Background: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) demonstrate deficits in vocabulary development and novel word learning processes, which have been proposed to stem from their speech perception deficits. Aims: This study had two aims. The first was to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention incorporating a computer-based phonetic…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intelligibility and attitude towards four English varieties to Korean-speaking learners (KSLs) of English, who have been exposed mainly to General American (or Korean-accented English) in their English language learning classrooms throughout the primary and secondary schools. A total of 105 Korean…

Owing to its economic growth and social changes in the past two decades, China has become a popular destination for tourists, investors, and diverse communities of migrants. When foreign-language-speaking migrants interact with Chinese criminal justice system, they rely on interpreters to participate in the proceedings. Based on four-month trial…

To study the success of an international event handling in Thailand with a focus on the area of mutual communication, this paper aimed to shed light on how English is used as a lingua franca among the local Thai working team and the organizer team who are non-native speakers from different language backgrounds to achieve their mutual understanding…

Communication in international meetings represents a challenge for the participants, who need to make choices about the language(s) they use to co-construct meaning and guarantee the success of their work. In this context, plurilingual interactions may offer an invaluable opportunity for power balanced relations and intercultural flexibility. In…

Over the past few decades, there has been considerable effort to find the mechanisms through which adult listeners can accommodate the rampant phonetic variation in natural speech. My dissertation concerns one source of variability: phonetic variation in speech produced by individuals with foreign accents. Mounting evidence shows that listeners…

The Vanuatu government has recently implemented a policy of vernacular literacy. Children are now to receive the first three years of schooling in a vernacular language. Needless to say, in a country with less than 300,000 people [Vanuatu National Statistics Office 2016 Accessed January 4, 2016. http://vnso.gov.vu/] and more than 100 indigenous…

This study investigates the intelligibility of English with mora-timed rhythm or Japanese Katakana Hatsuon Eigo among NNSs living in a multilingual community, utilizing shadowing to measure the concept of intelligibility. Eighty-six participants (10 Malay NSs, 28 Mandarin NSs, and 30 Tamil NSs) were asked to shadow a recording of a 300-word…

In the context of English as a global language in which the interaction is not only between native speakers and ESL speakers but also among non-native speakers themselves, there is a need to investigate how well L2 listeners can judge and successfully comprehend accented English produced by other L2 speakers; particularly, how the specific…

English has assumed a new role in international communication in recent decades, that is, as a Lingua Franca (ELF) among speakers with different first languages. This study attempts to investigate and analyze Chinese university students' perception and production of paired English fricatives from the perspective of ELF. By using a listening…

This paper tries to give answers for successful receptive multilingualism (RM) but also for its failure. It is mainly based on the results of two projects, one on inter-dialectal communication in the Baltic area during the era of the Hanseatic League and the other analyses inter-Scandinavian communication today. The main purpose of this survey is…

This paper draws on theories that describe interrelationships between identity, language and the media to investigate how the Kurds utilise two forms of electronic media--satellite television and the Internet--to construct their identities. The data for this study is generated from four sources: a Kurdish satellite television channel (Kurdistan…