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81ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ ПРОГРАММЫ ДЛЯ АНАЛИЗА РЕЧИ PRAAT И АУДИОРЕДАКТОРА VOL.1 №1 2019
AUDACITY В ОБУЧЕНИИ ПРОИЗНОШЕНИЮ НА КИТАЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ ISSN: 2686-9675
ЯЗЫКОЗНАНИЕ И ЛиТеРАТУРОВ еДЕИИЕ / АНТОНОВА АННА СЕР ГЕЕВНА, asantonqva@hse.ru / УДК 372.881.1
ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ ПРОГРАММЫ ДЛЯ АНАЛИЗА РЕЧИ PRAAT И АУДИОРЕДАКТОРА AUDACITY В ОБУЧЕНИИ ПРОИЗНОШЕНИЮ НА КИТАЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ
THE USE OF SOFTWARE TOOLS PRAAT AND AUDACITY IN TEACHING CHINESE L2 PRONUNCIATION
Антонова Анна Сергеевна, преподаватель
Школа востоковедения Национальный исследовательский университет "Высшая школа экономики"
asantonova @hse.ru
АННОТАЦИЯ
В статье рассматриваются возможности использования бесплатного программного обеспечения для анализа речи Praat и аудиоредактора Audacity при обучении китайскому языку. Данные программы позволяют записывать и визуализировать голосовые высказывания обучающихся, что может быть использовано при обучении некоторых аспектов фонетики и просодии. Также эти программы обеспечивают мгновенную обратную связь для студентов и позволяют им сравнивать свои речевые высказывания с аутентичными образцами, что может помочь учащимся самостоятельно работать над улучшением фонетики вне аудиторных занятий.
Ключевые слова и фразы: обучение фонетике, формирование устнопроизносительных навыков, инновации в преподавании иностранных языков.
Для цитирования: Антонова А.С. Использование программы для анализа речи PRAAT и аудиоредактора AUDACITY в обучении произношению на китайском языке. Современные востоковедческие исследования. 2019; 1 (1 ): 5-9.
INTRODUCTION
This paper aims to explore the possibilities of using free phonetics software like Praat and computer programs like Audacity in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. These programs can help students to develop better perception of Chinese sounds and to improve their overall fluency as well as confidence in language production.
Good pronunciation is the foundation of effective spoken communication. It is recognised as a fundamental skill,
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the use of free software for speech analysis Praat and audio editor Audacity in teaching pronunciation and intonation to Chinese second language learners. These programs allow recording and visualising voice statements of students and can be used 1) to develop better perception of Chinese sounds; 2) to create an awareness of phonological features which occur in native speaker pronunciation; 3) to train students to hear the difference between phonological contrasts that are not found in their language; 4) to raise awareness of the differences between L1 and L2 phonological systems. The main benefit of these programs is that they provide instant feedback for students and allow them to compare their speech utterances with authentic samples. Besides offering additional options for teaching activities, these techniques can also meet individual learner needs and promote self-training and learner autonomy.
Key words and phrases: teaching practical phonetics, technology and Chinese as Second Language, acquisition of prosody in Chinese as Second Language.
For citation: Antonova A.S. The use of software tools PRAAT and AUDACITY in teaching Chinese L2 pronunciation. Modern Oriental Studies. 2019; 1(1): 5-9.
which students need to acquire, mainly because it can greatly affect accuracy and comprehension. At the same time, pronunciation is probably one of the hardest skills in a foreign language to learn. It takes a lot of time and effort to improve the pronunciation of the target language. Language learners can be very advanced in their language skills but still have poor pronunciation or strong accent. However, foreign accent is not necessarily a problem as the real key to having good
MODERN ORIENTAL STUDIES
СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ ВОСТОКОВЕДЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ
VOL.1 №1 2019
ISSN: 2686-9675
international science journal / МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ НАУЧНЫЙ ЖУРНАЛ
pronunciation is what is called 'comfortable intelligibility'. In other words, the person or people listening to the non-native speaker should be able to understand what he/she is saying with minimal strain. Developing this level of intelligibility should also be a primary concern of language teachers, but unfortunately, this is not always the case.
Pronunciation, in other words the phonetics and phonology of a language, is often considered very much secondary to syntax/semantics in second language acquisition, and to some extent it may be true at the very beginning of learning, but pronunciation must be taught and taught well because it can help to enhance spoken intelligibility and improve students' awareness of the sound system of the target language. Moreover, phonology can mask syntax/semantics learning and create unnecessary problems or block acquisition of inflectional morphology or tense/case/gender agreement.
It is also important to note that effective communication depends not only on the accuracy and intelligibility of learners' own speech, but on learners' ability to perceive non-native speech. Perception of foreign speech needs to be train as well as pronunciation. However, teaching of both students' perception and their own intelligible production is complicated and quite challenging for many language teachers. Bringing free phonetics software into the classroom can help address these problems and prove to be a useful tool in Chinese language teaching, especially in the areas of pronunciation and fluency.
Technology can be an excellent motivational tool in the classroom because of the additional options for teaching activities. Visible speech, as it is displayed in speech analysis software, offers a second language learner an opportunity to explore, a chance to engage (perhaps simultaneously) both the sense of hearing and the sense of seeing, and to listen repeatedly to the same stimuli or to the selected portions thereof. A click of the cursor, and the student can listen to a word, a phrase, or a longer stretch of speech (as current speech analysis software can handle long sound files), or she/he can highlight and select only a syllable or a single word for immediate re-play. The student can use this same speech analysis software to record and to display—in real-time or after a very short delay—and then to analyze and to compare his or her own "voice picture" with that of the (pre-recorded) model utterance.
This can be done because phonetics software like Praat and Audacity 'write' what the student actually says. Thus, it allows students to see for themselves if they have acquired a contrast. In Audacity they can interact with their own pronunciation in real time. Unlike with a teacher, they can, them-
selves, see what of their motor activity brings them closer to or further from their target. Incorporating such techniques offers the chance to meet varied individual needs more easily than any teacher can. It promotes learner autonomy in working on pronunciation, which can be a critical factor in success. Besides, it allows teachers to be more creative and to eliminate completely pointless drilling, using 'hands-on' materials and forms of exercises that are easy to introduce into the classroom. Thus, teachers can incorporate technology into classroom teaching in a meaningful way, free up more time to provide individualised instruction and offer additional instructional time in a language laboratory or outside of class, if needed.
PRAAT
In this section we will show a few techniques for teaching pronunciation with Praat and comment on how these can be integrated in the classroom.
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of teaching pronunciation is to create an awareness of phonological features, which occur in native speaker pronunciation in order to aid understanding. Using Praat, teachers can help to train learners' perception of non-native sounds and teach them to hear and visually see the difference between phonological contrasts that are not found in their native language. This can greatly help in raising awareness of the differences between L1 and L2 phonological systems.
It is important to note that this software package is designed for researchers and linguists, so its application and interpretation of data can cause some difficulties as spectrograms and waveforms are difficult to interpret without specialised training. We will consider the most straightforward ways of using spectrograms (to identify and practise difficult consonant features and contrasts) and pitch tracking (to provide phonological and phonetic feedback on the contrast between the 4 Mandarin tones).
Using spectrograms can be beneficial for the learners; for instance, Lambacher (1999) indicated success with teaching English consonants to Japanese learners using spectrograms. For difficult consonant features and contrasts (i.e., aspiration, nasals, /r/ and /l/, /s/ and /J/, /f/ and /h/ contrasts), he illustrates how the contrasts look on visual displays built into the speech analysis program.
We also demonstrate how spectrograms can help identify and practise difficult consonant features and contrasts in the Chinese language and illustrate how the contrasts look on visual displays. For instance, voiceless unaspirated stops and voiceless aspirated stops in syllable-initial position
ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ ПРОГРАММы для АнАЯиЭА речи PRAAT и АудиорЕдАкторА VOL.1 №1 2019
AUDACITY В ОБУЧЕНИИ ПРОИЗНОШЕНИЮ НА КИТАЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ ISSN: 2686-9675
языкознание и литературоведение / дитоновд Анид сергеевна, asantonqva@hse.ru / удк 372.881.1
are quite distinct (see Figure 1 below). Students are trained to notice this difference and produce the same effect while recording the consonants. Such visualization helps to develop better perception and production of Chinese sounds
Figure 1: Left - voiceless aspirated stop; right - voice less unaspirated stop
Figure 2: Tone 4 produced by a native speaker
At the suprasegmental level, pitch tracking is a valuable tool in intonation training as it can help to identify and discriminate Mandarin tones. Tone is extremely important in distinguishing Mandarin syllables, i.e. the tonal contour of a syllable changes its meaning. The tone distinction in Mandarin is one of the most complex problems for many learners of Chinese. Moreover, the acquisition of Mandarin tones is a good example where the role of pitch is clearly phonological. Therefore, its description and integration in a systematic set of examples can be more easily established. The automatic feedback given to the learner can therefore be phonological as pertaining to the system of contrasts existing between the 4 tones of the language, and phonetic in commenting the particular details of realization in terms of syllable length and pitch contour.
Pitch tracking is relatively iconic, with rising, falling, and level lines on the display usually corresponding to rises, levels, and falls in a speaker's voice pitch. Although pitch tracks require some training to interpret, they have quite straightforward graphic visualisation and can be easily incorporated into the training sessions. The software records the user's voice and shows the obtained data (F0 contour and energy envelope) in real time as an audiovisual feedback. In order to identify the differences and similarities between native speakers and learners of Mandarin it is possible to compare the prosodic properties of the Mandarin tones on the syllable level (the syllable duration, F0 contour of Mandarin tone) and on the level of the whole utterance. This information can then be used to train students and help them approximate to the target pronunciation. Below (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3) is the illustration of Tone 4 pronounced by a native speaker and two tokens of the learner attempts: first before the training, second after the training.
Figure 3: Tone 4 produced by a learner: left - before the training, right - after the training
These examples illustrate that Praat allows visualising some phonetic and phonological differences between the learner's pronunciation and that of a native speaker. It can help students to improve their pronunciation, over all fluency and confidence in a language.
AUDACITY
Correct pronunciation of monosyllabic words, phrases, and sentences in isolation is only a small step towards producing larger chunks of speech in impromptu, conversational exchanges characterised by native or near-native fluency in the target language. Towards attaining and improving upon such fluency, the ready access to computer-aided auditory and visual feedback using speech analysis software can provide one more means of helping learners approach mastery in a foreign language. A beginning language learner needs to practice repeatedly producing the correct sounds, be they segments, such as consonants and vowels, or prosodic phenomena, such as tone, stress, and intonation. From there, a learner needs to be able to put the building blocks of syllables, words, phrases, and utterances together to produce fluent, connected speech. The task of a teacher is to design exercises from easier to more challenging ones to build these skills.
MODERN ORIENTAL STUDIES
СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ ВОСТОКОВЕДЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ
VOL.1 №1 2019
ISSN: 2686-9675
international science journal / МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ НАУЧНЫЙ ЖУРНАЛ
While the use of visualisation technology is a crucial advance in the teaching of pronunciation and intonation, such teaching can be further enhanced by connecting technology to an understanding of how intonation functions in discourse. To address this, Audacity can be integrated into the classroom as a useful tool. It can help student to work on L2 pronunciation, listening comprehension and oral production. This program is also free of charge and can be installed on most operating systems. Audacity has a number of useful functions, including visual representation of the sound recording, smooth editing of sound channels and different sound tracks. It also allows students to individually and at their own pace, create, listen to, record, and mix audio files on their computer. They can then submit their work to their teacher, or share it with their peers, via email.
Now we will introduce several activities that could be done with Audacity and show how they can be used to learn or teach Chinese.
1. Preparation of audio materials for the lessons using Audacity
One of the most useful functions of Audacity is a setup that can be used to record any sound going from a computer. If it is hard to extract audio from a clip on the Internet (YouTube or movie, etc.), Audacity allows doing it in one click. Apart from this, Audacity makes it easy to manipulate and edit recordings of various types, for instance, to remove noise and compress the audio file, to cut and edit. All these functions make it easier to prepare custom listening comprehension activities, depending on the teachers' needs and the students' level of language proficiency.
2. Pronunciation activities or Repetition exercises
It is possible to create different pronunciation activities with Audacity. Let us consider as an example a pronunciation activity that is appropriate for a beginner group. The teacher records samples for the student to repeat, leaving enough silence after each utterance and sends the recording to the students. Each student, individually and at their own pace, can listen to and repeat the utterances. Then they hit the "Record" button and Audacity will start playing the teacher's audio and record the student's performance at the same time. When done, the student can mute the original track and listen to the combined track comparing his/her performance with the teacher's. Comparing the visual waveform representation of their speech with that of the teacher's model can help students match their pitch and intonation contours with those of the model.
3. Improving fluency
Audacity can also be used to work on fluency. We will demonstrate a sample activity to do this. A written dialogue should be opened on the screen together with an audio file. First the student listens to the dialogue and repeats the phases after the speaker. Then it is better to choose a selection that the student is going to work on and fit it to the screen. After practicing the phrases, the student can record her/himself speaking together with the native speaker, imitating them. Then they can check the recording and see if they were fast enough. Then they mute both recordings and record themselves again, reading the phrase from the screen without the native speaker's voice. A whole dialogue can be practised like this, every time trying to speak with the same speed as a native speaker.
Another type of activity can be also used to complete the dialogue. The part of one speaker in the dialogue is replaced with silence and the student reads this part recording her/himself. The idea is to say the phrases quickly enough to fill the silence within the same timing. Students can work like this individually, record themselves, listen to their phrases, compare them to the sample, and edit their work to perfect it. The final recordings can be sent to the teacher for assessment.
4. Mimicking native speakers
Mimicking is one of the most powerful ways of acquiring good pronunciation in any language. However, it's not always practical to do so. If we listen to a YouTube clip, the interface simply does not allow us to repeat exactly what we want to repeat even if we have a sound file, but in Audacity, this is fairly easy. Here is another example. One of our 3 d year students chose a video clip from Youtube. His aim was to practice and imitate the native speaker's speech. First, he found an audio sample with native speaker speech from Youtube and recorded it. It is easy to do with Audacity, you start the video and at the same time press 'record' in Audacity. The track then can be cut to remove the silence at the beginning and the end of the track and improve the quality of the track (use "Noise removal" function). Then using the Effect "compressor" we can 'compress' the audio file, this helps to amplify the audio track further without clipping and reduce the distance between very quiet and very loud parts of the track. Now the audio track is ready for the practice. The student selects the part he wants to mimic and repeats it as many times as needed, trying to mimic it as closely as possible. The next step would be to record his/her own voice over the voice of the native speaker. In Audacity the student hits
ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ ПРОГРАММЫ ДЛЯ АНАЛИЗА РЕЧИ PRAAT И АУДИОРЕДАКТОРА VOL.1 №1 2019
AUDACITY В ОБУЧЕНИИ ПРОИЗНОШЕНИЮ НА КИТАЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ ISSN: 2686-9675
ЯЗЫКОЗНАНИЕ И ЛИТЕРАТУРОВЕДЕНИЕ / АНТОНОВА АННА СЕРГЕЕВНА, asantonova@hse.ru / УДК 372.881.1
"Record" and the audio will play while recording the voice. The student can then mute the original audio and evaluate his/ her own recording. Our student practiced like this and here is the final recording of his sample. As you can hear, the rate of his speech is quite fast and he was able to imitate the native speaker's speech quite accurately.
5. Audacity as a creative tool
The possibilities of using Audacity as a creative tool are endless. This program can help to record students' own speech, songs, poems, etc., then edit their performance and save it in their portfolio or share it with peers and teachers. We have seen an increased motivation in many students when asked to record on their own, using Audacity, different samples of speech. We have a special task for our 3d year students - to record a program or a podcast. They do it with pleasure. We listen to the recordings together and discuss them later.
As showed above, Audacity is a very useful tool as it helps to link pronunciation to other aspects of communication. It can be used to build skills from easier to more challenging ones, using different exercises and to provide multiple speech models. We showed several ways to use this program to prepare audio materials, record voice, compare intonation, and use different learning methods such as shadowing, dialogue completion, and work with the news.
CONCLUSION
In sum, in our digital age in the 21st century, we have ready access to speech-technology tools that we can apply to foreign language teaching and learning, which greatly facilitate the learner's goal of attaining native or near-native fluency: the learner can both hear and see what he/she is saying, as well as what should be said. The principle observation is that speech analysis software allows students to see what their ears cannot 'see'.
Another advantage of introducing and using such software in the classroom is to promote learner autonomy in working on pronunciation. Incorporating such techniques offers the chance to meet varied individual needs more easily than any teacher can. It allows teachers to have access to pronunciation teaching that hopefully goes beyond their own skills, providing individualised instruction and offering additional instructional time in a language laboratory or outside of class. The computer provides one-on-one individualised attention with patience enough to allow unlimited tries. Individuals proceed at a pace with which they are comfortable,
processing feedback and using available tools as they are needed, or moving quickly through an exercise. The interaction with the computer is private, thus likely to be less stressful to the learner than repeated teacher corrections in a classroom environment. Moreover, computer-based training can supply many more native speaker voices as models, a recognised benefit to learning pronunciation.
To conclude, such free software programs as Praat and Audacity can be beneficial for segmental and suprasegmental learning and as well as for training language fluency. They can be easily integrated into the learning process and can greatly enhance the learner's experience.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Audacity, Retrieved from http:// audacity.sourceforge.net/
2. Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David (2012). Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 6.0.35, Retrieved from http://www.praat.org/
3. Lambacher, S. (1999). A CALL tool for improving second language acquisition of English consonants by Japanese learners. Computer Assisted Language Learning 12. 2, 137_156. Retrieved from http:// dx.doi.org/10.1076/call.12.2.137.5722
4. Chan, Marjorie K.M. 2003. The digital age and speech technology for Chinese language teaching and learning. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ download?doi=10.1.1.523.489&rep=rep1&type=pdf
5. Chen, Q-H. (1997). Toward a sequential approach for tonal error analysis. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers' Association, 32(1), 21-39.
INFORMATION ABOUT AUTHOR
Anna Antonova, lecturer
School of Asian Studies National Research University "Higher School of Economics"
asantonova@hse.ru
Принята к публикации: 15.09.2019 г.
