The rating of proficiency tests that use the Inter-agency Roundtable (ILR) and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines claims that each major level is based on hierarchal linguistic functions that require mastery of multidimensional traits in such a way that each level subsumes the levels beneath it. These…

Many learners of English as a foreign language often feel that learning spoken English is frustrating and quite difficult, especially when they have to talk to English-speaking foreigners. In general, because they are unfamiliar with the spoken mode of English and are worried about making grammatical errors, they often feel very scared to speak…

This paper traces the development of two roughly synonymous nominalizing suffixes during the Early Modern English period, the Romance "-ity" and the native "-ness." The aim is to assess whether these suffixes were favored in particular registers or followed similar paths of development, and to ascertain whether the ongoing…

Purpose: The study sought to determine whether the onset of canonical vocalizations in children with cochlear implants (CIs) is related to speech perception skills and spoken vocabulary size at 24 months postactivation. Method: The vocal development in 13 young CI recipients (implanted by their third birthdays; mean age at activation = 20.62…

In this paper I make the case for embedding oracy practices in the HE curriculum through explicit teaching of oracy skills and a shared common language to describe these skills. Active learning and teaching approaches as well as growing expectations of graduate employability skills have resulted in greater demands on students in UK higher…

Profound hearing loss can have serious and irreversible consequences for oral language development in children, affecting spoken and written language acquisition. Auditory-verbal therapy has been widely applied to children with hearing loss with promising results, mainly in developed countries where cochlear implants are available. An evaluation…

Being able to speak or communicate orally is an ultimate goal for most English language learners. Thus, teaching speaking is a main component of the curriculum in most communicative-based English language classrooms. However, teachers struggle to teach speaking in English language classrooms. Two main reasons contribute to this struggle:…

Nonverbal behavior is essential in human interaction (Gullberg, de Bot, & Volterra, 2008; McNeill, 1992, 2005). For second language speakers, nonverbal features can be helpful for successful and efficient communication (e.g., Dahl & Ludvigsen, 2014). However, due to the complexity of nonverbal features, language testing institutions have…

The general consensus in second language (L2) acquisition research that instruction facilitates L2 development has been confirmed in a growing number of meta-analyses and research syntheses conducted in an increasingly wide range of L2 areas, including, recently, pronunciation instruction. Yet, little research has been done on the…

In an exploration of the effects of task-repetition practice on fluency development, English-as-a-foreign language learners performed three oral narrative tasks involving six-frame cartoons for 3 consecutive days. They engaged in task-repetition practice under either a blocked (Day 1: A-A-A; Day 2: B-B-B; Day 3: C-C-C) or an interleaved (Day 1:…

This study explores the status quo of speaking strategies used by Chinese High School Students of International Department by using both questionnaire and interview. The participants were 90 second-year Chinese High School Students of International Department, and then the data were analyzed by SPSS 18.0. The study yields certain results. First,…

Hyper-articulation of vowel and consonant contrasts is often reported in infant-directed speech (IDS), but is not universal cross-linguistically, and may be a side-effect of speaking rate. This study investigated the voicing characteristics of the four-way oral stop voicing contrast in Nepali IDS. Both lead and lag time of word-onset/g,…

The current study examined the extent to which cognitive fluency (CF) contributes to utterance fluency (UF) at the level of constructs. A total of 128 Japanese-speaking learners of English completed four speaking tasks--argumentative task, picture narrative task, reading-to-speaking task, and reading-while-listening-to-speaking task--and a battery…

The effects of question or task complexity on second language speaking have traditionally been investigated using complexity, accuracy, and fluency measures. Response processes in speaking tests, however, may manifest in other ways, such as through nonverbal behavior. Eye behavior, in the form of averted gaze or blinking frequency, has been found…

This study looked at the attitudes of Ethiopian English teachers and Bonga Mehal Ketema High School grade 10 students about spoken communication in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to determine why oral communication is such an important part of English teaching, what role teachers and students play in making orally active students in…