This paper brings task-based language teaching (TBLT) curriculum development principles into the blended learning context, presenting processes and outcomes from a project to develop a task-based thematic unit — asking and giving directions — in a hybrid web-based university-level class focused on listening and speaking skills in Mandarin Chinese. The authors follow the principled task-based cu...

Listening for impairments introduced by multichannel audio codecs is an important task. Classical objective methods are not adequate in assessing audio coding schemes. Accordingly, the ITU-R BS.1116 & 1534 recommendations provide guidelines for subjective evaluation of codecs. This paper provides a tutorial on the proper conditions to do reliable codec testing. Several key components covered ar...

In the present study, an exploratory approach (Oxford, Cho, Leung & Kim, 2004) to language learning is adopted which holds that the number and type of strategies used by Iranian learners might vary with respect to the difficulty of task and their L2 proficiency. In this regard, the term task is defined, its leading dimentions and charecteristics are put forward, and the nature of learning start...

Binaural noise reduction, with applications for instance in hearing aids, has been a very significant challenge. This task relates to the optimal utilization of the available microphone signals for the estimation of the ambient noise characteristics and for the optimal filtering algorithm to separate the desired speech from the noise. The additional requirements of low computational complexity ...

The study of the brain bases for normal musical listening has advanced greatly in the last 30 years. The evidence from basic and clinical neuroscience suggests that listening to music involves many cognitive components with distinct brain substrates. Using patient cases reported in the literature, we develop an approach for understanding disordered musical listening that is based on the systema...