Kelley Manning and Dr. Laura Smith, Department of German and Slavic Languages
“Simply phonetics. The science of speech. Thats my profession: also my hobby. Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby!” –Professor Henry Higgins (pg. 8)1
My favorite subject to study is linguistics, particularly phonetics and how people produce certain sounds in their everyday speech. My research project deals with examining improvements made in pronunciation of students on a study abroad in Berlin Germany. This project assists in rewarding future study abroad participants with better and more effective course work on the project, as well as providing them with funding, thanks to the answers the research provide about the programs.
I decided to focus my research on rounded vowels, particularly two vowels that are not in the American English inventory. I’ve noticed that students learning German will have a difficult time correctly producing the two vowels “ü” and “ö”. These two vowels are rounded and produced towards the front of the mouth, which the English speech inventory does not include. It can be very hard to discriminate these two sounds from a normal “u” and “o”, which are also rounded but produced towards the back of the mouth. Mispronunciation of these sounds can completely change the meaning of the word in German, so it’s important to be able to make that distinction in order to be correctly understood by native German speakers.
The study consisted of 23 undergraduate BYU students, ranging across different proficiency levels in the German language. The students were recorded either at the beginning of or before leaving to Germany, then again at the end of the program. They produced approximately 100 sentences containing rounded vowels, 50 of those sentences containing the two target vowels.
The sentences were recorded using a microphone device that is attached to an iPod. The files were transferred onto a computer then analyzed using a program called Praat, a software used for acoustic analysis. The target vowel in each word of the sentence was identified then analyzed according to its formats, which are resonant frequencies in vocal tract—some frequencies will get enhanced and others reduced when one produces them. Formats are what differentiate vowels from one another. We examined two formats, which measure the height and the advancement of the tongue, and assigned values to each format.
The pre- and post-test format values were entered onto an Excel sheet, which was organized into with each student and word listed according to the target vowel. This is currently the stage of the project I am working on. We plan on using the Bark scale to average the values, making them easy to compare to native German speakers, as well as their pre- and post-test values. This will allow us to see if the students made improvements in their pronunciation during the study abroad program. I except to see improvements made in most of the students, particularly those at a beginning and intermediate level. I hope the students will not only make improvements, but will be much closer to native-like pronunciation.
There have been a few problems that have arisen while doing this project. Some of the recordings were not as clear as others, making the formats a little difficult to measure. I have still been able to get the measurements I need by looking carefully at the spectrogram. It was difficult not being on the study abroad so I was not in full control of the recordings while they were in Berlin. Luckily, a couple of students were also conducting research while on the program and they were able to record the students for me. However, amidst these problems, I’ve found some great successes during my research. I’ve solidified my abilities in acoustic analysis and measuring formats, which will help me in future research and my future career.
I also have been working on this project for the past two years, starting with researching different study abroad studies and vowels. I spent many hours reading different studies and gathering information relevant to my own study. I also participated in a variety of courses that have taught me about the science and anatomy behind speech, which has only helped me in be more passionate about my project and its importance in helping people speak better German. Language is a necessity for any human being. It fulfills our need to communicate and build relationships with other people. Learning a foreign language and making effort to speak like a native speaker will help expand our views of the world and become more accepting of different cultures.
While working on this study, I have thought of a few different ideas that could be topics for future research. In regards to study abroad programs, I would be interested to study about the relationship between language improvement and motivation for speaking the language while attending a study abroad program. While listening to the speech samples in my study, I’ve wondered whether a student’s motivation has any involvement with the amount of improvement they make while on the program. It would also be interesting to examine other sounds that are unique to the German language that help students produce native-like pronunciation.
I’ve enjoyed working on this project. It’s stretched me in many ways and has helped me to develop my linguistic abilities. My ultimate goal is to become a speech language pathologist and using acoustic analysis is an effective way to analyze speech. This project has been a great preparatory tool for speech pathology and will continue to help me as I learn how to help those with speech disorders. It has given me the necessary skills to continue researching when I attend grad school as well as helping future clients through constant professional improvement through my personal research. I am very proud of the work I have done thus far and look forward to finishing my project within the next few days.
References
- Shaw, George Bernard. 1994. Pygmalion. New York: Dover Productions, Inc.