This dissertation documents a collection of sociolinguistic and sociophonetic studies of the speech of bilingual Korean Americans in California. Korean Americans are an ethnic minority in the United States whose speech patterns in Korean and English remain understudied. The goal of the studies is to begin sketching out the acoustic traits that…

Many U.S. adult schools currently aim to create academic and career pathways by implementing higher order thinking and metalinguistic application in their ESL curriculum. However, this 'ability to reflect on and manipulate the structural features of language' poses a significant hurdle to adult ESL learners newly learning to read and write, as…

Past studies in language teaching have addressed the issue of whether the benefits of formal instruction outweigh those of naturalistic instruction, or vice versa. This study examined 1 aspect of naturalistic instruction closely: the conversation partnership. There were 3 conversation partnerships (English/Mandarin, English/Arabic, and…