Describes the phonological analysis of Japanese speakers learning English as a foreign language. Analysis was carried out at a phonemic level and reflects learners' performance in the target language at a specific stage of interlanguage. A non-comprehensive comparison between the English and the Japanese sound systems was made and the so-called…

Speakers of many Oriental languages find it difficult to distinguish systematically between the /l/ and /r/ phonemes. Due to the importance of recognizing these contrasts in English, the teaching of these phonemes should be one of the foremost elements in teaching English as a second language to Asian students. (CFM)

Examines the perception of within-category allophonic differences in phonemes by both native speakers of English and Spanish learners of English as a Second language. Tries to show how representative different examples of a given phoneme category like /i/ are perceived by subjects in both groups. (Author/VWL)

In examining reading comprehension in a second language (L2), I have demonstrated that the prevailing metaphor of transfer of skills is misleading, and that what happens is access to an already existing general cognitive skill. There is evidence in first language (L1) and in L2 that accessing this skill when reading in an alphabetic language…

This book remains a comprehensive, myth-debunking examination of how L1 features (orthographic system, phonology, morphology) can influence English L2 reading at the "bottom" of the reading process. It provides a thorough but very accessible linguistic/psycholinguistic examination of the lowest levels of the reading process. It is both theoretical…

The learning processes of orthography and problems for students are discussed. A study of the spelling behavior of 174 first and second form (seventh and eighth grade) Dutch students is reported. Conclusions are stated. (Author/MT)

The pronunciation of final -s clusters is not uniformly treated by dictionaries, phoneticians, and writers of ESL texts. Four reasons for treating the pairs of clusters as homophonous in ESL instruction are: linguistic observation, linguistic patterning, linguistic history, and linguistic and pedagogical simplicity. This explicit treatment may…

This paper discusses the development of elicitation procedures for checking phoneme production in ESL learners. Two types of elicitation were tried: a picture-stimulus test and a regular question-type quiz, presented orally. Development of such procedures was judged quite feasible. (CHK)

One goal of this longitudinal study was to examine whether the predictors of reading skills in Grade 3 would differ between English as a second language (ESL) students and native English-speaking (L1) students. Phonological processing, syntactic awareness, memory, spelling, word reading, and lexical access skills were assessed in kindergarten and…

This study investigated the relationships between phonological awareness and reading in Oriya and English. Oriya is the official language of Orissa, an eastern state of India. The writing system is an alphasyllabary. Ninety-nine fifth grade children (mean age 9 years 7 months) were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, word reading and…

The influence of syllabic structure, lexical class and stress patterns of known words on the acquisition of the English stress system was investigated in ten native Thai speakers. All participants were adult learners of English with an average length of residence in the US of 1.4 years. They were asked to produce and give perceptual judgments on…

This article discusses the strategies used by Cantonese ESL learners to cope with their problems in pronouncing English initial consonant clusters. A small-scale research study was carried out with six secondary and six university students in Hong Kong, who were asked to perform four speech tasks: the reading of a word list, the description of a…