Report Format
You must submit a single document in PDF format. When submitting to Learn, the name of the file you upload and the electronic submission title must be in the format “{exam number}_{lab report word count}” and nothing else (e.g., “B012345_1459.pdf”)
At the beginning of the document, you must include:
- The title of your report
- Your exam number (i.e., the one that usually starts with “B”, not your student number that starts with “s”)
- The word count for your report
Write your exam number at the top of every page (as a header)
Marking is strictly anonymous. Do not include your name or your student number – only provide your exam id!
Sections
For the rest of the report please use the section headings as follows (and as discussed in report write-up guidance)
- Text Normalization
- POS tagging/Homographs
- Pronunciation
- Phrase break detection
- Waveform generation
- TTS pipeline discussion
Please also include two additional sections which do not count towards the word limit:
- Bibliography
- Declaration of AI use
Fonts and spacing
Please use a line spacing of 1.5 and a minimum font size of 11pt (and that applies to all text, including within figures, tables, and captions)
Word limit
The word limit for this assignment is is 1500 words. This includes:
- Main body text
- Footnotes
- Figure and table captions
This excludes:
- Section headings
- Text within figures and tables, such as examples, numerical data, and phonetic transcriptions
- The bibliography, and in-text citations
In 2024-25, the 1500 word limit is strict – there is no +10% allowance for word count. You can, of course, submit less than 1500 words. However, markers reserve the right to enact a penalty for going over the word limit or to simply not read anything over the word limit. If applied, the mark penalty will be 1 point per 100 words.
Each section of the report is worth the same amount, so you should aim to write around the same amount for each section (i.e., around 250 words). However, there is no specific word limit per section (just the overall 1500 word limit for the whole report)
Note: we are aware that Turnitin generally produces inflated word counts. Thus, it is important that you report your accurate word count at the beginning of your report. If you use Overleaf for creating your report in LaTeX, you should be fine using the word count provided there. Markers will generally accept the word count you give as accurate. However, they may choose to do their own word count if they feel that the given word count is not accurate.
While there is a word limit, there is no page limit. Large margins are fine but avoid blank pages
Figure, graphs and tables
You should ensure that figures and graphs are large enough to read easily and are of high-quality (with a very strong preference for vector graphics, and failing that high-resolution images). There is no page limit, so therefore there is no reason to have very small figures!
Your work may be marked electronically or we may print hardcopies on A4 paper, so it must be legible in both formats. In particular, do not assume the markers can “zoom in” to make the figures larger.
You are strongly advised to draw your own figures which will generally attract a higher mark than a figure quoted from another source. Figures which are clearly just screenshots or copies of other papers/textbooks won’t get you any extra marks.
Tables must have column or row headers, as appropriate.
There is no limit on the number of figures, graphs, and tables you can include. However, any figures/graphs/tables you do include should be properly referred to and discussed in the main text. All of these should have proper captions.
References
We generally prefer APA style references (i.e. Author, Year). Other citation styles are also ok as long as they are implemented correctly and consistently.
Declaration of use of AI
Please briefly describe if you use any external Artificial Intelligence (AI) related tools in doing this assignment. This includes grammar checking and use of generative AI based chat apps to investigate the topic. If you use tools based on large language models (e.g. ChatGPT), describe the prompts that you used in doing this work. If you did not use these tools in your work, you can simply write “none”.
Text in this section does not count towards the 1500 word limit.
Remember, you should not use generative AI to generate text for your submitted report. Please see the course AI policy here: Speech Processing AI policy. Please be honest! You will not be penalised for use of these tools as long as they adhere to this policy.