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Kuronen, M., P. Lintunen & T. Nieminen (toim.) . Näkökulmia This study inves gates whether temporal features in speech can predict the perceived proficiency level in Finnish learners of Swedish. In so doing, seven expert raters assessed speech samples produced by upper secondary school students using the revised CEFR scale for phonological control. The effect of temporal features was studied with a cumula ve link mixed model, and the assessments were further analyzed to study inter-rater varia on. The results indicate that ar cula on rate and certain types of disfluencies in speech can predict the perceived proficiency level. Furthermore, assessors seem to weigh temporal features differently depending on the speech type and their individual focus.

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Prosodic features are important in achieving intelligibility, comprehensibility, and fluency in a second or foreign language (L2). However, research on the assessment of prosody as part of oral proficiency remains scarce. Moreover, the acoustic analysis of L2 prosody has often focused on fluency-related temporal measures, neglecting language-dependent stress features that can be quantified in terms of syllable prominence. Introducing the evaluation of prominence-related measures can be of use in developing both teaching and assessment of L2 speaking skills. In this study we compare temporal measures and syllable prominence estimates as predictors of prosodic proficiency in non-native speakers of English with respect to the speaker’s native language (L1). The predictive power of temporal and prominence measures was evaluated for utterance-sized samples produced by language learners from four different L1 backgrounds: Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Hungarian. Firstly, the speech samples were assessed using the revised Common European Framework of Reference scale for prosodic features. The assessed speech samples were then analyzed to derive articulation rate and three fluency measures. Syllable-level prominence was estimated by a continuous wavelet transform analysis using combinations of F0, energy, and syllable duration. The results show that the temporal measures serve as reliable predictors of prosodic proficiency in the L2, with prominence measures providing a small but significant improvement to prosodic proficiency predictions. The predictive power of the individual measures varies both quantitatively and qualitatively depending on the L1 of the speaker. We conclude that the possible effects of the speaker’s L1 on the production of L2 prosody in terms of temporal features as well as syllable prominence deserve more attention in applied research and developing teaching and assessment methods for spoken L2.

Prosody in terms of word and sentence stress is one of the most difficult features for many second language (L2) speakers to learn and it can be hypothesized that assessing the learner's prosodic abilities could provide a good measure for assessing the learners' spoken language skills in general. Automatic assessment is, however, dependent on reliable automatic analyses of prosodic features for comparing the productions between native (L1) and L2 speech. Here we investigate, whether estimated prosodic prominence levels of syllables can be used to predict the prosodic competence of Finnish learners of Swedish. Syllable level prominence was estimated for 99 L2 and 25 native Swedish utterances using continuous wavelet transform analysis with combinations of f0, energy, and duration features. The L2 utterances were assessed by four expert raters using the revised CEFR scale for prosodic features. Correlations of prominence estimates for L2 utterances with estimates for L1 utterances and linguistic stress patterns were used as a measure of prosodic proficiency of the L2 speakers. The results show that these estimates correlate significantly with the assessments of expert raters. Overall, the results provide strong support for the use of the wavelet-based prominence estimation techniques in automatic assessment of L2 proficiency.