This article researches the attitude of learners to the oral activities in the Afrikaans Second Language classroom. The apparent discrepancy between learners' communicative competence and the oral year mark awarded by school-based educators is looked at. It seems as though neither educators nor learners participate very enthusiastically in oral activities in the classroom. Educators on the one hand appear to be preoccupied with assessment and the completion of a syllabus rather than with developing the communicative competence of learners. Learners on the other hand fear being censured and mocked by their peers and the assessment process most commonly used in the classroom compounds this anxiety. In Section 4 suggestions are made for reducing assessment anxiety so as to encourage learners to communicate spontaneously in Afrikaans. Learners of an additional language need to be provided with the opportunity to engage in oral activities that elicit the use of the target language in such a way that the learner's enthusiasm to participate neutralises the fear of using linguistic structures that they feel they have not yet mastered. OPSOMMING In hierdie artikel word leerders se houding !eenoor die mondelinge akliwiteite in die Afrikaans Tweede Taal klaskamer ondersoek. Die klaarblyklike wanverhouding lussen die leerders se kommunikaliewe vaardigheid en die mondeiinge jaarpunt wat deur onderwysers toegeken word, word ondersoek. Uit die studie blyk dit dat nog die leerders nog die onderwysers baie entoesiasties deelneem aan mondelinge aktiwiteite in die klaskamer. Die onderwysers blyk behep te wees met die insamel van punte en die voltooiing van leerplan items sonder om aandag te skenk aan die ontwikkeling van leerders se kommunikatiewe vaardighede. Die vrees wat leerders het vir die sensuur deur hulle portuurgroep, word versterk deur die evalueringsangs wat die assesseringsmetodes skep. Voorstelle word gemaak om leerders se kommunikasievrees en toelsangs te verminder om sodoende leerders aan te moedig om sponlaan in Afrikaans te kommunikeer. Leerders van 'n Tweede Taal moet die geleentheid gegun word vir mondelinge aktiwiteite wat taal-in-gebruik sal ontlok, waar die entoesiasme vir die taak die leerder sal laat vergeet van die taalkennis wat nog nie bemeester is nie en wat deur deelname aan die aktiwiteit ontdek word. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, 2001.

El presente volumen ofrece un corpus del castellano hablado que consiste en 20 entrevistas realizadas en el municipio de Getxo, País Vasco. En la breve introducción se resume el marco de la investigación en la que se recogieron los datos, se describen los criterios de selección de los informantes y se explican los aspectos más importantes de la convención de transcripción aplicada. / Bei dem vorliegenden Buch handelt es sich um ein Korpus des gesprochenen Spanisch. Es besteht aus 20 Interviews, die in der Gemeinde Getxo, Baskenland, erhoben wurden. In der kurzen Einleitung werden der Rahmen, in dem die Daten erhoben wurden, beschrieben, die der Informantenauswahl zugrunde gelegten Kriterien erklärt und die wichtigsten Aspekte der angewandten Transkriptionskonvention skizziert. / In this volume we offer a corpus of spoken Spanish consisting of 20 interviews collected in the municipality of Getxo, Basque Country. The short introduction describes the framework within which these data were collected, explains the criteria for the selection of the interviewees and outlines the most important aspects of the transcription conventions used.

This dissertation analyzes the production and functions of the conjunctions and, but, so, and then as discourse markers in English as a Second Language (ESL) students' oral narratives. Two types of narratives are analyzed: a non-guided, or spontaneous narrative, and a picture-guided-narrative. Narratives of forty three ESL students are included in the analysis as well as narratives from six native speakers.This study indicates that l) the ESL students attach a narrowly defined meaning to and, but, so, and then, 2) the ESL students use and, but, so, and then to link previous sentences or ideas. or refer back to ideas, less than for any other function, 3) the ESL students do not use a greater number of occurrences of and, but, so, and then in the picture-guided-narrative than in the non-guided-narrative, and 4) the ESL students misuse conjunctions in similar ways regardless of their native language (LI ); that is, although the influence from a student's Ll may result in specific problems of transfer, some patterns of conjunction errors are unrelated to the Ll and may be indicative of a more general problem. / Department of English

The Serbian-born, German university educated Nebojša Jovan Živković is a virtuoso percussionist and an acclaimed composer of a large body of innovative music. The concert percussion community has embraced several of these works and this document examines two solo pieces: “ULTIMATUM I for Solo Marimba,” Opus 24.1 (1990/91), and “Generally Spoken It Is Nothing But Rhythm for Percussion Solo,” Opus 21 (1994/95). The intention of this study is to be a practical performance guide to aid in making decisions that will inform expressive interpretation. Both works are examined in the context of the formal structure and how the motivic, thematic, and harmonic elements relate to the form. Performance aspects such as instrument selection, setup optimization, interpretation, utilization of expressive dynamics and articulations, dynamic balance, extended techniques, universal four-mallet techniques, practice strategies, and suggestions for preparation are included. Overall, the challenges of “ULTIMATUM I” are many—technical, musical, physical, and emotional. The composer’s comments concerning Opus 24.1 focus on an energetic and expressive attitude. The energy is written into the music, but the performer must communicate this ultimative energy to the audience. Opus 24.1 has an angular texture, complex rhythms, fast tempos, and extremely loud dynamics. The aggressivo middle section contains many of the greatest challenges of the piece. Inherent to any multi-percussion setup are technical challenges and these are compounded in “Generally Spoken“ due to the inclusion of the vibraphone. Opus 21 is an excellent addition to any percussion recital and a performance will captivate the audience—due in particular to the unique sonorities achieved between tuned almglocken, tuned toms, Chinese gongs, and vibraphone. The music of Živković may have limited appeal to listeners unaccustomed to solo concert percussion. More scholarly research into Živković’s personal history, Balkan heritage, and compositional concepts may help widen audience appreciation. / Literature review -- Ultimatum I for solo marimba opus 24.1 (1994/95) -- Generally spoken, it is nothing but rhythm for percussion solo opus 21 (1990/91) / School of Music

This paper is a phonetic investigation of radio newsreading on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) from 1937 to 1987. Recorded newscasts from the first, third, and fifth decades of CBC history are examined. Brief histories of CBC Radio news and of the Office of Broadcast Language are included, and the bibliography brings together much scattered reference material on CBC language. Traditional auditory evaluations of selected aspects of voice quality settings, vowel quality, and voice dynamics are supplemented by instrumental measurements. The descriptive terminology of Laver (1980) is applied to identify the voice quality settings. The majority of newsreaders examined display the vocal settings of lowered larynx, open jaw, and the use of creaky phonation. This configuration enhances vocal resonance and is shown to be an established newsreading model, perceived as suitable to the authoritative presentation of information. The patterns of vocal settings identified for three test decades (1937-47, 1957-67, 1977-87) are supported by the results of acoustic analyses. Individual, group, and across-group statistical tests were executed on the results of acoustical waveform analyses of the peripheral vowels k n u/ produced by each newsreader. To test vowel quality as a sociolinguistic variable, the CBC formant data were compared with compatible /ae o u/ data from informants of the Survey of Vancouver English (Gregg, 1984). The results show that the speech of CBC Radio newsreaders cannot be associated with any particular SES class of the Vancouver Survey. As a result of the extensive variation in production found for both informant groups, the high back vowel phoneme /u/ remains ill-defined for Canadian English. The voice dynamic component in CBC Radio newscasts has changed over the years. Measurements of speech rate show that the duration of pauses post-1966 are dramatically shorter than those pre-1966. Sentence length is shown not to have changed considerably, but phrases have been lengthened and pauses shortened. A marked reduction in the percentage of silent time within the newscast has been the result. It is suggested that pitch fluctuations are now used more extensively than pausing to structure the text orally. Despite the changes in continuity, the articulation rate of the newsreaders, measured in syllables per second, has remained constant. These results indicate that the newsreaders are exceptionally skilled speakers. The prevalent voice settings and the averaged acoustic measurements for CBC vowels are presented as representative of a readily identifiable and publicly recognized standard of formal spoken Canadian English.

Personal assistants need to allow the user to interact with the system in a flexible and adaptive way such as through spoken language dialogue. This research is aimed at achieving robust and effective dialogue management in such applications. We focus on an application, the Smart Personal Assistant (SPA), in which the user can use a variety of devices to interact with a collection of personal assistants, each specializing in a task domain. The current implementation of the SPA contains an e-mail management agent and a calendar agent that the user can interact with through a spoken dialogue and a graphical interface on PDAs. The user-system interaction is handled by a Dialogue Manager agent. We propose an agent-based approach that makes use of a BDI agent architecture for dialogue modelling and control. The Dialogue Manager agent of the SPA acts as the central point for maintaining coherent user-system interaction and coordinating the activities of the assistants. The dialogue model consists of a set of complex but modular plans for handling communicative goals. The dialogue control flow emerges automatically as the result of the agent???s plan selection by the BDI interpreter. In addition the Dialogue Manager maintains the conversational context, the domainspecific knowledge and the user model in its internal beliefs. We also consider the problem of dialogue adaptation in such agent-based dialogue systems. We present a novel way of integrating learning into a BDI architecture so that the agent can learn to select the most suitable plan among those applicable in the current context. This enables the Dialogue Manager agent to tailor its responses according to the conversational context and the user???s physical context, devices and preferences. Finally, we report the evaluation results, which indicate the robustness and effectiveness of the dialogue model in handling a range of users.

In 2003 the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) unveiled their new junior high school (JHS) English as a Foreign Language (EFL) policy, which focused strongly on oral communication. Although there is evidence of policy noncompliance in schools until now there has been no English language research on the attitudes or practices of Japanese teachers of English (JTEs), or the views of the students, and their parents in regards to teaching/learning English speaking skills. The research, based on JHSs in a mid-sized Japanese city (pop. 475,000 approx.), focused predominantly on JTEs, but also included students, and their parents. Focus group sessions, questionnaires, and one-on-one interviews were used to collect data. The study reveals that learning English speaking skills is considered important, but passing the senior high school (SHS) entrance examination is the main concern and so, test impact from the SHS entrance examination exerts the greatest pressure on JHS JTEs. The JTEs also perceive themselves as facing other issues such as student motivation, JTE speaking proficiency, and large class sizes. Another finding is that JTEs appear to receive inadequate training– pre- and inservice– resulting in issues, such as a reliance on traditional methods (yakudoku), which are not in accordance with MEXT’s intentions, and JTE proficiency test achievement levels lower than those desired by MEXT. As a result of these issues gaps exist between MEXT JHS EFL policies and actual teaching practices, and have unfortunately led to a situation where JTEs believe that MEXT does not care about or understand the teaching environment. The study concludes that implementation of MEXT’s policy require a better match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy, a decrease in class sizes, and JTEs receiving more adequate training. A more positive relationship between MEXT and JTEs would result from these two groups working collaboratively when designing JHS EFL policies and could better achieve a match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy.

In 2003 the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) unveiled their new junior high school (JHS) English as a Foreign Language (EFL) policy, which focused strongly on oral communication. Although there is evidence of policy noncompliance in schools until now there has been no English language research on the attitudes or practices of Japanese teachers of English (JTEs), or the views of the students, and their parents in regards to teaching/learning English speaking skills. The research, based on JHSs in a mid-sized Japanese city (pop. 475,000 approx.), focused predominantly on JTEs, but also included students, and their parents. Focus group sessions, questionnaires, and one-on-one interviews were used to collect data. The study reveals that learning English speaking skills is considered important, but passing the senior high school (SHS) entrance examination is the main concern and so, test impact from the SHS entrance examination exerts the greatest pressure on JHS JTEs. The JTEs also perceive themselves as facing other issues such as student motivation, JTE speaking proficiency, and large class sizes. Another finding is that JTEs appear to receive inadequate training– pre- and inservice– resulting in issues, such as a reliance on traditional methods (yakudoku), which are not in accordance with MEXT’s intentions, and JTE proficiency test achievement levels lower than those desired by MEXT. As a result of these issues gaps exist between MEXT JHS EFL policies and actual teaching practices, and have unfortunately led to a situation where JTEs believe that MEXT does not care about or understand the teaching environment. The study concludes that implementation of MEXT’s policy require a better match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy, a decrease in class sizes, and JTEs receiving more adequate training. A more positive relationship between MEXT and JTEs would result from these two groups working collaboratively when designing JHS EFL policies and could better achieve a match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy.

In 2003 the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) unveiled their new junior high school (JHS) English as a Foreign Language (EFL) policy, which focused strongly on oral communication. Although there is evidence of policy noncompliance in schools until now there has been no English language research on the attitudes or practices of Japanese teachers of English (JTEs), or the views of the students, and their parents in regards to teaching/learning English speaking skills. The research, based on JHSs in a mid-sized Japanese city (pop. 475,000 approx.), focused predominantly on JTEs, but also included students, and their parents. Focus group sessions, questionnaires, and one-on-one interviews were used to collect data. The study reveals that learning English speaking skills is considered important, but passing the senior high school (SHS) entrance examination is the main concern and so, test impact from the SHS entrance examination exerts the greatest pressure on JHS JTEs. The JTEs also perceive themselves as facing other issues such as student motivation, JTE speaking proficiency, and large class sizes. Another finding is that JTEs appear to receive inadequate training– pre- and inservice– resulting in issues, such as a reliance on traditional methods (yakudoku), which are not in accordance with MEXT’s intentions, and JTE proficiency test achievement levels lower than those desired by MEXT. As a result of these issues gaps exist between MEXT JHS EFL policies and actual teaching practices, and have unfortunately led to a situation where JTEs believe that MEXT does not care about or understand the teaching environment. The study concludes that implementation of MEXT’s policy require a better match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy, a decrease in class sizes, and JTEs receiving more adequate training. A more positive relationship between MEXT and JTEs would result from these two groups working collaboratively when designing JHS EFL policies and could better achieve a match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy.

In 2003 the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) unveiled their new junior high school (JHS) English as a Foreign Language (EFL) policy, which focused strongly on oral communication. Although there is evidence of policy noncompliance in schools until now there has been no English language research on the attitudes or practices of Japanese teachers of English (JTEs), or the views of the students, and their parents in regards to teaching/learning English speaking skills. The research, based on JHSs in a mid-sized Japanese city (pop. 475,000 approx.), focused predominantly on JTEs, but also included students, and their parents. Focus group sessions, questionnaires, and one-on-one interviews were used to collect data. The study reveals that learning English speaking skills is considered important, but passing the senior high school (SHS) entrance examination is the main concern and so, test impact from the SHS entrance examination exerts the greatest pressure on JHS JTEs. The JTEs also perceive themselves as facing other issues such as student motivation, JTE speaking proficiency, and large class sizes. Another finding is that JTEs appear to receive inadequate training– pre- and inservice– resulting in issues, such as a reliance on traditional methods (yakudoku), which are not in accordance with MEXT’s intentions, and JTE proficiency test achievement levels lower than those desired by MEXT. As a result of these issues gaps exist between MEXT JHS EFL policies and actual teaching practices, and have unfortunately led to a situation where JTEs believe that MEXT does not care about or understand the teaching environment. The study concludes that implementation of MEXT’s policy require a better match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy, a decrease in class sizes, and JTEs receiving more adequate training. A more positive relationship between MEXT and JTEs would result from these two groups working collaboratively when designing JHS EFL policies and could better achieve a match between the SHS entrance examination and JHS EFL policy.