Projects

The proposed project aims to investigate how young learners’ background and socio-economic factors impact their test performance through the British Council’s Primary English Test (PET). Learner’s background factors include language contact/exposure inside/outside of school, learners’ socio-economic status, and hours/types of study inside and outside of school, and their access to technology.

The study aims to determine the predictive validity of the DET test scores, by examining the relationship between students’ DET scores and their academic success in the university context.  The study supports the need for the validation argument that the impact of tests should be assessed by capturing test takers’ abilities to function successfully in academic contexts. The study will have two parts: (1) the predictive validity of the DET for university graduate and undergraduate international students’ academic attainment, and (2) the DET’s predictive validity of the Global Launch (Intensive English Program) students’ academic performance. 

The primary aims of the proposed project include (1) developing a systematic and effective instrument that can directly measure listeners’ attitude and stereotype towards different racial, ethnic, and language groups, and (2) making the instruments publicly available to various communities in education, research, and society in general.

This study will examine linguistic features of real-life in-class presentations given by ITAs in teaching preparation classes at US universities. The features will be analyzed in relation to ITAs’ overall DET scores and their scores on the speaking tasks of the test as well as in relation to the grades ITAs receive on their presentations.

The purpose of the proposed study is to examine the impact of English accent varieties on test-takers’ performance on two different Aptis listening tasks (monologues and dialogues) and their attitudes towards Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in language testing. In particular, the study will investigate the effects of potential localized L1 and L2 accent effects as well as those of highly intelligible World Englishes (WE) accents on listeners’ test performance. In doing so, the project will provide localization-related validity evidence for the listening tasks of the Aptis General test.

This Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) funding project focuses on exploring and developing a novel operational collection of speech, language and perception-based measures to objectively assess speech intelligibility for second language (L2) speech production, as well as providing effective learner-specific feedback. With the rise of English as an international language, intelligibility-based successful communication has been emphasized over native-like accents. However, L2 teachers often raise concerns about learners’ slow or stagnant pronunciation progress. Several primary reasons for this problem may include difficulties in perceptually discerning changes in learners’ speech and interpreting learners’ speech patterns without any learner-specific intelligibility assessment profile. Today, teachers have no systematic way to assess each student’s speech changes, nor can students monitor and track feedback related to their pronunciation learning progression. Therefore, an exploratory and transformative method is introduced for measuring speech intelligibility that provides both teachers and learners with objective and individualized feedback. This  exploratory project is proposed for EAGER funding  in order to establish a baseline working framework for operational objective measure creation, and proof-of-concept assessment feedback for teachers and learners. This approach will help teachers gauge learners’ intelligibility levels and allow learners to self-regulate their learning progress incrementally over time. The long-term innovation is expected to benefit skilled US professionals from non-English speaking countries, who work in various STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Additionally, this interdisciplinary project provides various opportunities for hands-on training and experience for both graduate and undergraduate students in the fields of language education, applied linguistics, computer engineering, and speech technology.

The proposed project aims to investigate the relationships between young learners’ background and contextual factors and their language learning progressions over a semester of time in the English as a Foreign Language context. The findings of the project can inform the curriculum planning and development of future TOEFL Primary testing and administration as well as assessment research and practices in second or foreign language learning and teaching. The project will result in several journal manuscripts, research reports, and conference presentations.

As an extension of Kang et al. (2021), the current study is proposed to further analyze the IELTS test-takers’ performance data for both speaking and writing features to comprehensively examine their association with IELTS proficiency levels, their linguistic progression and their relationship with test-taker background. Findings will inform the development of the IELTS band score descriptors and make contributions to the fields of L2 testing and SLA by offering concrete evidence to understand the relationship between learning outcomes and learner backgrounds. The project will result in various manuscripts and research reports.  

There is an increasing demand for an English as a lingua franca perspective to be incorporated into international listening test materials. Primarily using a prestigious inner circle form of North American English as the sole listening stimulus may not be ecologically valid any longer, especially in the context of globalization. Scholars (Hamp-Lyons & Davies, 2008) argue that English proficiency tests should now adopt an English as an International Language approach over reference to traditionally standard varieties.  However, the inclusion of samples produced by speakers of outer and expanding circle English varieties (e.g., India, Mexico, Korea) has been largely avoided. Accordingly, the current project aims to answer an on-going validity question of whether international tests of English proficiency should or should not privilege a standard variety of English to make it fair to speakers of non-standard varieties (Hamp-Lyons & Davies, 2008; Kang et al., 2019).  More specifically, the project intends to examine (1) to what extent different or shared English accents have an impact on listeners’ performance in the Duolingo listening tests, (2) to what extent different English accents affect listeners’ performances in two different task types (i.e., ‘yes/no’ vocabulary and dictation), and (3) what listeners’ overall attitudes towards the inclusion of different English accents are in the Duolingo English Test (DET) and their associations with the listening test scores? Speakers from four distinct English varieties will be recruited to produce speech samples for the Duolingo listening tasks (i.e., “Yes/No” Vocabulary and Dictation). They will be Chinese, Spanish, English (from India) and Korean, i.e., the most frequent first languages of DET test-takers (LaFlair & Settles, 2020). Listeners who speak with the same four international English accents will be recruited to take the Duolingo listening tests. The findings of the proposed project will provide important guidance to promote the DET as a test of international English and to better understand fairness, equality, and practicality of designing and administering high-stakes English tests. 

There is an increasing demand for an English as a lingua franca perspective to be incorporated into international listening test materials. Primarily using a prestigious inner circle form of North American English as the sole listening stimulus may not be ecologically valid any longer, especially in the context of globalization. Scholars (Hamp-Lyons & Davies, 2008) argue that English proficiency tests should now adopt an English as an International Language approach over reference to traditionally standard varieties.  However, the inclusion of samples produced by speakers of outer and expanding circle English varieties (e.g., India, Mexico, Korea) has been largely avoided. Accordingly, the current project aims to answer an on-going validity question of whether international tests of English proficiency should or should not privilege a standard variety of English to make it fair to speakers of non-standard varieties (Hamp-Lyons & Davies, 2008; Kang et al., 2019).  More specifically, the project intends to examine (1) to what extent different or shared English accents have an impact on listeners’ performance in the Duolingo listening tests, (2) to what extent different English accents affect listeners’ performances in two different task types (i.e., ‘yes/no’ vocabulary and dictation), and (3) what listeners’ overall attitudes towards the inclusion of different English accents are in the Duolingo English Test (DET) and their associations with the listening test scores? Speakers from four distinct English varieties will be recruited to produce speech samples for the Duolingo listening tasks (i.e., “Yes/No” Vocabulary and Dictation). They will be Chinese, Spanish, English (from India) and Korean, i.e., the most frequent first languages of DET test-takers (LaFlair & Settles, 2020). Listeners who speak with the same four international English accents will be recruited to take the Duolingo listening tests. The findings of the proposed project will provide important guidance to promote the DET as a test of international English and to better understand fairness, equality, and practicality of designing and administering high-stakes English tests. 

4/18/2018                    Patent Serial No. 9,947,322          NAU Case 2013-015

Title: “Systems and Methods for Automated Evaluation of Human Speech”

This invention is a method of detecting prosody in human speech in terms of prominent syllables, tone units, and tonic syllable tone choices as defined by David Brazil’s framework for representing prosodic features in discourse. It automatically determines these communicative features from a raw audio wave file in steps: 1) determine the phones that make up the utterance, 2) group the phones into syllables, 3) identify the prominent syllables, 4) divide the utterance into tone units, 5) determine the tone (falling, rising, rising-falling, falling-rising, or neutral) of the tonic syllables (last prominent syllable in a tone unit), and 6) determine the pitch (low, mid, or high) of the tonic syllables. The invention develops a program, which can be used for language learners, teachers, linguists, electronic engineers, computer scientists, or anyone in speech communication, who wish to better operationalize the property of human speech into a machine. Employing a text-independent system, the current invention provides a unique model for salient features of prosody in spoken parameters and integrates the stress and pitch tone features relevant to improving the performance of automated speech systems.

Description coming soon 

Description coming soon