While listeners tend to downgrade speakers' accent and comprehensibility when they perceive them to be from a different language community--a process known as reverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS)--research has generally relied solely on quantitative data such as Likert scale ratings. The current study sought to extend the analysis further by…

The current study examined how two groups of native speakers--monolingual Canadians and multilingual Singaporeans--differentially perceive foreign accentedness in spontaneous second language (L2) speech. The Singaporean raters, who had exposure to various models of English and also spoke multiple L2s on a daily basis, demonstrated more lenient…

This paper reports the results of a survey of 101 Japanese university students' perceptions of different varieties of English using an open-ended questionnaire. Participants indicated their first impressions of varieties of English that they had named. This methodology allows participants themselves to provide the specific varieties as well as the…

This study is an investigation of the extent to which francophone learners of English as a second language (ESL) are aware of the differences between French and English question formation and how such awareness relates to their L2 performance. Three tasks were administered to 58 grades 5 and 6 francophone ESL learners. In a grammaticality…

This study was designed to identify strategies used during intentional vocabulary learning and to assess the relationship between strategy use and vocabulary learning performance. English-speaking students of Spanish studied new Spanish words while viewing word-picture pairs. The participants then completed posttests and answered questions about…

This paper reports the findings of a psycholinguistic study of the development of phonological awareness (PA) in Chinese children acquiring their first language and learning a foreign language at the same time. The language situation of these children in relation to PA is of particular interest because Chinese and English have not only different…

This study examined whether differences in phonological awareness were related to differences in speech comprehensibility. Seventeen adults who learned English as a foreign language (EFL) in academic settings completed 14 tests of phonological awareness that measured their explicit knowledge of English phonological structures, and three tests of…