Mahdi Duris

Mahdi Duris
Iowa State University | ISU · Department of English

Master of Arts

About

11
Publications
1,102
Reads
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6
Citations
Introduction
I’m a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate in Applied Linguistics and Technology (ALT) at Iowa State University. My research interest is in pronunciation, phonetics, and phonology. Specifically, the automation of intelligibility ratings by way of the Acoustic Masking and Intelligibility (AMI) theory. I also conduct research on Mispronunciation Detection and Diagnosis (MDD) systems.
Additional affiliations
January 2022 - present
Iowa State University
Position
  • Research Assistant
Description
  • Research Assistant to Dr. John M. Levis. Project: Adaptive explicit and implicit feedback in second language pronunciation training. Research funded by the National Science Foundation (2020).
August 2020 - present
Iowa State University
Position
  • Instructor
Description
  • Instructor for ENGL 101B: English for Native Speakers of Other Languages: Academic English. Instructor for SP CM 212: Fundamentals of Public Speaking.
August 2020 - present
Iowa State University
Position
  • Global Online Course Mentor
Description
  • Mentor for the Online Professional English Network (OPEN), previously knows as American English (AE) E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and administered by FHI 360
Education
August 2020 - May 2025
Iowa State University
Field of study
  • Applied Linguistics and Technology
August 2018 - May 2020
St. Cloud State University
Field of study
  • Teaching English as a Second Language
June 2013 - July 2013
University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations
Field of study
  • Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Publications

Publications (11)
Poster
Full-text available
It is commonly argued that lexical words receive prosodic prominence, whereas Non-Lexical Words (NLWs) are non-prominent in spoken discourse. Yet, emergent evidence from spoken corpora preliminarily suggested that this distinction might not be completely accurate as NLWs can be situationally informative and, therefore, assigned prominence. Using a...
Article
Full-text available
This study presents an instrumental phonetic account of the intelligibility of Saudi Spoken English (SSE) consonants. Few studies have investigated the spoken consonants of highly proficient EFL teachers in Saudi Arabia. This research informs on how intelligible SSE consonants are perceived by General American English (GAE) listeners using the Koff...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Presentation
Full-text available
This study presents an instrumental phonetic account of the intelligibility of Saudi Spoken English (SSE) consonants. Few studies have investigated the spoken consonants of highly proficient EFL teachers in Saudi Arabia. This research informs on how intelligible SSE consonants are perceived by General American English (GAE) listeners using the Koff...
Article
Full-text available
Koffi (2019) investigated the acoustic correlates that Arabic L2 speakers of English use to encode lexical stress. This study replicates the same methodology and uses the same acoustic correlates and the same Just Noticeable Difference (JND) thresholds. Whereas Koffi (2019) focused on a general population of Arabic speakers of English, the current...
Poster
Full-text available
Intelligibility of second language (L2) speakers is typically measured using dictation, transcription and/or listening comprehension exercises performed by native (L1) speakers (Kang, et al., 2017). However, Koffi’s (2019) Acoustic Masking and Intelligibility (AMI) theory implies that intelligibility of vowels can be measured instrumentally by exam...
Article
Full-text available
This article describes the acoustic characteristics of female Saudi-accented English vowels and uses acoustic phonetic measurements to assess the intelligibility of their vowels. Peterson & Barney’s (1952) and Hillenbrand et al.’s (1995) methodology is slightly modified. Whereas their studies extracted various measurements, including F1 and F2 of v...
Thesis
Full-text available
This thesis serves two purposes. The first is to describe Saudi-accented English vowels acoustically. The second is to rely on the measurements obtained from the acoustic phonetic analyses to assess the intelligibility of their vowels. The methodology pioneered by Peterson and Barney (1952) and replicated by Hillenbrand, Getty, Clark & Wheeler (199...
Article
Full-text available
English is the main foreign language in schools in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Even though the Kingdom has made considerable budgetary sacrifices to raise English proficiency in the country, the results do not yet match expectations. According to English First (EF), in 2019, Saudi Arabia ranked “very low” on the English Proficiency Index (EPI). We...
Poster
Full-text available
This pilot study examined the strategies that speakers of American English employ in producing Arabic [ʔ]. We have measured, compared, and contrasted the VOT produced by English speakers to those of Arabic speakers. Background information A B [saʔala] [suʔaːl] [aʔkal] [qaɾaʔa] [ɾaʔs].

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