Production of certain English phonemes relies heavily on effort from the abdominal region, and under-utilization of this region by second language English speakers can create difficulties pronouncing these sounds. In particular, production of long vowel/diphthong sounds requires sustained abdominal contraction to maintain the length of these…

As there is no vowel length contrast in Chinese, Chinese learners of Thai (CLTs) often have difficulty distinguishing between short and long vowels, especially when the same vowel grapheme in Thai orthography can be pronounced as both a short and a long vowel. This study examined the importance of metalinguistic knowledge (MLK) used by CLTs before…

In our pronunciation courses, segmental level in English pronunciation plays a very important role in perception and teaching of English pronunciation. This research aims to investigate into the most salient pronunciation problems at segmental level by fresh college students from Mainland China through an experimental study, and it is found that…

People often experience difficulties when they first hear a novel accent. Prior research has shown that relatively fast natural accent accommodation can occur. However, there has been little investigation of the underlying perceptual mechanism that drives the learning. The current study examines whether phonemic boundary changes play a central…

This study compared individuals from two first language (L1) backgrounds (Italian, Mandarin) to determine how they may differ in their perception of Japanese consonant length (i.e. singleton vs. geminate) according to the phonemic status of length in L1 and experience with Japanese. The participants included two groups of non-native learners of…

The study examines cross-linguistic influence (CLI) and voice onset time (VOT) in the production of Spanish stop consonants by native speakers of Mandarin Chinese who have learned English as their second language (L2). Six Chinese nationals studying Spanish in the United States at beginning levels and an advanced-level control were recorded…

This study reports syllable position effects on second language (L2) Portuguese speech perception, revealing that L2 segmental learning may be prone to an influence from the suprasegmental level. The results show that first language (L1) Mandarin learners had diminished performance on the discrimination between the target Portuguese liquids (/l/…

The "gleam-glum effect" is a novel sound symbolic finding that words with the /i:/-phoneme (like "gleam") are perceived more positive emotionally than matched words with the /[open-mid back unrounded vowel]/-phoneme (like "glum"). We provide data that not only confirm the effect but also are consistent with an…

The purpose of this article aims to analyze the effect of word-word space in written Chinese to advanced non-native speakers when they read and process Mandarin texts. The participants have performed one online reaction time experiment and another one offline pencil-paper test. The results indicate that the structure of word segmentation in…

This study investigated the role of cross-linguistic similarity in the acquisition of Russian initial stop contrasts by Chinese learners, addressing two specific research questions: (1) How similar are Russian voiced stops to Mandarin stops for Chinese learners?; and (2) How can the speech learning model (SLM) be applied to account for the…

This research aimed to (1) develop and measure the efficiency of a set of reading and pronunciation skills in Chinese phonetics via Seesaw online classroom; (2) examine the effectiveness of the set; and (3) evaluate students' satisfaction with practice packages on Chinese pronunciation via Seesaw online classroom. Thirty-six undergraduate students…

E-storybooks are the most important auxiliary learning materials for English-as-Foreign-Language (EFL) learners. Few studies reported positive results on pronunciation and speech development from using audio accompanied e-storybooks, although audios are expected to play the role of recasts in providing pronunciation feedback for learners.…

Previous studies on spoken word production have shown that native English speakers used phoneme-sized units (e.g., a word-initial phoneme, C) to produce English words, and native Mandarin Chinese speakers employed syllable-sized units (e.g., a word-initial consonant and vowel, CV) as phonological encoding units in Chinese. With spoken word…

The present study investigated the applicability of word reading, word segmentation, and text reading as diagnostic tools to assess comprehension, detect struggling readers, and inform instruction for low-level Chinese as second language (L2) learners (n = 70). The results showed that the three instruments measured different dimensions of word…

Instruction in second language (L2) English phoneme pronunciation almost invariably includes a focus on improving the learners' use of their articulatory organs to pronounce the relevant sounds. However, the pronunciation of many English sounds also relies on effort from the abdominal region, and under-utilization of this region can often…