Abstract:

Different forms of online presentation (including online teaching) became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper presents the results of a study aimed at testing the hypothesis that when the lecturer reads a text during online presentation, the processing of the material by listeners and their subjective assessment of the presentation are worse compared to when the lecturer explains the material in his or her own words. There are many studies that compare the linguistic features of reading and spontaneous speech (de Silva et al. 2003; Nakamura et al. 2008, etc.), or test whether a listener can distinguish one type of speech from another (Blaauw 1994; Stepanova 2006), but there is no data on how the type of oral text affects mastering of the material during an online lecture.
The stimuli in the experiments were video recordings of flash talks (short presentations of a study or idea usually accompanied by slides). Four speakers recorded flash talks where they delivered prepared monologues but did not read. We transcribed their speech, asked them to read the transcripts, and record their reading on video. The speakers in Experiment 1 had experience in giving flash talks, while the speakers in Experiment 2 had no such experience.
The participants in each experiment got two videos from two different speakers; the format of the presentation (reading or speaking) could be either different or the same within a pair. The participants answered eight questions about the content of the talks and gave subjective assessments of them on three scales: clarity, interestingness, and how good the format of presentation was. We had 145 participants (109 female) in Experiment 1 and 91 participants (70 female) in Experiment 2. Each participant took part only in one experiment.
Linear regression was used for the analysis. The dependent variables were the number of correct answers to questions and the participants' ratings on each of three mentioned above scales. The independent variables were the spontaneity of speech (reading or speaking), the speaker's experience in giving flash talks (yes or no), and whether the participants recognized the speaker (yes or no). Despite some differences in the phonetic features of reading and prepared monologues (e.g., the overall duration of talks and the number of unfilled pauses), the presentation format did not affect either the mastering of information or the subjective assessments of talks (p>.05 in both experiments). The subjective assessments were higher for experienced speakers (p<.001 for all three scales). The familiarity with the speaker influenced the results: participants who recognized the speaker gave more correct answers to the questions (p<.001) and rated the talk with a familiar speaker as more interesting (p=.049).
The results we obtained can be explained by the fact that the speakers did not read the originally written text, but a transcript of their prepared monologues, which in their structure differ from the written text. In our further experiments, we plan to include reading a pre-prepared written text as the third type of stimuli. Moreover, in the current study, we considered talks that lasted only a few minutes. Perhaps, with longer stimuli, the difference between reading and prepared monologue is more pronounced.
Research supported by the grant #21-18-00429 “Cognitive mechanisms of multimodal information processing: text type & type of recipient” from the Russian Science Foundation.

Keywords:

Reading, prepared speech, speech perception, Russian.