Development of educational measurement on speech and communication abilities focusing on the cognition of speech sounds.

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As people engage in conversations, they continuously assume the partners' personalities and adjust their ways of speaking. Especially in the case of telephone conversations, speech itself is the information to assume speaker's personalities and other traits.This study investigated the following: 1) the formation of personality impressions along with speech sound, 2) the relationship of learner's personality traits and learning styles to his or her English test scores.Regarding the first part of the study, Prosodic features such as speech rate, pitch, pauses, and intonations were manipulated to synthesize the continua of speech stimuli. Participants were asked to rate their impressions on these stimuli using Big Five personality traits. The results indicated that each trait had a distinctive change pattern, while reversed U-shape patterns were their common characteristics. Each personality trait could be estimated with a quadratic regression equation. By integrating these five equations … More , the whole personality impression could be re-constructed. This procedure can be applied to synthesize speech sounds with artificial personalities.In the second part of the study, utilized a part of the monitor examinations by the National Center for University Entrance Examinations. The English section included grammar and reading tests and listening comprehension tests. After completing the examination, each participant completed a questionnaire based on the Big Five personality scale and an inventory regarding the participant's styles of learning English. Path analysis of personality traits, learning styles, and English test performances suggested that a learner's personality traits may affect his or her learning styles Furthermore, the learning styles may affect his or her overall performance in English as well as the performance patterns between the grammar and reading score and the listening comprehension score.These findings provide suggestions on supporting English language learners to improve listening comprehension skills. Less