This article reviews research findings involving visual input in speech processing in the form of facial cues and co-speech gestures for second-language (L2) learners, and provides pedagogical implications for the teaching of listening and speaking. It traces the foundations of auditory-visual speech research and explores the role of a speaker's…

In many English language teaching contexts, listening activities resemble listening comprehension tests. Scholars have argued that this product-oriented approach is not particularly effective in helping learners improve their listening skills and have advocated for the inclusion of instruction that targets specific features of spoken language. The…

This paper adopts an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to analyze the social organization of the instruction-giving sequences that were accomplished by a teacher of Italian as a foreign language during the last phase of a writing task conducted in pairs. Specifically, the paper explores the linguistic, prosodic and embodied…

This dissertation investigates how English-speaking second language (L2) learners of Mandarin perceive, process and learn Mandarin lexical tones. While most languages use modulations in pitch (intonation) to convey meanings at the phrasal and sentential levels, a number of languages, including Mandarin, also use suprasegmental features such as…

Research has suggested that the type and frequency of learning strategies employed by successful listeners is greater than their less successful counterparts. Based on evidence that metacognitive strategies (e.g. listening-for-gist; inferring meaning) are more effective than cognitive ones (e.g. word-for-word translation), this study sought to…

Prosody communicates pragmatic meaning far beyond that which is evident at the surface level of an utterance and can pose challenges to learners' pragmatic comprehension. The current study investigated how second language (L2) English learners made decisions about speaker intent when communicated through prosody. Seventeen English L2 learners took…

This study investigates the perception and production of a specific type of metaphoric gesture that mimics melody in speech, also called "pitch gesture," in the learning of L2 suprasegmental features. In a between-subjects design, a total of 106 participants with no previous knowledge of Chinese were asked to observe (Experiment 1) and…

This study explored the feasibility of training school teaching assistants to provide the treatment, Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing to treat childhood apraxia of speech (CAS, also known as developmental verbal dyspraxia). The study used a single case experimental design across behaviours and a qualitative evaluation of teaching assistant…

The role of prosodic information in sentence processing is not usually addressed in second language (L2) instruction, and neurocognitive studies on prosody-syntax interactions are rare. Here we compare event-related potentials (ERP) of Chinese and German learners of English L2 to those of native English speakers and show how first language (L1)…

The work described in this report is the first phase of a project to provide easy-to-use tools for authoring and rendering secondary-school algebra-level math expressions in synthesized speech that is useful for students with blindness or low vision. This report describes the initial development, software implementation, and evaluation of the…

With research showing the benefits of pronunciation instruction aimed at suprasegmentals (Derwing, Munro, & Wiebe, 1997, 1998; Derwing & Rossiter, 2003; Hahn, 2004; McNerney and Mendelsohn, 1992), more materials are needed to provide learners opportunities for self-directed practice. A 13-week experimental study was performed with 75 ESL learners…