Professor
Because the United States is such a large country, it took time for a common national culture to emerge. One hundred years ago there was very little communication among the different regions of the United States. One result of this lack of communi- cation was that people around the United States had very little in common with one another. People in different parts of the country spoke differently, dressed differently, and behaved differently. But connections among Americans began to increase thanks to two technological innovations: the automobile and the radio.
Automobiles began to be mass-produced in the 1920s, which meant they became less expensive and more widely available. Americans in small towns and rural com- munities now had the ability to travel with ease to nearby cities. They could even take vacations to other parts of the country. The increased mobility provided by auto- mobiles changed people’s attitudes and created links that had not existed before. For example, people in small towns began to adopt behaviors, clothes, and speech that were popular in big cities or in other parts of the country.
As more Americans were purchasing cars, radio ownership was also increasing dramatically. Americans in different regions of the country began to listen to the same popular radio programs and musical artists. People repeated things they heard on the radio—some phrases and speech patterns heard in songs and radio programs began to be used by people all over the United States. People also listened to news reports on the radio. They heard the same news throughout the country, whereas in news- papers much news tended to be local. Radio brought Americans together by offering them shared experiences and information about events around the country.
Using points and examples from the talk, explain how the automobile and the radio contributed to a common culture in the United States.
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 690.0 578.828451883 119% => OK
No of words: 160.0 151.265690377 106% => OK
Chars per words: 4.3125 3.82278263415 113% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.55655882008 3.50058242952 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.15112615855 1.80425224433 119% => OK
Unique words: 98.0 92.4686192469 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.6125 0.61298525976 100% => OK
Syllable count: 224.1 182.283891213 123% => OK
Avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.20543933054 116% => OK
Performance on coherence:
Topic speech coherence ratio: 0.083904109589 0.0839705835288 100% => OK
Acoustic performance on paragraphs:
How many acoustic paragraphs: 5.0 4.47071129707 112% => OK
Average paragraph length: 32.0 65.8948926009 49% => The average paragraph length is low.
STD paragraph length: 22.0907220344 19.7758100068 112% => OK
Average paragraph duration: 11.948 25.5208953607 47% => OK
STD paragraph duration: 7.72554049889 7.49434385956 103% => OK
Acoustic performance on sentences:
How many acoustic sentences: 49.0 42.9832635983 114% => OK
Average acoustic sentence length: 3.26530612245 3.78147595546 86% => OK
STD acoustic sentence length: 2.18319659107 2.94285465224 74% => OK
Average acoustic sentences duration: 1.16693877551 1.39386743896 84% => OK
STD acoustic sentences duration: 0.706304565403 0.967747756167 73% => OK
Acoustic performance on acoustic silence:(An acoustic silence means a little pause between two or more words)
How many acoustic silence: 43.0 40.4456066946 106% => OK
Total acoustic silence duration: 6.75 7.59280334728 89% => OK
Average acoustic silence duration: 0.156976744186 0.19053887516 82% => OK
STD acoustic silence duration: 0.131742082128 0.157467062838 84% => OK
Acoustic performance on acoustic words:
Total word duration: 48.27 46.3453556485 104% => OK
Average word duration: 0.3016875 0.308780311121 98% => OK
STD word duration: 0.167037502806 0.201157623399 83% => OK
Disfluencies: like hesitations, or 'ehn' or taking a long time to pronounce a word:
How many disfluencies: 2.0 8.09623430962 25% => Good job, the lower, the better.
Total_disfluencies_duration: 1.55 6.56692468619 24% => Good job. The lower, the better.
Total acoustic noise duration: 2.59 3.53066945607 73% => OK
Acoustic rates:
Total speech duration: 59.74 59.5455230126 100% => OK
Compare to expected duration: 0.995666666667 0.992425383543 100% => OK
Rate of silence: 0.719785738199 0.681803438845 106% => OK
Rate of speech: 2.67827251423 2.53813033465 106% => OK
Rate of speech by unique words: 1.64044191496 1.55221717717 106% => OK
Rate of word duration by unique words: 2.03024652994 1.99939622689 102% => OK
Average articulation rates: 0.28946843125 0.309613076454 93% => OK
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Rates: 90.0 out of 100
Scores by speech e-grader: 27.0 Out of 30
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Note: the speech e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas.