Research attempting to understand the intermediate stages of first-language acquisition and disordered speech has led to the discovery of covert contrast. A covert contrast is a statistically reliable difference between phonemes that is produced by a language learner, but in a way that cannot be heard readily by a listener of the target language.…

In this study we investigated the potential for a shared-first-language (shared-L1) effect on second language (L2) listening test scores using differential item functioning (DIF) analyses. We did this in order to understand how accented speech may influence performance at the item level, while controlling for key variables including listening…

Although corpora and corpus linguistics have been applied for quite long in foreign and second language settings, there is still limited understanding about how EFL learners use corpus tools along with dictionaries to enhance their collocation knowledge. This study aims to gain insight into the effectiveness of corpus-based pedagogy in comparison…

Adopting the approaches of "pattern hunting" and "pattern refining" (Kennedy & Miceli, 2001, 2010, 2017), this study investigates how seven freshman English students from Taiwan used the Corpus of Contemporary American English to discover collocation patterns for 30 near-synonymous change-of-state verbs and new ideas about…

This study investigates how second language (L2) listeners' perception is affected by two factors: the listeners' experience with the target dialect -- North American English (NAE) vs. Standard Southern British English (SSBE) -- and talkers' language background: native vs. non-native talkers; i.e. interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit…

The purpose of this paper is to report on the state of both professional licensure and the practice of speech language therapy in the diaspora spaces of the United States and Canada. Additionally, this paper discusses best practices for collaborating with, providing care to, and facilitating professional growth among the Arab diaspora. We begin by…

L2 pragmatics have explored the effects of different factors on different aspects of learners' pragmatic performance, but often not simultaneously. In addition, syntactic complexity is rarely examined in L2 pragmatics. This cross-sectional study aimed to conduct a multidimensional analysis to explore the effects of proficiency and study-abroad…

Speaking courses in English language education are important to develop many skills. They are enjoyable courses in which students can practice the words, phrases, idioms, or proverbs they learn. Teachers or lecturers are lucky if their students would like to attend the classroom activities, they prepare for their class hours. When students attend…

Previous studies in the acquisition of clitic se in Spanish have focused on the syntactic processes needed to perform detransitivization. However, current approaches on event structure reveal that "se" encodes aspectual information which is crucial for its acquisition. We examine the use, intuition and interpretation of the aspectual…

This study investigated the efficacy of explicit lexical collocation instruction via the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). To improve competence in lexical collocation and writing performance and to examine whether collocational competence and writing performance have a linear interrelation, 16 international English for Academic…

Differences in how one says the same thing in two distinct languages often give rise to challenges for second language learners, which when addressed, allow them to become more competent language users. The present study investigates the use of communicative language teaching (CLT) on compliment responses in Standard American English for English…

Vocabulary learning materials and vocabulary learning research have a common objective of promoting effective vocabulary instruction (Schmitt, 2008), but in practice vocabulary learning materials tend to reflect materials writers' repertoire and intuition primarily (Tomlinson, 2011). In an effort to develop a stronger interface between research…

Second language (L2) phonological acquisition involves learning novel target-language sounds, variable forms of sounds that arise in different phonological contexts, and any phonotactic constraints that govern their appearance. Interlanguage (IL) grammars must adapt to represent sounds and constraints that are novel to the native language (L1)…

Teletandem (Telles, 2009) is a model of telecollaboration in which pairs of foreign language students from different countries meet regularly and virtually to learn each other's languages. Within this context, participants are expected to help their partners learn by providing feedback. The multimodal nature of this type of environment, however,…

Despite English being a core and compulsory part of the curriculum for Chinese English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners, it is nevertheless often highly challenging for them. This is partly due to the discrepancies between English's citation and spoken form and the lack of recognition this pronunciation receives within ESL classrooms. With this…