This study evaluates the development of L2 collocational competence in texts written by learners of differing proficiency levels, compared to native speaker collocation patterns from a reference corpus. We address: (1) whether learners develop their collocation competence as their proficiency grows; and (2) How is this development mediated by…

Mandarin speakers tend to adapt intervocalic nasals as either an onset of the following syllable (e.g. Bruno [right arrow] "bù.lu.nuò"), as a nasal geminate (e.g. Daniel [right arrow] "dan.ní.er"), or as one of the above forms (e.g. Tiffany [right arrow] "dì.fú.ní" or "dì.fen.ní"). Huang and Lin (2013, 2016)…

How and when do children become aware that speakers have different accents? While adults readily make a variety of subtle social inferences based on speakers' accents, findings from children are more mixed: while one line of research suggests that even infants may be acutely sensitive to accent unfamiliarity, other studies suggest that 5-year-olds…

Modern vocabulary size tests are generally based on the notion that the more frequent a word is in a language, the more likely a learner will know that word. However, this assumption has been seldom questioned in the literature concerning vocabulary size tests. Using the Vocabulary of American-English Size Test (VAST) based on the Corpus of…

The study investigates the relationship between lexical encoding and production in order to establish whether learners are able to produce a difficult contrast in words that they merged in their mental lexicon. Forty American English learners of Russian were tested on their production and lexical encoding of familiar and highly-frequent words with…

The many permutations of spoken English have called for an interrogation into the notions of 'standard English' and 'native accents'. Despite their problematic nature, these terms remain commonly used, and familiarity with 'standard', inner-circle varieties of English is typical among L2 English speakers, differences in education and language…

Purpose: The aim of the current study was to examine /l/ developmental patterns in young learners of Southern American English, especially in relation to the effect of word position and phonetic contexts. Method: Eighteen children with typically developing speech, aged between 2 and 5 years, produced monosyllabic single words containing singleton…

Due to the rise of World Englishes, one of the principal challenges of teachers of English today is to keep paced with language variation (Crystal, 2013). Such variation influences their choices on the variety of English in instructional texts that they use in teaching ESL/EFL academic writing. Grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics, this…

Purpose: The present study aimed to compare acoustic models of speech intelligibility in individuals with the same disease (Parkinson's disease [PD]) and presumably similar underlying neuropathologies but with different native languages (American English [AE] and Korean). Method: A total of 48 speakers from the 4 speaker groups (AE speakers with…

This study examines language attitudes towards different varieties of English through listener judgments of speaker and speech traits; in addition, the study explores the relationship of these judgments to the intelligibility, as well as the perceived accentedness and comprehensibility, of varieties of Asian English and General American English.…

English-medium instruction (EMI) is gaining popularity among EFL higher education institutions. However, not all EMI programs provide the same English immersion as those in the Anglosphere. The researcher targeted English medium university textbooks as a research focus, since they are first and foremost learning material of specialist knowledge…

"Standard" varieties are often perceived as morally superior compared with "nonstandard" varieties (Hill 2008). Consequently, these differences lead to ideologies that racialize "nonstandard" varieties (Rosa 2016), and increase the negative stereotypes towards "nonstandard" varieties (Giles and Watson 2013).…

Purpose: This research explores the standard language ideology in Chinese foreign language education policies. The most substantial in relation to language policy and management in regard to language ideology are beliefs associated with the values on the named language and its varieties (Spolsky, 2009). In the standard language ideology, the…

This study addresses the lack of comprehension data in second language acquisition research by focusing on English existential "there"-constructions (ETCs) with a locative extension (e.g., "there is an X on the Y"). The post-copular noun X used in the present study consisted of two types: actual and nonsense. Participants…

The present study is intended to critically examine metadiscourse markers in 24 master thesis abstracts. Twelve of them are written by non-native Iraqi female students and the rest by native American female students. To do so, the researchers have set two aims: examining the types and subtypes of metadiscourse markers in terms of nativity and…