Increasing involvement with students at the University of Namibia has indicated their overall difficulty with comprehending and recalling information from oral content lectures. It has also been observed that in general very little attention is given to the development of listening skills in L2 ESP and EAP courses. For this study, I conducted a quasi-experiment to determine whether the recognition and interpretation of discourse markers will enhance students' listening comprehension in academic lectures. Students were tested to determine their comprehension of content information in a video-taped lecture. Qualitative data were collected by means of a questionnaire. After an intervention period of eight weeks, where the experimental group received strategy training in the recognition and interpretation of discourse markers in spoken texts, both groups were again tested. Their results were statistically compared. I also looked at related findings of other researchers. Finally, aspects for possible future research will also be considered. / English Studies / MA - (Specialisation in TESOL)

This project discusses the importance of accurate note-taking for D/deaf and hard of hearing students who have accomodation requirements and offers innovative opportunities to improve the student experience in order to encourage more D/deaf and hard of hearing individuals to persue academia. It also includes a linguistic analysis of speech singals that correspond to transcription output errors produced by speech-to-text programs, which can be utilized to advance and improve speech recognition systems. / In hopes to encourage more D/deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students to pursue academia, speech-to-text has been suggested to address notetaking issues. This research examined several transcripts created by two untrained speech-to-text programs, Ava and Otter, using 11 different speakers in academic contexts. Observations regarding functionality and error analysis are detailed in this thesis. This project has several objectives, including: 1) to outline how the DHH students’ experience differs from other note-taking needs; 2) to use linguistic analysis to understand how transcript accuracy converts to real-world use and to investigate why errors occur; and 3) to describe what needs to be addressed before assigning DHH students with a captioning service. Results from a focus group showed that current notetaking services are problematic, and that automatic captioning may solve some issues, but some errors are detrimental as it is particularly difficult for DHH students to identify and fix errors within transcripts. Transcripts produced by the programs were difficult to read, as outputs lacked accurate utterance breaks and contained poor punctuation. The captioning of scripted speech was more accurate than that of spontaneous speech for native and most non-native English speakers. An analysis of errors showed that some errors are less severe than others; in response, we offer an alternative way to view errors: as insignificant, obvious, or critical errors. Errors are caused by either the program’s inability to identify various items, such as word breaks, abbreviations, and numbers, or a blend of various speaker factors including: assimilation, vowel approximation, epenthesis, phoneme reduction, and overall intelligibility. Both programs worked best with intelligible speech, as measured by human perception. Speech rate trends were surprising: Otter seemed to prefer fast speech from native English speakers and Ava preferred, as expected, slow speech, but results differed between scripted and spontaneous speech. Correlations of accuracy and fundamental frequencies showed conflicting results. Some reasons for errors could not be determined without knowing more about how the systems were programed. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / In hopes to encourage more D/deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students to pursue academia, automatic captioning has been suggested to address notetaking issues. Captioning programs use speech recognition (SR) technology to caption lectures in real-time and produce a transcript afterwards. This research examined several transcripts created by two untrained speech-to-text programs, Ava and Otter, using 11 different speakers. Observations regarding functionality and error analysis are detailed in this thesis. The project has several objectives: 1) to outline how the DHH students’ experience differs from other note-taking needs; 2) to use linguistic analysis to understand how transcript accuracy converts to real-world use and to investigate why errors occur; and 3) to describe what needs to be addressed before assigning DHH students with a captioning service. Results from a focus group showed that current notetaking services are problematic, and that automatic captioning may solve some issues, but some types of errors are detrimental as it is particularly difficult for DHH students to identify and fix errors within transcripts. Transcripts produced by the programs were difficult to read, as outputs contain poor punctuation and lack breaks between thoughts. Captioning of scripted speech was more accurate than that of spontaneous speech for native and most non-native English speakers; and an analysis of errors showed that some errors are less severe than others. In response, we offer an alternative way to view errors: as insignificant, obvious, or critical errors. Errors are caused by either the program’s inability to identify various items, such as word breaks, abbreviations, and numbers, or a blend of various speaker factors. Both programs worked best with intelligible speech; One seemed to prefer fast speech from native English speakers and the other preferred slow speech; a preference of male or female voices showed conflicting results. Some reasons for errors could not be determined, as one would have to observe how the systems were programed.

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Students who study through the medium of a second language often have reading/listening comprehension and general study problems. This study focuses on particular aspects of these problems only, namely, identification of main ideas, summarisation and note-taking. The aim of this study was w determine the effect of teaching L2 students a combination of metacognitive and cognitive strategies for reading and listening comprehension (the main idea, summarising and note-taking by means of dictation). An intervention programme was designed in order to teach students these skills. There were ten students in both the experimental and the control groups. Both groups were assessed before and after the intervention programme. The findings reveal that the intervention was successful, with the experimental group showing greater improvement than the control group. The findings of this study have implications for second language tertiary learning and teaching theory and practice / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)

Cette thèse se propose d’étudier les différents types de traitement utilisés par des locuteurs de français L1 et des apprenants étrangers de français lors de la prise de notes dans cette langue, à partir du discours oral magistral. Ce travail qui s’inscrit dans une perspective psycholinguistique vise à analyser la conformité et la fidélité sémantique et formelle des textes-cibles (les productions) par rapport au texte-source (le discours émis). Le cadre théorique de la thèse analyse différentes approches et taxinomies relatives aux stratégies communicatives en langue étrangère, notamment celle de Kellerman, dans le but de dégager une typologie des stratégies de traitement à étudier dans les données empiriques relevées. Afin d’étudier l’efficacité des prises de notes des participants à l’enquête observés, nous avons conçu une grille d’analyse intitulée une « grille de matrices » permettant d’analyser d’une part, le discours professoral (par la méthode de l’analyse discursive de Van Dijk) et d’identifier et de quantifier différents procédés audiographiques déployés par les noteurs observés. A l’issue d’analyses portant sur la forme et le fond des textes recueillis, nous avons dégagé des résultats détaillés relatifs à l’efficacité de la prise de notes des participants observés. Au terme des analyses, des propositions didactiques en matière de prise de notes en langue maternelle et étrangère sont formulées. / This thesis intends to study different types of treatments used by speakers of French L1 and foreign learners of French for note-taking during an oral lecture in that language. From a psycholinguistic perspective, this assignment aims to analyze compliance and definite semantic fidelity of targets-texts (productions) in comparison with the source-text (the issued speech). The theoretical context of the thesis analyzes different approaches and taxonomies relating to conversational strategies in a foreign language notably that of Kellerman, with the intention of identifying a typology of treatment strategies to be studied in gathered empirical data. To study the effectiveness of the participants’ note-taking, we conceived an analysis grid called “matrix grid” allowing to analyze, on one hand, professorial speech (through the method of the discursive analysis of Van Dijk) and on the other hand, to identify and quantify different audiographique techniques used by examined note takers. After analyzing the form and semantic content of the gathered texts, we formulated detailed results relating to the effectiveness of the examined participants’ note-taking. As a consequence of these analyses, didactic proposals in note-taking in a native or foreign language were formulated.

Students who study through the medium of a second language often have reading/listening comprehension and general study problems. This study focuses on particular aspects of these problems only, namely, identification of main ideas, summarisation and note-taking. The aim of this study was w determine the effect of teaching L2 students a combination of metacognitive and cognitive strategies for reading and listening comprehension (the main idea, summarising and note-taking by means of dictation). An intervention programme was designed in order to teach students these skills. There were ten students in both the experimental and the control groups. Both groups were assessed before and after the intervention programme. The findings reveal that the intervention was successful, with the experimental group showing greater improvement than the control group. The findings of this study have implications for second language tertiary learning and teaching theory and practice / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)

[pt] Recentemente, o tópico de Gestão de Conhecimento Pessoal vem ganhando muita popularidade. Ilustrado pelo rápido crescimento de aplicativos como Notion, Obsidian, e Roam Research e da aparição de livros como How to Take Smart Notes e Building a Second Brain. Contudo, ainda é uma área que não foi fortemente envolvida pelo Processamento de Linguagem Natural (NLP). Isso abre uma bela oportunidade para a aplicação de NLP em operações com conhecimento. Nosso objetivo é o desenvolvimento de um sistema de software que utiliza NLP e aplicatovps de anotação para transformar uma coleção de textos isolados em uma coleção de textos interconectada e inter-navegável. Isso é feito usando mecanismos de navegação baseados em conceitos mencionados e recomendações semânticas. Neste trabalho apresentamos a metodologia para construir o sistema, demonstrações com exemplos palpáveis, assim como uma avaliação para determinar a coerência dos resultados. / [en] Recently, the topic of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) has seen a surge in popularity. This is illustrated by the accelerated growth of apps such as Notion, Obsidian, and Roam Research, and the appearance of books like How to Take Smart Notes and Building a Second Brain. However, the area of PKM has not seen much integration with the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). This opens up an interesting opportunity to apply NLP techniques to knowledge operations tasks. Our objective is the development of a Software System that uses NLP and note-taking apps to transform a siloed text collection into an interconnected and inter-navigable text collection. The system uses navigation mechanisms based on shared concepts and semantic relatedness between texts. In this study, we present a methodology to build this system, the research context, demonstrations using examples, and an evaluation to determine if the system functions properly and if the proposed connections are coherent.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Anatomy A215: Basic Human Anatomy (Anat A215) is an undergraduate human anatomy course at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) that serves as a requirement for many degree programs at IUB. The difficulty of the course, coupled with pressure to achieve grades for admittance into specific programs, has resulted in high remediation rates. In an attempt to help students to improve their study habits and metacognitive skills Medical Sciences M100: Improving Learning Skills in Anatomy (MSCI M100) was developed. MSCI M100 is an undergraduate course at IUB which is taught concurrently with Anat A215, with the hopes of promoting academic success in Anat A215. This multifaceted study was designed to analyze the factors associated with students who remediate Anat A215, to predict at-risk students in future semesters, and assess the effectiveness of MSCI M100. The first facet involved analysis of Anat A215 students’ demographic information and class performance data from the spring semester of 2004 through the spring semester of 2010. Results of data analysis can be used by IUB instructors and academic advisors to identify students at risk for remediating, as well as provide other undergraduate anatomy instructors across the U.S. with potential risk factors associated with remediation. The second facet of this research involved analyzing MSCI M100 course assignments to determine if there are improvements in student study habits and metacognitive skills. This investigation involved quantitative analysis of study logs and a learning attitudes survey, as well as a thorough inductive analysis of students’ weekly journal entries. Lastly, Anat A215 exam scores and final course grades for students who completed MSCI M100 and students who did not complete MSCI M100 were compared. Results from these analyses show promising improvements in students’ metacognition and study habits, but further research will better demonstrate the efficacy of MSCI M100.