British English and Singapore English are said to differ in rhythmic patterning. British English is commonly described as stress-timed, but Singapore English is claimed to be syllable-timed. In the present paper, we explore the acoustic nature of the suggested cross-varietal difference. In directly comparable samples from British English and Singapore English, two types of acoustic measurements were taken; we calculated a variability index reflecting changes in vowel length over utterances, and measurements reflecting vowel quality. Our findings provide acoustic data which support the hypothesized cross-varietal difference in rhythmic patterning; we show (1) that successive vowel durations are more nearly equal in Singapore English than in British English, and (2) that reduced vowels pattern more peripherally in the F1/F2 formant space in Singapore English than in British English. We complete the paper with a comparison of our vowel variability index with a set of acoustic measures for rhythm proposed by Ramus, Nespor, and Mehler (1999), which focus on variability in vocalic and intervocalic intervals. We conclude that our variability index is more successful in capturing rhythmic differences than Ramus et al. (1999)'s measures, and that an application of our index to Ramus et al.'s intervocalic measure may provide a further diagnostic of rhythmic class.
It has been claimed that Singapore English and British English differ in stress placement: Singapore English speakers stress the final syllables of polysyllabic words such as flawlessly which are stressed initially in British English. Two considerations lead us to question the cross-varietal difference in stress placement. Firstly, we note that previous comparative studies have investigated stress differences in nuclear position. In this position, however, cues to a boundary and cues to stress may be confounded. Secondly, differences in stress placement have not been suggested by Singapore English speakers, but by British English analysts who may have presupposed comparable acoustic cues to stress in the two varieties. Thus, we hypothesize that it is not the flocation of lexical stress which differs in the two varieties, but the acoustic realization of stress. In the present paper this hypothesis was tested experimentally. Ten Singapore English and ten British English speakers produced polysyllabic words in nuclear, intonation phrase-final, and in non-nuclear, intonation phrase-medial position. Duration and F0 measurements were taken. The results do not support the claimed cross-varietal difference in flexical stress placement. In nuclear position, Singapore English test items are associated with significantly more phrase-final flengthening than British English test items. Additionally, we find a flack of “deprominencing” in F0 in Singapore English, that is, the difference between the nuclear syllable and following unstressed syllables is less clearly marked. In prenuclear position, the cross-varietal differences in duration and F0 disappear.
In the latest 2012 PISA results, the top performers were all Asian countries and regions. Common among these high performing education systems is the emergence of quality improvement in education as a means of achieving equity. This replaces the conventional focus on system inputs in education mainly influenced by the economic and sociological beliefs of the time, based on the human capital theory and the compensatory theory for the disadvantaged as a means of rectifying inequities. Improvement in education has resulted in more complicated scenarios that can potentially improve quality, e.g., closing the achievement gap by improving overall performance, and creating opportunities for low achievers to aspire to higher achievement. The PISA results also provide more information about the intrinsic reasons behind high achievement. For example, the measurement of resilience shows that low achievers are fighting to improve, despite disadvantaged backgrounds and situations, e.g., socioeconomic status, parents' education background, and residential status. In addition, intrinsic interest and a strong belief in learning effort are also proved to be significant factors in high achievement that may overcome disadvantaged learning environments for individual students. Further, recent developments in student-centered participative pedagogies, such as peer tutoring, collaborative learning, and knowledge building, have turned students into active learning agents. They are no longer passive classroom recipients of learning, but rather are active learners in seamless learning scenarios that are helping high performing education systems to enhance learning outcomes.
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