The present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English... Show moreThe present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English interpreter trainees. The effect of treatment on decreasing the rate of message omissions is studied as well. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups on the basis of their overall performance on a TOEFL pre-test, but with equal division between genders. The control group was then taught interpreting skills by the routine curriculum, while the other, experimental, group spent part of the time on memory training tasks and exercises, e.g. imagination and story retelling. Three raters assessed quality measures of accuracy, omissions, additions, grammar, expression, terminology, pace and accentuation of the interpreter trainees in pre-test and post-test performance. Statistical analysis shows that the memory training had a positive effect on the quality of interpretation and also on decreasing the rate of message omission. The results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreting programs for training future interpreters, material producers and all who are involved in interpreting studies and its pedagogy. Show less
We administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text... Show moreWe administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text matching task at the paragraph level. The scores on these functional tests were compared with each other and with intersubjective measures obtained for the same materials through opinion testing, i.e., estimated and perceived intelligibility. The native language of the speakers and listeners belonged to one of three groups of European language families, i.e., Germanic (Danish, Dutch, English, German, Swedish, yielding 20 within- family pairs of different speaker and listener languages), Romance (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, yielding 20 language pairs) and Slavic (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, i.e., 30 pairs). Results from 13,566 participants were analyzed for the 70 within-family combinations of speaker and listener languages. The word recognition test and the cloze test revealed similar patterns of intelligibility but correlated poorly with the picture-to-text matching scores. Both measures of judged intelligibility (estimated and perceived) correlated highly with one another and with the functional test scores, especially those of the cloze test. We conclude that lay listeners are able to judge the intelligibility of a non-native test language from within their own language family. Moreover, participants understood writ- ten language better than the spoken forms. Advantages and disadvantages of the various intelligibility measures we used are discussed. We conclude that the written cloze procedure which we developed is the optimal cross-language intelligibility test in the European language area. Show less
This article summarizes earlier research done on the prosodic marking of interrogativity and imperatives in Dutch on the basis of recorded speech from male and female speakers. The first part of... Show moreThis article summarizes earlier research done on the prosodic marking of interrogativity and imperatives in Dutch on the basis of recorded speech from male and female speakers. The first part of this article compares statements (ST) and three types of question. The form of questions may differ in various respects from statements: Wh-questions (WH) have a question word in initial position and exhibit subject-verb inversion, yes/no-questions (YN) have inversion only, while declarative questions (DE) have the same structure as ST. Our functional hypothesis that the intensity of interrogativity marking through prosody counterbalances the degree of syntactic marking in the order ST Show less
We administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text... Show moreWe administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text matching task at the paragraph level. The scores on these functional tests were compared with each other and with intersubjective measures obtained for the same materials through opinion testing, i.e., estimated and perceived intelligibility. The native language of the speakers and listeners belonged to one of three groups of European language families, i.e., Germanic (Danish, Dutch, English, German, Swedish, yielding 20 within- family pairs of different speaker and listener languages), Romance (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, yielding 20 language pairs) and Slavic (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, i.e., 30 pairs). Results from 13,566 participants were analyzed for the 70 within-family combinations of speaker and listener languages. The word recognition test and the cloze test revealed similar patterns of intelligibility but correlated poorly with the picture-to-text matching scores. Both measures of judged intelligibility (estimated and perceived) correlated highly with one another and with the functional test scores, especially those of the cloze test. We conclude that lay listeners are able to judge the intelligibility of a non-native test language from within their own language family. Moreover, participants understood writ- ten language better than the spoken forms. Advantages and disadvantages of the various intelligibility measures we used are discussed. We conclude that the written cloze procedure which we developed is the optimal cross-language intelligibility test in the European language area. Show less
This article summarizes earlier research done on the prosodic marking of interrogativity and imperatives in Dutch on the basis of recorded speech from male and female speakers. The first part of... Show moreThis article summarizes earlier research done on the prosodic marking of interrogativity and imperatives in Dutch on the basis of recorded speech from male and female speakers. The first part of this article compares statements (ST) and three types of question. The form of questions may differ in various respects from statements: Wh-questions (WH) have a question word in initial position and exhibit subject-verb inversion, yes/no-questions (YN) have inversion only, while declarative questions (DE) have the same structure as ST. Our functional hypothesis that the intensity of interrogativity marking through prosody counterbalances the degree of syntactic marking in the order ST < WH < YN < DE is confirmed both by an analysis of the phonological choices made and by the details of the phonetic implementation of the melodies. The second part of the article compares statements and imperatives. All sentences were produced with three different attitudes: neutral, friendly and authoritarian. Our hypothesis that imperatives are prosodically marked in the same way as authoritarian statements seems to be confirmed, as an analysis of tone transcriptions reveals no systematic differences between them at the linguistic level. The difference is only weakly marked in the prosody at the phonetic level, in a way that suggests that the speaker raises his/her voice in imperatives (higher overall pitch, longer duration, greater intensity), which is also the way in which the authoritarian style of speaking differs from the other attitudes. Show less
The present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English... Show moreThe present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English interpreter trainees. The effect of treatment on decreasing the rate of message omissions is studied as well. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups on the basis of their overall performance on a TOEFL pre-test, but with equal division between genders. The control group was then taught interpreting skills by the routine curriculum, while the other, experimental, group spent part of the time on memory training tasks and exercises, e.g. imagination and story retelling. Three raters assessed quality measures of accuracy, omissions, additions, grammar, expression, terminology, pace and accentuation of the interpreter trainees in pre-test and post-test performance. Statistical analysis shows that the memory training had a positive effect on the quality of interpretation and also on decreasing the rate of message omission. The results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreting programs for training future interpreters, material producers and all who are involved in interpreting studies and its pedagogy. Show less
By means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language... Show moreBy means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language families in Europe. We first present the results of a selection of 1833 listeners representing the mutual intelligibility between young, educated Europeans from the same 16 countries where the test languages are spoken. Next, we present the data from a sub-group of listeners who had not learned the test language and had had minimal exposure to it. This allows us to investigate how well the listeners understand the test language on the basis of structural similarities between their own language and the test languages. Finally, we compare the results of the two data sets to the traditional genealogic characterisation of the three language groups. We expect the intelligibility results from the second group of listeners who had had minimal exposure to the test language to be a better reflection of the genealogical characterisation than the results from the larger group who had sometimes been exposed to the test language or had learned it at school. Show less
The present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English... Show moreThe present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English interpreter trainees. The effect of treatment on decreasing the rate of message omissions is studied as well. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups on the basis of their overall performance on a TOEFL pre-test, but with equal division between genders. The control group was then taught interpreting skills by the routine curriculum, while the other, experimental, group spent part of the time on memory training tasks and exercises, e.g. imagination and story retelling. Three raters assessed quality measures of accuracy, omissions, additions, grammar, expression, terminology, pace and accentuation of the interpreter trainees in pre-test and post-test performance. Statistical analysis shows that the memory training had a positive effect on the quality of interpretation and also on decreasing the rate of message omission. The results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreting programs for training future interpreters, material producers and all who are involved in interpreting studies and its pedagogy. Show less
The present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English... Show moreThe present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English interpreter trainees. The effect of treatment on decreasing the rate of message omissions is studied as well. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups on the basis of their overall performance on a TOEFL pre-test, but with equal division between genders. The control group was then taught interpreting skills by the routine curriculum, while the other, experimental, group spent part of the time on memory training tasks and exercises, e.g. imagination and story retelling. Three raters assessed quality measures of accuracy, omissions, additions, grammar, expression, terminology, pace and accentuation of the interpreter trainees in pre-test and post-test performance. Statistical analysis shows that the memory training had a positive effect on the quality of interpretation and also on decreasing the rate of message omission. The results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreting programs for training future interpreters, material producers and all who are involved in interpreting studies and its pedagogy. Show less
We administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text... Show moreWe administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text matching task at the paragraph level. The scores on these functional tests were compared with each other and with intersubjective measures obtained for the same materials through opinion testing, i.e., estimated and perceived intelligibility. The native language of the speakers and listeners belonged to one of three groups of European language families, i.e., Germanic (Danish, Dutch, English, German, Swedish, yielding 20 within- family pairs of different speaker and listener languages), Romance (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, yielding 20 language pairs) and Slavic (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, i.e., 30 pairs). Results from 13,566 participants were analyzed for the 70 within-family combinations of speaker and listener languages. The word recognition test and the cloze test revealed similar patterns of intelligibility but correlated poorly with the picture-to-text matching scores. Both measures of judged intelligibility (estimated and perceived) correlated highly with one another and with the functional test scores, especially those of the cloze test. We conclude that lay listeners are able to judge the intelligibility of a non-native test language from within their own language family. Moreover, participants understood writ- ten language better than the spoken forms. Advantages and disadvantages of the various intelligibility measures we used are discussed. We conclude that the written cloze procedure which we developed is the optimal cross-language intelligibility test in the European language area. Show less
Gooskens, C.; Heuven, V.J.J.P. van; Golubović, J.; Schüppert, A.; Swarte, F.; Voigt, S. 2017
By means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language... Show moreBy means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language families in Europe. We first present the results of a selection of 1833 listeners representing the mutual intelligibility between young, educated Europeans from the same 16 countries where the test languages are spoken. Next, we present the data from a sub-group of listeners who had not learned the test language and had had minimal exposure to it. This allows us to investigate how well the listeners understand the test language on the basis of structural similarities between their own language and the test languages. Finally, we compare the results of the two data sets to the traditional genealogic characterisation of the three language groups. We expect the intelligibility results from the second group of listeners who had had minimal exposure to the test language to be a better reflection of the genealogical characterisation than the results from the larger group who had sometimes been exposed to the test language or had learned it at school. Show less
This study investigates the effect of prosodic feature awareness training on the quality of interpreting by interpreter trainees. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were... Show moreThis study investigates the effect of prosodic feature awareness training on the quality of interpreting by interpreter trainees. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups at random, but with equal division between genders (seven males in each group). The control group was then taught interpreting skills by the routine curriculum, while the experimental group spent part of the time instead on theoretical explanation and practical exercises emphasizing prosodic differences between Farsi and English. Three raters assessed the quality of the interpreter trainees’ performance in a post-test in terms of accuracy, omissions, overall coherence, grammar, expression, word choice, terminology, accentedness, pace and voice. The results show that prosodic feature awareness training did have a statistically significant effect on the quality measures: the overall assessment of the experimental group was 14 points better (on a scale between 0 and 100) than that of the control group. Moreover, the difference was larger for the phonetic/ prosodic quality scales (accentedness, pace, voice) than for the other scales. These results have implications for designers of curricula for training interpreters, material producers and all who are involved in foreign-language study and pedagogy. Show less
This study investigates the effect of gender on writing style in English. We asked to which extent male and female English writers use words and sentence structures in the same way. We collected 36... Show moreThis study investigates the effect of gender on writing style in English. We asked to which extent male and female English writers use words and sentence structures in the same way. We collected 36 recent opinion articles in British English by male and female authors written on the same topic in matched pairs. We analyzed the token-to-type ratio, word length (number of letters), sentence length (number of words per sentence), sentence complexity (number of finite verbs or subclauses per sentence) and use of emotional (‘?’, ‘!’) versus other punctuation marks. Several textual parameters measured are correlated between male and female authors, which indicates an effect of topic. Unexpectedly, women used more subordinated clauses per sentence than men but no other significant effects of gender were found. We provisionally conclude that no gender-dependent instruction on English writing is needed in the foreign language curriculum. A tanulmány az angol nyelvű írásokban érvényesülő gender-hatást vizsgálja. Arra a kérdésre keressük a választ, hogy milyen mértékben hasonlóak az angol nyelven író női és férfi szerzők által használt szavak és mondatszerkezetek. 36 brit angol nyelvváltozatban készült, női és férfi szerzőktől származó, a közelmúltban megjelent cikket választottunk, amelyek párba állítva egyazon témáról fogalmaznak meg véleményt. Munkánk során elemeztük a szövegekben előforduló szókincs kiterjedését, a szavak terjedelmét (leütések száma), a mondatok terjedelmét (mondatonkénti szavak száma), a mondatok szerkezetét (tagmondatok vagy állítmányi szerepben használt igék száma), valamint az érzelmeket kifejező és egyéb írásjelek előfordulását. Az eredmények több szövegjellemző esetén a női és férfi írásokban egyezésre utalnak, amely a téma hatására hívja fel a figyelmet. Várakozásaink ellenére a női írók több alárendelő mondatszerkezetet alkalmaznak az írásokban mint a férfiak, azonban nemre vonatkozó egyéb szignifikáns eltérés nem azonosítható. Következtetésünk szerint az idegen nyelv oktatásában nemek szerint eltérő angol nyelvű írásfejlesztés nem szükséges. Show less
Gooskens, C.; Heuven, V.J.J.P. van; Golubović, J.; Schüppert, A.; Swarte, F.; Voigt, S. 2017
By means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language... Show moreBy means of a large-scale web-based investigation, we established the degree of mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages within the Germanic, Slavic and Romance language families in Europe. We first present the results of a selection of 1833 listeners representing the mutual intelligibility between young, educated Europeans from the same 16 countries where the test languages are spoken. Next, we present the data from a sub-group of listeners who had not learned the test language and had had minimal exposure to it. This allows us to investigate how well the listeners understand the test language on the basis of structural similarities between their own language and the test languages. Finally, we compare the results of the two data sets to the traditional genealogic characterisation of the three language groups. We expect the intelligibility results from the second group of listeners who had had minimal exposure to the test language to be a better reflection of the genealogical characterisation than the results from the larger group who had sometimes been exposed to the test language or had learned it at school. Show less
We administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text... Show moreWe administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text matching task at the paragraph level. The scores on these functional tests were compared with each other and with intersubjective measures obtained for the same materials through opinion testing, i.e., estimated and perceived intelligibility. The native language of the speakers and listeners belonged to one of three groups of European language families, i.e., Germanic (Danish, Dutch, English, German, Swedish, yielding 20 within- family pairs of different speaker and listener languages), Romance (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, yielding 20 language pairs) and Slavic (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, i.e., 30 pairs). Results from 13,566 participants were analyzed for the 70 within-family combinations of speaker and listener languages. The word recognition test and the cloze test revealed similar patterns of intelligibility but correlated poorly with the picture-to-text matching scores. Both measures of judged intelligibility (estimated and perceived) correlated highly with one another and with the functional test scores, especially those of the cloze test. We conclude that lay listeners are able to judge the intelligibility of a non-native test language from within their own language family. Moreover, participants understood writ- ten language better than the spoken forms. Advantages and disadvantages of the various intelligibility measures we used are discussed. We conclude that the written cloze procedure which we developed is the optimal cross-language intelligibility test in the European language area. Show less
