Papers by Sinem Sonsaat
Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 2015
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Both native and nonnative language teachers often find pronunciation a difficult skill to teach b... more Both native and nonnative language teachers often find pronunciation a difficult skill to teach because of inadequate training or uncertainty about the effectiveness of instruction. But nonnative language teachers may also see themselves as inadequate models for pronunciation, leading to increased uncertainty about whether they should teach pronunciation (Golombek & Jordan, 2005). Although studies have regularly shown that instruction is effective in promoting pronunciation improvement (Saito, 2012), it is not known if improvement depends on the native language of the instructor, nor if learners improve differently depending on whether their teacher is native or nonnative. This study investigated the effect of teachers’ first language on ratings of change in accentedness and comprehensibility. Learners in intact English classes were taught one class by a nonnative- and one by a native-English-speaking teacher. Each teacher taught the same pronunciation lessons over the course of 7 weeks. Results show that native listeners’ ratings of the students’ comprehensibility were similar for both teachers, despite many learners’ stated preference for native teachers. The results offer encouragement to nonnative teachers in teaching pronunciation, suggesting that, like other language skills, instruction on pronunciation skills is more dependent on knowledgeable teaching practices than on native pronunciation of the teacher.
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Papers and Proceedings by Sinem Sonsaat
Accent conversion (AC) aims to transform non-native speech to sound as if the speaker had a nativ... more Accent conversion (AC) aims to transform non-native speech to sound as if the speaker had a native accent. This can be achieved by mapping source spectra from a native speaker into the acoustic space of the non-native speaker. In prior work, we proposed an AC approach that matches frames between the two speakers based on their acoustic similarity after compensating for differences in vocal tract length. In this paper, we propose an approach that matches frames between the two speakers based on their phonetic (rather than acoustic) similarity. Namely, we map frames from the two speakers into a phonetic posteriorgram using speaker-independent acoustic models trained on native speech. We evaluate the proposed algorithm on a corpus containing multiple native and non-native speakers. Compared to the previous AC algorithm, the proposed algorithm improves the ratings of acoustic quality (20% increase in mean opinion score) and native accent (69% preference) while retaining the voice identity of the non-native speaker.
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This is a chapter from the book, Issues in Materials Development, published by Sense Publishers. ... more This is a chapter from the book, Issues in Materials Development, published by Sense Publishers. If you wish to have a copy of the chapter, please ask.
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Papers by Sinem Sonsaat
Papers and Proceedings by Sinem Sonsaat