Published:29 November 2022|Version 3|DOI:10.17632/39vyf9gx9x.3
Contributors:Lau Yoke Lian, , , ,
Description
The "Audio and Spectrum" folder contains an "Audio Recordings" subfolder, a "Respondent Consent Form," and a "Spectrums" file.
Steps to reproduce
Inform the targeted students about the study and promote their participation in January 2020. Introduce a variety of applications into the teaching and study of Mandarin and encourage students to practise their use. The data collection is announced at the end of the semester, and between June 2020 and July 2020, a WhatsApp group is used to monitor students who voluntarily participate in the project. Certain pupils receive a WhatsApp message with ten sentences from a Mandarin textbook. The researchers asked the students to videotape themselves reading these 10 sentences in a quiet location, then email or WhatsApp the recording to them. Each suitable recording will be compensated for thirty Ringgit in Malaysia. Mandarin level 2 students from Universiti Malaysia Sabah volunteered for this study. These were the membership requirements: I. Must begin research at the beginning level of Mandarin. ii. Must be able to read and comprehend the sentences provided. III. Must have no issue performing the language's tones and rhythms. Each participant provided an audio recording, and three groups of recordings were analysed: a. recordings from students, b. recordings from a mandarin language instructor, and c. recordings from a Text to Speech MP3 audio recorder. All recordings had to meet the following requirements: I. The recording must occur in a quiet location. The recording must be crystal-clear, with proper pronunciation and a natural speaking rate and cadence. The ten sentences are examples of standard Mandarin and maybe dialogue. Mandarin language instructors picked the ten sentences based on one or more of the following criteria: a. describing the culture of Mandarin; b. exemplifying the style of life in Mandarin; c. a frequent Mandarin phrase. Before pre-recording each statement, researchers discussed its meaning and provided Malay translations to each participant. Before any recordings were taken, each participant was provided with a comprehensive orientation. Only Universiti Malaysia Sabah in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia offered the courses. In addition, the recordings were restricted to sentences from the Mandarin language course textbook. Each participant, including native Mandarin speakers, created the recording using a smartphone application. The Text-to-Speech MP3 software provides a free web-based text-to-speech recording. Wave pad was largely utilised to analyse and monitor the spectrum of the recording. The spectral content of the ten recordings was compared using a wave pad sound editor. The following spectrum recordings are separated into identically sized and extended boxes to allow comparison. Anyone seeking to compare the speech sound wave of Mandarin language learners with that of text-to-speech technology may potentially reuse the data.
Institutions
Universiti Malaysia Sabah Pusat Penataran Ilmu dan Bahasa, Universiti Malaysia Sabah