Synthetic voices in the foreign language context

May 7, 2021, 2:06 a.m.
Feb. 15, 2022, 2:33 a.m.
Feb. 15, 2022, 2:33 a.m.
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Volume 24 Number 1, February 2020
Bione, Tiago Cardoso, Walcir
2020-01-31T15:56:57Z
2020-01-31T15:56:57Z
2020-02-01
This study evaluated the voice of a modern English text-to-speech (TTS) system in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context in terms of its speech quality, ability to be understood by L2 users, and potential for focus on specific language forms. Twenty-nine Brazilian EFL learners listened to stories and sentences, produced by a TTS voice and a human voice, and rated them on a 6-point Likert scale according to holistic criteria for evaluating pronunciation: Comprehensibility, naturalness, and accuracy. In addition, they were asked to answer a set of comprehension questions (to assess understanding), to complete a dictation/transcription task to measure intelligibility, and to identify whether the target past -ed form was present or not in decontextualized sentences. Results indicate that the performance of both the TTS and human voices were perceived similarly in terms of comprehensibility, while ratings for naturalness were unfavorable for the synthesized voice. For text comprehension, dictation, and aural identification tasks, participants performed relatively similarly in response to both voices. These findings suggest that TTS systems have the potential to be used as pedagogical tools for L2 learning, particularly in EFL settings, where natural occurrence of the target language is limited or non-existent.
Made available in DSpace on 2020-01-31T15:56:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 24_1_10125-44715.pdf: 459234 bytes, checksum: 658b562bc3a0d43970ff9001b4054f22 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2020-02-01
186
Bione, T., & Cardoso, W. (2020). Synthetic voices in the foreign language context. Language Learning & Technology, 24(1), 169–186. https://doi.org/10125/44715
10125/44715
1094-3501
http://hdl.handle.net/10125/44715
1
Language Learning & Technology
University of Hawaii National Foreign Language Resource Center Center for Language & Technology (co-sponsored by Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning, University of Texas at Austin)
/item/10125-44715/
169
Text-to-speech TTS English as a foreign language L2 pronunciation L2 pedagogy
Synthetic voices in the foreign language context
Article
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