This article reports on the second language (L2) perception of contrasts among British English monophthongs. This study has two aims: 1) to explore the discriminability of contrasts in L2 British English monophthongs; and 2) to test the perceptual assimilation model-L2 (PAM-L2) towards the ability to discriminate British English contrasts. The…

Native language acquisition is one of the initial processes undertaken by the human brain in the infant stage of life. The linguist community has always been interested in finding the method, which is adopted by the human brain to acquire the native language. Word segmentation in one of the most important tasks in acquiring the language.…

In dialogue, speakers tend to adapt their speech to the speech of their interlocutor. Adapting speech production to preceding speech input may be particularly relevant for second language (L2) speakers interacting with native (L1) speakers, as adaptation may facilitate L2 learning. Here we asked whether Dutch-English bilinguals adapt pronunciation…

Background: Literacy achievement of learners is a concern in many developing countries, particularly for English second language (EL2) learners with inadequate language development. It is important to investigate foundational phonological awareness (PA), as well as speech perception skills to guide the development of effective intervention for EL2…

The current study investigated linguistic influences on comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and accentedness (linguistic nativelikeness) in second language (L2) learners' extemporaneous speech. Target materials included picture narratives from 40 native French speakers of English from different proficiency levels. The narratives were…

The current study examined the effect of speaker variability on children's cross-situational word learning (XSWL). The study also examined the role of bilingual experience and sustained attention. Forty English monolingual children and 40 Spanish-English bilingual children ages 4-7 completed a XSWL task in a Single Speaker Condition and a Multiple…

This study investigated the role of cross-linguistic similarity in the acquisition of Russian initial stop contrasts by Chinese learners, addressing two specific research questions: (1) How similar are Russian voiced stops to Mandarin stops for Chinese learners?; and (2) How can the speech learning model (SLM) be applied to account for the…

This research aimed to (1) develop and measure the efficiency of a set of reading and pronunciation skills in Chinese phonetics via Seesaw online classroom; (2) examine the effectiveness of the set; and (3) evaluate students' satisfaction with practice packages on Chinese pronunciation via Seesaw online classroom. Thirty-six undergraduate students…

This dissertation investigates language-specific acoustic and aerodynamic phenomena in language contact situations. Whereas most work on second language and bilingual phonology has focused on individual consonants and vowels, this project examines patterns of coarticulation in the two languages of Spanish-English and French-English bilingual…

This study employed a targeted phonetic instruction to explore the mechanisms that underpin second language (L2) phonetic acquisition. Broadly, two general approaches to phonetic acquisition have been previously proposed. A segmental approach suggests that learners acquire a series of individual, discrete phonemes (e.g., Flege, 1995), while a…

Junctures are specific phonemes in English language and work like what the traffic lights do in the structures of phrases at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. They indicate both the pauses and continuation in the flow of speech in between or among the utterances some of which can be the…

Without data on speech accuracy of Vietnamese-English speakers, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are unable to assess accurately this population for speech sound disorders. This study explored the heretofore uninvestigated speech accuracy and use of Vietnamese-English bilingual individuals residing in the USA. Participants included six…

Individuals with lower proficiency in a second language tend to produce more disfluent speech patterns in the second language. Speech disfluencies refer to interruptions in the forward flow of speech and are distinct from the colloquial use of "fluency," to characterize knowledge of a language. Prior research indicates that some speech…

Millions engage in learning a Second Language (L2) using their mobile devices with a wide range of success. Concomitantly, there exists a growing interest in research on the effects of mobile-assisted language learning and predictors of learner outcomes (e.g., Loewen et al., 2020; Sudina & Plonsky, 2023). However, few of these apps and studies…

Research on native Arabic speakers' perception of non-native English phonemic contrasts has manifested various conclusions. Some studies have revealed that native Arabic speakers experience difficulty in the perception of non-native English phonemic contrasts, where others have concluded that they largely do not experience such difficulty. Due to…