{"id":129,"date":"2023-09-22T10:28:43","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T17:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/?page_id=129"},"modified":"2023-09-22T10:40:40","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T17:40:40","slug":"task-3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/task-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Task 3: Voice to Text"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Context:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I decided to record 5 minutes of myself rehearsing with my Grade 9 Concert Band class. We were doing warmups and talking about concepts such as breathing, airflow and articulation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I used the dictation feature on the 2022 version of Microsoft Word with the built-in Microsoft on my Dell work laptop.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I teach with a microphone through an external sound system. That will also affect the outcome with the dictation feature.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>The ensemble may be playing on their instruments while I can talking through the microphone<\/li>\n<li>I have inserted my Speech-To-Text (STT) transcript for your reference here: <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/task-3\/etec-540-task-3-transcript\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-134\">ETEC 540 Task 3 Transcript<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The dictation is extremely inaccurate and unfiltered in comparison to conventions of written English. From grammar to comprehension, there are areas of improvement within the software capabilities to be successfully used. If a third-party read over the dialogue, I believe that the person would not be able to comprehend what is occurring in this conversation without prior context.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The dictation is also a testament to spoken English compared to written English (proper English). There are cultural slangs, incomplete sentences that my Grade 3 classroom teacher would be disappointed in. The way people think of language when speaking (at least for myself), is different from the thought process in written English. It opened my eyes on some of the tendencies I have when speaking \u201cwithout thinking\u201d. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In written English there can be a third party narrator guiding and providing context to the audience member. I find that a critical role in the understanding of text in the English language.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Amalia E. Gnanadesikan\u00a0 mentions that phonemes and syllables can be recognized by software however it does not have the capability to record speech. Speech can be defined as the emotion and subtle nuances such as tone, intonation, tempo and pitch.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cTechnicalities\u00a0 aside,\u00a0 an\u00a0 important\u00a0 point\u00a0 here\u00a0 about\u00a0 these\u00a0 abstract phonemes\u00a0 and\u00a0 syllables\u00a0 is\u00a0 that\u00a0 although\u00a0 writing\u00a0 represents\u00a0 information\u00a0 about\u00a0 how\u00a0 words\u00a0 are\u00a0 pronounced,\u00a0 it\u00a0 does\u00a0 not\u00a0 record\u00a0 the\u00a0 identifying\u00a0 details\u00a0 of\u00a0 any\u00a0 individual\u00a0 utterance\u00a0 of\u00a0 those\u00a0 words.\u00a0 It\u00a0 records\u00a0 language, but not actual speech. Even in cases of dictation or courtroom stenographer,\u00a0 much\u00a0 information\u00a0 about\u00a0 the\u00a0 actual\u00a0 speech\u00a0 is\u00a0 lost,\u00a0 such as\u00a0 intonation\u00a0 and\u00a0 emotional\u00a0 content.\u201d (Gnanadesikan, 2008)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is interesting to note as a music educator, there are many software available that have the capability to analyze and interpret data on intonation and pitch in real time. For example, a software called SmartMusic, allows a student to perform etudes while the software displays incorrect pitch, tuning, rhythm and volume. With this knowledge, I believe there is a possibility for speech-to-text dictation to improve. It may just require more focus on the software.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I can also understand that since it is not a common software used among the general population, there may not be a need to improve the software.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What is &#8220;wrong&#8221; in the text? What is &#8220;right&#8221;?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Wrongs:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The next is quite broken in relation to \u201cproper\u201d English. When one writes a sentence there is often information, there is a thought however in my text, oftentimes there were fragmentations and a lack of cohesiveness throughout the entire script.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There were many grammatical errors from tenses to sentence structure. I wonder if it is from my own speech or from the interpretation of the dictation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Surprisingly there were words that were spelled incorrectly. It may be due to the vocabulary utilized during our music ensembles rehearsal time. Vocabulary that is uncommon in regular dialogue language were often the spelling errors\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What was right:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The one thing that felt \u201cright\u201d was that the software kept pace with my speech throughout the entire 5 minutes. There were moments where the ensemble would play while I was talking and surprisingly the software kept up. At no point does \u201cnoise pollution\u201d confuse the software from typing out my speech. The efficiency of the technology is faster compared to manual transcription.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Overall thoughts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Initially as I was doing my readings for the week, I believed that STT technologies would be quite useful in terms of accessibility. The idea of doing the 5 minute recording came from the concept of using STT for individuals with hearing impairments and\/or language barriers. After the recording is only 5 minutes, there is a feeling that STT technology is simply unreliable. There are accuracy concerns, technical barriers, learning curves to use the software efficiently and hardware limitations as well. STT is a technology that I would categorize as \u201cniche\u201d. It is like the car brand Lucid putting a drone in the hood of their electric car. In the advertisement, it showed all the unique capabilities of having a drone while driving, however in practice, it is not reliable to use. The thought of STT technology in its usage is quite unlimited. From accessibility support to connecting with cultures around the world without language barriers however the technology is not at a point where the general population can use it reliably. Perhaps there are useful situations that I have not been exposed to yet but as a consumer, after 5 minutes of its utilization, I was turned off from it. On a bright note to end, I am excited to see STT technology advance as the application in a variety of contexts. I could see it being used in many situations from a classroom, to a courthouse to even a hospital. The future of STT is able to break language barriers and that thought is truly exciting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>References:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2008). <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (Vol. 8). John Wiley &amp; Sons.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Ong, W.J. (2002). Chapter 1: The orality of language. In\u00a0<em>Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word\u00a0<\/em>(pp. 5-16). Routledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context: I decided to record 5 minutes of myself rehearsing with my Grade 9 Concert Band class. We were doing warmups and talking about concepts such as breathing, airflow and articulation. I used the dictation feature on the 2022 version of Microsoft Word with the built-in Microsoft on my Dell work laptop. I teach with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72039,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-129","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/129\/revisions\/137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/bobbyhan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}