The process of studying a foreign language in Russian higher education institutions is carried out in a specially organized linguo-didactic language environment which is understood as a methodological framework designed in accordance with the peculiarities of a linguo-cultural community. It is aimed at combining learning methods and techniques to…

Hardly any work has been done on the features of Philippine English in the clausal level from spoken discourses from a professional group. This paper compares the cases of inverted subject-auxiliary in embedded questions of the same group of professionals between 1999 and the years of 2016-2019, thus spanning almost 20 years. A total of 167 hits…

This article examines the question of whether university-based high-level foreign language and linguistic training can influence brain activation and whether different L2 proficiency groups have different brain activation in terms of lateralization and hemispheric involvement. The traditional and prevailing theory of hemispheric involvement in…

In this pilot study looking at interlanguage prosody, normal, and contrastively focused constructions in English were collected from four English-as-a-first-language speakers and four Japanese-as-a-first-language speakers. These productions were then played to six native English speakers to see how well they could identify the stress placement of…

Reports a study that investigated syllable duration and pausing in Chinese speakers learning English as a Second Language. (nine references) (JL)

A study examined the occurrence of specific grammatical structures (double object pronouns, nominalization with "lo," demonstrative adjectives/pronouns, and possessive adjectives/pronouns) in oral samples of native speaker Spanish and compared the results with the treatment of the structures in six beginning-level college Spanish textbooks.…

Compares the relative frequency of the performance and avoidance of oral complaints by 22 Chinese learners and 12 native speakers of American English. Participants were enrolled in a major U.S. university and were asked to respond to three problematic situations that were set in the same university housing complex where all of the respondents…

Analyzed the spoken and written language of Caribbean college students who consider themselves to be native speakers of English. Discusses the students' linguistic self-perception as well as the morphosyntactic and discourse features that emerge when they write in standard English. The study suggests that anglophone Caribbean students should be…

Describes the University of Texas at El Paso's use of a Spanish placement system that seeks to appropriately place both native and non-native speakers of Spanish in the correct track and level of Spanish courses. (CB)

This study examined the quality of three English vowels and their Korean counterpart vowels by measuring F1/F2 frequencies and investigating how the different vowel qualities influenced consonant voicing. Participants were six native speakers (NS) of English and six NS of Korean who were graduate students at a large U.S. university. F1/F2…

This exploratory study compares the narratives of three Korean speakers living in the United States with those of two native English speakers. The subjects viewed the film, "The Red Balloon," and were given three tasks: to recount the events in the movie, to describe what they would relate to their friends about the movie, and to…

The oral proficiency interview (OPI) has been submitted to external scrutiny and has been accepted by many foreign language educators as an accurate method of assessing speaking competence of foreign language learners. An OPI is herein examined in the context of evaluating native speakers. (seven references) (JL)

Discusses the problems faced by teachers of third-year (i.e. advanced) Italian language courses, particularly in developing students' speaking skills. Stresses the importance of "real talk" and discusses relevant student activities such as interviewing native speakers, preparing live radio broadcasts, and videotaping students speeches and…

Investigated the correlation between global foreign accent (GFA) and voice onset time (VOT). VOT values for /p/, /t/, and /k/ were measured at two times, separated by an interval of 42 months. Subjects were 11 Japanese speakers of English as a foreign language; 5 age-matched native speakers of English served as the control group. (Author/VWL)

Examines status in institutional discourse and identifies congruence as a factor in the success of native and nonnative speakers. Nonnative speakers suffered from a lack of context-specific pragmatic competence involving the use of status preserving strategies and appropriate content for noncongruent speech acts. (21 references) (JL)