olga pustovalova

Olga Pustovalova, State University of Moldova

pustovalova.olga@gmail.com

Scientific advisor: Gheorghe Căpăţână, Ph.D.

Voice output

1. Voice recordings2. Text-to-speech (TTS)

TTS:Software that can read electronic

texts automatically.Language-dependent.

Advantages

Auditory learning style

Fewer eyestrainSeveral tasks at a

time

Accessibility

Disadvantages

Quality issuesBandwidth issues

Non-auditory learning styles?

Search, scanning, scrolling?

Research topic

Voice output

Speech synthesis (TTS)

Speech synthesis based on a limited-domain dictionary

Use casesUse cases ArchitecturesArchitectures

Usage of TTS

Unlimited dictionary: Lower quality.Texts of any type.

Limited dictionary:Higher quality.Texts of specific structure.

E.g. Julia Zhang (2004). Language Generation and Speech Synthesis in Dialogues for Language Learning

Difficult and exhausting to listen.

Strange intonations, incorrect accents and pauses, unnatural way of reading.

Most advanced tools not available for free.

First impressions

Text-to-speech. Unlimited dictionary.Russian TTS: user experience studies. 2008

Higher motivation to use TTS.

It took several days to get comfortable with synthesized voice.

Multi-tasking: listening while doing something else. Computer vs. creating audio-files for music players.

Long-term users

Text-to-speech. Unlimited dictionary.Russian TTS: user experience studies. 2008

Subjective quality

Naturalness and intelligibility. Questionnaires. Modified mean opinion score (MOS).

Objective quality

Viswanathan (2005)Rix, Hollier (1993-2001)

Pitch, jitter, harmonic-to-noise ratio.

TTS in daily life: studies of user

experience

•First impressions may discourage

users

•TTS → study on the go (mp3 players)

Preliminary results

Ways of integrating TTS:

preliminary drafts of architecture.