Proc. of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), Vol. 1, pp. 317-320, Barcelona, 2003
Using Arai’s vocal tract models for education in Phonetics
T. Lander and T. Arai
Abstract: Dr.Arai’s vocal tract models are used for instruction in a three- day Acoustic Phonetics short couse taught at Northwest Chiristian College in Eugene, Oregon, as a part of the year 2002 Oregon Summer Institute of Linguistics. Arai’s vocal tract models, designed as educational tools, are found to help students grasp basic concepts in acoustic phonetics, particularly source filter theory. A perceptual experiment investigates human perception of the output of the medels at a fine phonetic level. A questionnaire reveals that students used the models to improve vowel discrimination during the perceptual experiment, and a written exam reveals students’ solid understanding of the interaction between sourcefilter theory. Finally, we examine the students’ label selections for the perceptual study and discuss implications for speech annotation.