Med ljudböckernas intåg på den litterära marknaden förändras vårt sätt att konsumera litteratur. Bara i Sverige står ljudbokslyssningen för 23 procent av den totala konsumtionen av litteratur. I dagens ljudbokstjänster finns möjligheten att öka (eller minska) hastigheten på uppspelningen. I USA är detta redan en trend och kallas för “Speed Listening”. Men hur stor del, om något, av innehållet går förlorat om hastigheten ökar? Uppsatsen undersöker hur läsförståelsen ser ut när samma text spelas upp i två olika hastigheter. Två grupper om 24 respondenter vardera har jämförts genom att efter att ha lyssnat på en del av en ljudbok fått svara på en enkät kring innehållet. Dessa svar har sedan ställts emot varandra. Ingen signifikant skillnad har kunnat påvisas mellan gruppen som lyssnat på 1.0x och den grupp som lyssnat på 1.25x. I uppsatsens andra del presenteras resultatet av en kvalitativ undersökning där fyra författare fått svara på hur de ser på att deras berättelser eventuellt förändras när de spelas upp i snabbare hastighet. / Audio books has become a big player on the literary market, in Sweden alone the share is 23 percent as of 2018. In apps like Storytel you are able to increase (or decrease) the playback speed. This is already becoming a trend in USA where it’s even a definition for it: Speed Listening. But what happens with our reading comprehension when the speed is increased? The essay contains an experiment on 48 persons separated into two groups listening to the same audio book in two different speeds. The participants were then asked to take a test with questions on the story. The groups where compared and the results show no significant difference between the group that listened to 1.0x and the one that listened to 1.25x. The essay also presents the result of a survey where authors are answering questions on what they think about the possible transformation on their books stories when listened to at different paces.

Text-to-speech (TTS) systems are ubiquitous. From Siri to Alexa to customer service phone call options, listening in a real-world context requires language learners to interact with TTS. Traditionally, language learners report difficulty when listening due to various reasons including genre, text, task, speaker characteristics, and environmental factors. This naturally leads to the question: how do learners perceive TTS in instructional contexts? Since TTS allows controls on speaker characteristics (e.g. gender, regional variety, speed, etc.) the variety of materials that could be created--especially in contexts in which native speakers are difficult or expensive to find--makes this an attractive option. However, the effectiveness of TTS, namely, intelligibility, expressiveness, and naturalness, might be questioned for those instances in which the listening is more empathic than informational. In this study, we examined participants' comprehension of the factual details and speaker emotion as well as collected their opinions towards TTS systems for language learning. This study took place in an intensive English Program (IEP) with an academic focus at a large university in the United States. The participants had ACTFL proficiency levels ranging from Novice High to Advance Low. The participants were divided into two groups and through a counterbalanced design, were given a listening assessment in which half of the listening passages were recorded by voice actors, and other half were generated by the TTS system. After the assessment, the participants were given a survey that inquired their opinion towards TTS systems as learning tools. We did not find significant relationships between the voice delivery and participants' comprehension of details and speakers' emotions. Furthermore, more than half of the participants held positive views to using TTS systems as learning tools; thus, this study suggested the use of TTS systems when applicable.

The increased popularity of listening to audiobooks has influenced the discussion of literacy, pressuring the educational system to adjust accordingly. This study investigates if the audiobook is being used as a teaching tool in the upper secondary, SLA classroom and what attitude teachers have toward using audiobooks in their teaching as well as the reasons behind their attitudes. This research also investigates whether there is a correlation between age or student program and the usage of audiobooks. To gather data, a questionnaire was sent out to 46 English language teachers in upper secondary school in Halland. The questionnaire included open-ended questions which resulted in qualitative answers from 28 participants. The retrieved result proved that most upper secondary school English teachers are using the audiobook as a teaching tool, however, the reason for their usage differed. Some participants, who did not make use of the audiobook in their classroom still had a positive attitude towards using it and could present many beneficial aspects of it. The result contradicts the initial hypothesis about teachers showing reluctance using audiobooks in their teaching.

This is a study about active and passive music listening within the culture of dansband. The purpose of my study is to analyze how the concepts of active and passive music listening operate within the dansband genre and to shed light on the significance of dansband music for its listeners. In addition, I look at the dansband culture to explore how practitioners understand and motivates their engagement with dansband. To this end, I construct a theoretical framework building on previous literature about active and passive music listening. The data consists of qualitative interviews conducted with people who dances and are engaged within the dansband culture. According to the informants, there are a few themes that are more central than others within the dansband culture. I have presented these thematically under the headings “Dansband gives a kind of joy that otherwise is not experienced”, “The question of alcohol”, “Is it possible to separate the dancing from the music and vice versa?”, “Dansband music = music that you can dance to?” and “Skill level in the dance affects the role of music” in an attempt to contribute to a more complex picture of dansband. The results show that the concepts of active and passive music listening could be of better use within dansband if the definitions were wider, seen as a continuum where the concepts could be fluid, and more inclusive when it comes to contextual factors. This is also supported by previous research done in a context of music listening in everyday life.

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Listening, the most frequently used form of language skill, plays a significant role in daily communication and educational process. In spite of its importance, listening ability development has received only slight emphasis in language instruction. Nevertheless, U.S. college classrooms, where comprehensive listening serves as a primary channel for learning, require that students function effectively as listeners. It is therefore important for ESL programs to prepare students for successful listening in academic lectures by implementing authentic listening materials in the ESL classes. The fundamental purpose of this study was to examine the influences of aural authentic materials on listening ability in students of English as a second language. The secondary purposes of the study were to identify the learning strategies used by ESL students experiencing authentic listening texts and to determine the influences of authentic materials on ESL students' attitudes towards learning English. ESL students attending the High Intermediate Academic Listening and Vocabulary Development class at a language training center participated in this study. The sources of data for this descriptive study included interviews, questionnaires, and class observation. Analysis of the interviews and the self-evaluation questionnaire revealed that the use of authentic materials in this ESL classroom helped increase students' comfort level and their self-confidence to listen to the target language. Analysis of the class observation and the learning strategy questionnaire revealed that ESL students usually paid attention when someone was speaking English. Students also relied on outside sources such as dictionaries, or other people such as relatives to understand unfamiliar words. Finally, analysis of the class observation and the interview with students revealed that the use of aural authentic materials in ESL classroom had a positive effect on ESL students' motivation to learn the language. Recommendations are offered to ease learners' frustration that resulted from the use of unfamiliar vocabulary and the speed of authentic speech. / Ed. D.

The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of various rates of compressed speech instruction upon the listening comprehension of community college students. The primary objective of the study was to determine the degree to which two types of community college students, developmental and non-developmental, could recall factual and interential information from an uninterrupted forty-two-minute presentation which had been compressed to: 0% (175 words per minute), 33% (275 words per minute), and 57% (400 words per minute). The ability of each type of student and treatment type to recall information over time was measured. The study was conducted at a large urban community college in the Winter and Spring of 1980. One hundred thirty-one developmental and non-developmental subjects participated in the study. These two classifications of students were randomized into one of three groups. The three experimental groups heard the treatment material presented at a designated compression rate, and took a treatment post-test. All experimental subjects took a delayed post-test two weeks following treatment. The scores of one hundred twenty participants were used in the Lindquist Type III analysis of variance with repeated measures which was conducted on the post-tests and delayed post-tests. The results of the data analysis revealed significant differences in type of treatment, type of student, and time of testing with the following results: (1) subjects hearing the presentation at 0% compression had the highest scores. There was no significant difference between the scores of the 0% and 33% treatment groups. (2) non-developmental subjects scored significantly higher than developmental subjects on the treatments and (3) scores on the post-test were significantly higher than the delayed post-test. / Ed. D.

This experiment tested two hypotheses linking the right cerebral regulation of hostility and cardiovascular arousal. First, replication of previous research supporting heightened cardiovascular (systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate) reactivity among high hostile participants was attempted. Second, dynamic variations in functional cerebral asymmetry in response to pain (cold pressor) and emotional linguistic processing was measured. Low- and high-hostile participants were identified using the Cook Medley Hostility Scale (CMHS). All participants completed either the negative affective verbal learning test (Experiment 1) or the cold pressor paradigm (Experiment 2). Cardiovascular measures (SBP, DBP, and HR) were recorded and either dichotic listening procedures (Experiment 1) or tachistoscopic lexical recognition procedures (Experiment 2) were administered before and after the stressor. The primary finding of this research was greater left cerebral activation (decreased cardiovascular reactivity) following the dichotic phoneme listening and the tachistoscopic lexical recognition tasks and greater right cerebral activation following pain (cold pressor) and emotionally linguistic (affective verbal learning) stressors. / Master of Science