Production of certain English phonemes relies heavily on effort from the abdominal region, and under-utilization of this region by second language English speakers can create difficulties pronouncing these sounds. In particular, production of long vowel/diphthong sounds requires sustained abdominal contraction to maintain the length of these…

As there is no vowel length contrast in Chinese, Chinese learners of Thai (CLTs) often have difficulty distinguishing between short and long vowels, especially when the same vowel grapheme in Thai orthography can be pronounced as both a short and a long vowel. This study examined the importance of metalinguistic knowledge (MLK) used by CLTs before…

Understanding vowel production is vital in order to develop a rich choral tone based on unified vowels, appropriate resonance, and freely produced singing. Likewise, correct articulation of consonants produces understandable text. Enunciating the texts of Western choral repertoire is often challenging for Mandarin singers, and learning English…

In our pronunciation courses, segmental level in English pronunciation plays a very important role in perception and teaching of English pronunciation. This research aims to investigate into the most salient pronunciation problems at segmental level by fresh college students from Mainland China through an experimental study, and it is found that…

People often experience difficulties when they first hear a novel accent. Prior research has shown that relatively fast natural accent accommodation can occur. However, there has been little investigation of the underlying perceptual mechanism that drives the learning. The current study examines whether phonemic boundary changes play a central…

The study examines cross-linguistic influence (CLI) and voice onset time (VOT) in the production of Spanish stop consonants by native speakers of Mandarin Chinese who have learned English as their second language (L2). Six Chinese nationals studying Spanish in the United States at beginning levels and an advanced-level control were recorded…

This study reports syllable position effects on second language (L2) Portuguese speech perception, revealing that L2 segmental learning may be prone to an influence from the suprasegmental level. The results show that first language (L1) Mandarin learners had diminished performance on the discrimination between the target Portuguese liquids (/l/…

Many studies evidence the flexibility of speech perception in the first language (L1), which allows rapid adaptation to unfamiliar foreign accents. Two influential studies by Bradlow and Bent (2008) and a follow-up study by Baese-Berk et al. (2013) found that increased variability as a function of the number of talkers and accents facilitated the…

As an international financial centre, Hong Kong is a metropolitan city that has given rise to multilingual characteristics in recent years. In addition to Cantonese and English, which serve mostly as first and second languages, Hong Kong residents have increasingly begun to develop a third or even a fourth language. The biliteracy and…

This dissertation draws on both qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate the linguistic practices of teachers and children who are learning Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) in two dual immersion preschools in California. CHL children have been interpreted as novice members in local speech communities who actively explore…

Instruction in second language (L2) English phoneme pronunciation almost invariably includes a focus on improving the learners' use of their articulatory organs to pronounce the relevant sounds. However, the pronunciation of many English sounds also relies on effort from the abdominal region, and under-utilization of this region can often…

The rapid growth of Mandarin Chinese and English dual-language (DL) programs and the differences between these two languages have fostered the need to investigate the early literacy performance of young students in a Mandarin/English DL program. This study used the interactive transfer framework (Chung et al., 2019) to understand the Mandarin and…

Purpose: Research has shown that observing hand gestures mimicking pitch movements or rhythmic patterns can improve the learning of second language (L2) suprasegmental features. However, less is known about the effects of hand gestures on the learning of novel phonemic contrasts. This study examines (a) whether hand gestures mimicking phonetic…

Purpose: The objective was to investigate acoustic cue processing in lexical-tone recognition by pediatric cochlear-implant (CI) recipients who are native Mandarin speakers. Method: Lexical-tone recognition was assessed in pediatric CI recipients and listeners with normal hearing (NH) in 2 tasks. In Task 1, participants identified naturally…

Students in South East Asia often struggle with English /l/ and /r/. This study therefore set out to examine how Taiwanese pupils' perception of these sounds is influenced by cross-language effects. Most Taiwanese students have Mandarin as L1 and Taiwanese as L2 or vice versa, and English as L3. A same-different discrimination experiment was…