptual framework for the design of Open Educational Resources (OERs) f... more This paper discusses a conceptual framework for the design of Open Educational Resources (OERs) for online language teacher training including an example of practical implementation. The authors identify in the principles of micro-and macro-learning, cognitive load theory and Threshold Concepts (TCs), the key elements that lead to the creation of effective OERs designed for the Lilac Project which aims to support language teachers in managing online learning environments. Data from questionnaires and focus groups were utilised to establish a set of TCs connected to online language teaching. These were then crossreferenced with existing TCs, and utilised to create micro learning content that does not negatively impact the cognitive load, but, at the same time, is positioned within a larger macro structure that allows for the development of deeper knowledge and competences. The structure of Lilac OERs will be presented as a practical example of how the potential of technologies to support learning can be embedded in online contexts.
La questione ortografica della lingua bulgara venne presentata per la prima volta a Brašov, in Ro... more La questione ortografica della lingua bulgara venne presentata per la prima volta a Brašov, in Romania, dalla “Società filologica” di Vasil Nenovič all’inizio degli anni venti del XIX secolo. Già durante il XVIII secolo si erano gettate le basi per un risveglio culturale e politico dello Stato Bulgaro. Grazie a due figure chiave dell’epoca, Paisij Hilendarski e Sofronij Vračanski, che si fecero portatori del glorioso passato storico della Bulgaria, venne alimentato nell’animo del popolo bulgaro la necessità e soprattutto il desiderio di rendersi indipendente sia politicamente che culturalmente. Ciò accadde il 3 marzo del 1878 con la Liberazione dal giogo ottomano, frutto del cosidetto “Văzraždane bulgaro”, che portò il Paese ad una rinascita politico-culturale. L’idea di costruire un’ortografia unica andava di pari passo con la ricostruzione della lingua letteraria bulgara. I primi tentativi furono portati avanti dalle prime scuole ortografiche degli anni ’30-’40 dell’800 (la scuola...
Associazione Italiana Scienze della Voce (AISV) and Officinaventuno, 2018
Italiano LinguaDue, 2022
Negli ultimi anni si è assistito a un progressivo interesse riguardo all’impiego delle arti perfo... more Negli ultimi anni si è assistito a un progressivo interesse riguardo all’impiego delle arti performative in campo glottodidattico. Tale tendenza è dovuta ad approcci didattici sempre più orientati alla dimensione sociale e non verbale della comunicazione. Tuttavia, per il momento ci sono ancora pochi studi nell’ambito glottodidattico sull’utilizzo del corpo, immobile o in movimento, e della danza nella lezione di lingua straniera. Il contributo intende presentare il progetto Tra-balliamo, un percorso formativo incentrato sulla didattica ludico-performativa e finalizzato alla promozione della lingua e cultura italiana nelle scuole secondarie di Galway, in Irlanda. Dopo una breve introduzione sulla DPLS, viene delineato l’approccio fenomenologico che sottende a una glottodidattica di tipo esperienziale che promuove la danza come strumento di apprendimento linguistico e ponte metaforico tra culture. Una seconda sezione viene poi dedicata alla struttura della proposta didattica, alla pr...
Speech Prosody 2018, 2018
This paper aims at investigating the efficacy of a perceptionproduction training on the productio... more This paper aims at investigating the efficacy of a perceptionproduction training on the production of Italian-L2 yes/no questions by Hiberno-English learners. Our hypotheses are that an intensive prosodic training improves the production of Italian-L2 prosody regarding both 1) the lexical stress patterns and 2) the intonation patterns, in terms of both their phonological composition and the phonetic details of their implementation. Though results are preliminary, the comparison of productions by trained and control subjects shows that, as hypothesized, only the former were able to change the prosodic features of yes/no questions in Italian-L2, improving as for both the lexical stress and the intonation patterns.
TEANGA, The Journal of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, 2022
The past years have witnessed the collection of various corpora for the study of Irish English (I... more The past years have witnessed the collection of various corpora for the study of Irish English (IE). Most have been developed and driven by diverse research foci with a specific aim in mind, however, at present data sources consist of unavailable and/or outdated audio files of English spoken primarily in Dublin and Belfast. Additionally, a very limited number of investigations on the prosodic features of IE varieties have been conducted to date. As a result, a comprehensive overview of IE prosodic diversity is still missing and existing speech corpora do not allow for the analysis of intonation patterns, which requires more controlled, purpose-built data sets. A prosodic corpus devoted to the analysis of IE varieties needs to be incorporated into the research agenda. This contribution presents the corpus of Irish English Speech (IES) with the following objectives: to collect recordings of spoken IE across present-day Ireland under a unified protocol in order to guarantee comparisons among different datasets; to obtain an initial phonological inventory of each variety examined; to compare the phonological systems of diverse IE varieties; and to provide researchers with accessible and open data sources. The core of the corpus has been gathered in accordance with the guidelines of the Interactive Atlas of Romance Intonation project (Prieto, Borràs-Comes & Roseano, 2011-2014) via a questionnaire based on the Discourse Completion Task, which was translated and readapted for Irish English speakers, and a Map Dialogue Task designed to obtain spontaneous speech productions. This method has yielded the collection of a wide range of intonation patterns concerning different types of context-specific utterances, such as statements, questions, imperatives and vocatives. After an overview of the segmental phonology of IE, previous studies on the prosodic features of IE varieties and the speech corpora of IE will be examined with the purpose of identifying the gaps in existing literature, which will then be followed by a detailed outline of the development of the corpus of IES. This contribution will provide an illustrative example for fully exploiting the potential of the IES database and call for further in-depth investigations on IE prosody.
Visual Literacy and Digital Communication: The Role Of Media in New Educational Practices., 2022
This study address the need to re-design the future of Higher Education curricula to enhance lang... more This study address the need to re-design the future of Higher Education curricula to enhance language students' career planning skills and offer programmes of study that comply with new trends in the digitalised labour market. Students should be required to complete task whose outcomes are usable in the real world, so that learning experiences mirror the complexities and ambiguities of real life in accordance with the principles of authentic learning. To this purpose, an innovative module was devised for third-year undergraduate students of the Bachelor of Arts in Global Languages at the National University of Ireland, Galway. It focuses on the use of language technology to source, critique and develop activities for online language learning. It draws upon Open Educational Resources, and includes virtual training, tasks, interactive activities, and a new combination of assessment models. A pre-/post-test and a final questionnaire were carried out to gather data on students' progress and their perceptions of the learning experience. Results show an overall improvement of skill sets and a positive attitude of students towards a hand-on approach.
Rivista semestrale per l'insegnamento dell'italiano come lingua straniera/seconda italiano a stra... more Rivista semestrale per l'insegnamento dell'italiano come lingua straniera/seconda italiano a stranieri indice Editoriale pag.
Il corpo e la danza come strumenti di apprendimento linguistico e ponti tra culture" è stato fina... more Il corpo e la danza come strumenti di apprendimento linguistico e ponti tra culture" è stato finanziato dal Department of Education-Post-Primary Language Initiative (PPLI).
studi AItLA L'AItLA pubblica una collana di monografie e di collettanee sui diversi temi della li... more studi AItLA L'AItLA pubblica una collana di monografie e di collettanee sui diversi temi della linguistica applicata. I manoscritti vengono valutati con i consueti processi di revisione di pari per assicurarne la conformità ai migliori standard qualitativi del settore. I volumi sono pubblicati nel sito dell'associazione con accesso libero a tutti gli interessati.
Proceedings of 11th International Conference of Experimental Linguistics, 2020
This research offers a preliminary survey on vowels and diphthong variation between two Irish Eng... more This research offers a preliminary survey on vowels and diphthong variation between two Irish English varieties: Galway (GW) and Letterkenny (LK). The results showed only a smaller difference between GW and LK with respect to the monophthongs, whereas a larger difference was found for the MOUTH diphthong. Despite the great amount of literature on English dialects, a phonetic investigation of these specific varieties is still lacking. This study may open the path to further investigations of sociophonetic values and the stereotypes associated with different varieties, in particular those of the northern regions.
Studi AISV è una collana di volumi collettanei e monografie dedicati alla dimensione sonora del l... more Studi AISV è una collana di volumi collettanei e monografie dedicati alla dimensione sonora del linguaggio e alle diverse interfacce con le altre componenti della grammatica e col discorso. La collana, programmaticamente interdisciplinare, è aperta a molteplici punti di vista e argomenti sul linguaggio: dall'attenzione per la struttura sonora alla variazione sociofonetica e al mutamento storico, dai disturbi della parola alle basi cognitive e neurobiologiche delle rappresentazioni fonologiche, fino alle applicazioni tecnologiche.