Measurement of learners' listening disfluency (LD)

1. Shadowing to reduce listening disfluency (LD) of learners
   Shadowing  is a special kind of  "repeat-after-me" practice, where a learner repeats a  given audio with as short delay as possible while  listening. Synchronous repetition is practically impossible and about a 1-sec delay is inevitable. Shadowing has been introduced to language learning since 1990s to enhance learners' listening skills. By continuing shadowing practices, it is said that the capacity of working memory is enlarged, which leads to enhancing the listening skills. Shadowing helps learners identify individual words in a given audio, which corresponds to reduction of LD, but additional skills are needed to comprehend the given audio correctly. 

2. Shadowing to measure listening disfluency (LD) of learners
   In our project, shadowing is used in two ways: measurement of learners' LD and reduction of their LD.  In 2021, we conducted a shadowing marathon, where learners participated in 42-day shadowing practices. Learners' LD was measured every day and the reduction of their LD was also measured over the 42 days. 

3. Mutual shadowing among Global English speakers
   In  our project, mutual shadowing was conducted, where Global English speakers shadowed each other. By calculating their LD, a participant can know 1) how smoothly s/he listens to others and 2) how smoothly the others listen to him/her.  The participants were international students at The University of Tokyo, Waseda University, and The Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, as well as Japanese students at The University of Tokyo.  They were speakers of Global Englishes, and their accents were extremely diverse. In this project, we proposed a method of visualizing 1) and 2) simultaneously for a specific learner, and the visualized chart is called global communicability chart. 

For details, please read the papers listed in References.

References

• Kunihara, T., Zhu, C., Minematsu, N., Nakanishi, N. (2022) Gradual Improvements Observed in Learners' Perception and Production of L2 Sounds Through Continuing Shadowing Practices on a Daily Basis. Proc. Interspeech 2022, 1303-1307

• Tomita, Y., Gao, Y., Minematsu, N., Nakanishi, N., Saito, D. (2024) Analysis and Visualization of Directional Diversity in Listening Fluency of World Englishes Speakers in the Framework of Mutual Shadowing. Proc. Interspeech 2024 4024-4028.

• Fujiwara, A., Minematsu, N., Nakanishi, N., Saito, D., Mutual Shadowing among Speakers of World Englishes and Its Application to Investigating the Influence of Accents on Listening Fluency, Proc. SLaTE (2025)