The purpose of this study was to explore five developmental patterns of English letter-name knowledge for emergent bilingual children. We considered five patterns demonstrated by English monolingual children: visual similarity effect, uppercase familiarity effect, first name/first initial effects, consonant-order effect, and frequency effect. We…

This dissertation examines whether EFL and ESL Korean learners of English are able to produce and perceive two English phonological contrasts that depend on vowel duration differences, coda consonant voicing contrasts and the tense-lax distinction in vowels. For production, it examines differences in vowel duration and vowel quality associated…

Speaker's good pronunciation makes his/her listener comfortable, and confident to participate in the conversation and his/her mispronunciations bring implications to the listener's awareness and involvement with the message spoken. The research was aimed at detecting the mispronunciations produced by 70 nonnative (L2) post-graduate students who…

This paper examines the understudied phenomenon of consonant gemination in the pronunciation of English among Levantine Arabic learners of English (LA learners). The very few studies that touched on gemination among LA learners attributed gemination to spelling in the target language (English). This study challenges this analysis and demonstrates…

At present, developmental dyslexia is classified as a specific language disorder recognised by inclusive educational laws in Spain and the United Kingdom. Phonological correspondence is very different in Spanish and in English, and the difficulties they entail for native speakers are also different. The predominance of English worldwide has led to…

This investigation explored the voice onset time (VOT) values of word-initial bilabial stops /p/ and /b/ as realized by Arabic-speaking male and female Saudi ESL learners. It sought to identify the differences, if any, between these two groups with regard to this acoustic measure (i.e., VOT). The VOT measurements were then compared with those of…

Awareness, short-term memory, and long-term memory are interrelated cognitive abilities that influence orthographic acquisition under Individual Differences. Connectionists ignore the role of biological grammar in language acquisition and consider external inputs or interventions as factors that shape abstract grammar through network mapping…

This study investigates how Korean students produce and perceive single and double consonant letters in English words. To this end, twenty-eight Korean learners of English participated in the production and perception tests of English consonants /p, b, s, d, k, g/ with single and double letters. The participants were first asked to produce English…

Graphotactic as well as phonological factors influence native English speakers' decisions about consonant doubling in the spelling of nonwords, e.g., "zimen" versus "zimmen." This study examined the extent to which such influences apply to non-native speakers of English, who presumably have less knowledge of English…

Foreign language was recently added to Japan's national primary school curriculum. Phoneme-Grapheme Recognition (PGR) skills are a critical step in both L1 and L2 development. Due to its simplistic approach and the lack of new investment in teacher training, research regarding the impact on PGR skills are important. This study tested the relative…

Derivational suffixes are known to play a crucial role in assigning stress to multi-syllabic words among native English speakers. However, it is unclear whether second language (L2) learners of English can effectively use derivational suffixes as stress cues in written words. To address this gap, we studied if native Chinese-speaking adults…

Graphophonemic (GP) knowledge of a language represents the foundation of a good learning start point. In the English as a foreign language (EFL) context, many learners lack adequate GP knowledge of English, resulting in difficulty to master the language skills even at the tertiary level. Thus, this study investigated first-year university,…

Korean learners of English are known to repair consonant clusters, which are not allowed in their native language, with an epenthetic vowel [close central unrounded vowel]. The purpose of the present study is to examine whether the perception-production link of such an illusory vowel in a second language (L2) is only within and not across…

Phonetic imitation is a ubiquitous process in speech production. Speakers have a strong tendency to imitate their interlocutors both in a native and a non-native language. It is especially important in acquiring non-native speech, because it allows forming new sound categories. In the current study we investigated whether and to what extent Polish…

While phonetic training in laboratory settings has been shown to be helpful for second language (L2) sounds learning in prior studies , it is still open to debate whether a perception- or a production-based approach can better help adults learn L2 sounds in classroom settings. This study aimed to fill this knowledge gap. The participants were…