Background: Nonword repetition (NWR) is a common phonological processing task that is reported to tap into many cognitive, perceptual, and motor processes. For this reason, NWR is often used in assessment batteries to aid in verifying the presence of a reading or language disorder. Aims: To examine the extent to which child- and item-level factors…

Purpose: This study investigated articulatory patterns for American English /[Voiced alveolar approximant]/ in children with and without a history of residual speech sound disorder (RSSD). It was hypothesized that children without RSSD would favor bunched tongue shapes, similar to American adults reported in previous literature. Based on clinical…

This research examined how linguistic differences between African American English (AAE) and Mainstream American English (MAE) impact how children process sentences and learn new information. The central hypothesis of this dissertation is that these linguistic differences adversely impact how AAE-speaking children use contrastive inflectional verb…

Purpose: We evaluated whether children whose inaccurate /[voiced alveolar approximant]/ productions showed evidence phonetic differentiation with /w/ at 3.5-4.5 years of age improved in /[voiced alveolar approximant]/ production over the next year more than children whose inaccurate productions did not show evidence of such differentiation. We…

The article presents a lexical study that investigates the lexical demands of academic written texts at different levels of writing. By employing the British National Corpus/ Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA) word list and the Academic Word List (AWL), the present study analyzed data from the British Academic Written English…

The popularity of using textbooks in second language programs in universities around the world continues to grow. Textbooks support teachers in their teaching by providing accessible materials and clear instruction. In addition, learners are guided by familiar lesson frameworks (e.g., beginning, middle, end) to guide their independent study…

This study investigates the use of a popular online expression 'skr' by Chinese micro-blogging users on Weibo. Used originally as a hip-hop term for the sound of cars drifting tires, 'skr' was exploited by Chinese micro-blogging users for other meanings and functions. Data were collected from Weibo users' postings over a month. Using the Search…