title: New sentence recognition materials developed using a basic non-native English lexicon.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The objective of this project was to develop new sentence test materials drawing on a basic non-native English lexicon that could be used to test speech recognition for various listener populations. These materials have been designed to provide a test tool that is less linguistically biased, compared with materials that are currently available, for sentence recognition for non-native as well as native speakers of English.
  
  
  METHODS
  One hundred non-native speakers of English were interviewed on a range of 20 conversational topics. Over 26 hr of recorded non-native English speech were transcribed. These transcriptions were used to create a lexicon of over 4,000 unique words. The words from this lexicon were used to create the new materials based on a simple syntactic sentence structure frame.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Twenty lists of 25 sentences were developed. Each sentence has 4 keywords, providing 100 keywords per list. Lists were equated for rate of occurrence of keywords in lexicon, high-frequency count (total number of affricates and fricatives), number of syllables, and distribution of syntactic structure. Listening-in-noise results for native-English-speaking, normal-hearing listeners indicated similar performance across lists.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The Basic English Lexicon materials provide a large set of sentences for native and non-native English speech-recognition testing.
authors.affiliation: Queens College of the City University of New York, Flushing, USA. lauren.calandruccio@med.unc.edu
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Calandruccio
authors.forename: Rajka
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Smiljanic
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006320:Hearing Tests / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests / Q000379:methods*; D013067:Speech Perception; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult