This paper examines the understudied phenomenon of consonant gemination in the pronunciation of English among Levantine Arabic learners of English (LA learners). The very few studies that touched on gemination among LA learners attributed gemination to spelling in the target language (English). This study challenges this analysis and demonstrates…

This study investigates how Korean students produce and perceive single and double consonant letters in English words. To this end, twenty-eight Korean learners of English participated in the production and perception tests of English consonants /p, b, s, d, k, g/ with single and double letters. The participants were first asked to produce English…

Hindi graphs, called akshara, are difficult to learn because of their visual complexity and large set of graphs. Akshara containing multiple consonants (complex akshara) are particularly difficult. In Hindi, complex akshara are formed by fusing individual consonantal graphs. Some complex akshara look similar to their component parts (transparent),…

There is evidence that orthographic knowledge can influence on-line spoken-word recognition. Interestingly, when graphic and phonetic codes are not congruent due to the application of phonological alternation processes, people report hearing sounds that are matched to graphic (underlying), not phonetic codes (Hallé et al. in J Mem Lang 43:618-639,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the profiles of nonresponders among native Chinese-speaking students struggling in English reading before and after an intensive intervention in phonological awareness as well as letter knowledge. Struggling English learners (n = 72) were screened from 668 Grade 4 students based on their English word…

Previous studies on spoken word production have shown that native English speakers used phoneme-sized units (e.g., a word-initial phoneme, C) to produce English words, and native Mandarin Chinese speakers employed syllable-sized units (e.g., a word-initial consonant and vowel, CV) as phonological encoding units in Chinese. With spoken word…

The present study investigated the representation and processing of segmental and tonal information in visual Chinese word recognition in native and non-native Chinese readers. Two experiments using homophone judgement paradigm were conducted. When judging two Chinese characters (Experiment 1), both groups showed difficulties when the segmental…

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…

Demand for second-language (L2) Chinese education for kindergarteners has grown rapidly, but little is known about these kindergarteners' L2 skills, with existing studies focusing on school-age populations and alphabetic languages. Accordingly, we developed a six-subtest Chinese character acquisition assessment to measure L2 kindergarteners'…

This review highlights some areas of current interest in teaching students to spell and how spelling skills develop. The topics covered in the paper include: theories of spelling acquisition, theories guiding effective teaching, the importance of word study approaches across the age range, the influence of technology on learning to spell, spelling…

The primary impediment to literacy in Japanese is kanji proficiency. The ostensible reason kanji present such a formidable challenge, especially for the second language learner, is the combined effect of their quantity and complexity. Research into the cognitive processing of logographic characters, however, indicates that the main obstacle to…

The aim of our study was to examine the relationship between NL (Native Language: Polish) phonological processing skills (verbal and phonological short-term memory, phoneme segmentation and blending, rapid automatised naming (RAN)) and the accuracy and fluency of NL and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) word and nonword decoding and word…

Orthographic knowledge, the general ability to learn, store, and use information about the orthographic form of words (Stanovich & West, 1989), is a crucial skill for supporting literacy. Although the development of first language (L1) orthographic awareness is impacted by the characteristics of a learner's L1 writing system, relatively little…

English orthographic learning, among Chinese-L1 children who were beginning to learn English as a foreign language, was documented when: (1) "only" visual memory was at their disposal, (2) visual memory and either "some" letter-sound knowledge or "some" semantic information was available, and (3) visual memory,…

This classroom research deals with pronunciation problems that Turkish EFL teacher candidates would encounter. The participants were 22 EFL pre-service teachers with B2 level of proficiency in English. The presentations which were carried out by these participants were analyzed both by the participants themselves and the researcher. The results…