This study examines the impact of explicit and implicit pronunciation instruction on the segmental pronunciation accuracy of phonemes /s/ and /z/ in an EFL classroom of 11th-grade Spanish-speaking students. The research focuses on transparent and non-transparent words containing the grapheme <s> and the phonemes /s/ and /z/ and was conducted…

Within the field of linguistics, whether considering language contact situations (Weinreich, 1979) or foreign language education (Lado, 1957), the topic of language transfer, especially as it relates to pronunciation, has always been an item of particular interest. While research on such transfer has mostly focused on various phenomena of the L1…

Prior research indicates that first language (L1) orthography can adversely affect second language (L2) phonological acquisition, yet studies on orthographic interference and pedagogical strategies to mitigate these effects remain sparse. Addressing these research gaps, this study investigates the impact of orthographic interference on L2 German…

At present, developmental dyslexia is classified as a specific language disorder recognised by inclusive educational laws in Spain and the United Kingdom. Phonological correspondence is very different in Spanish and in English, and the difficulties they entail for native speakers are also different. The predominance of English worldwide has led to…

Awareness, short-term memory, and long-term memory are interrelated cognitive abilities that influence orthographic acquisition under Individual Differences. Connectionists ignore the role of biological grammar in language acquisition and consider external inputs or interventions as factors that shape abstract grammar through network mapping…

Foreign language was recently added to Japan's national primary school curriculum. Phoneme-Grapheme Recognition (PGR) skills are a critical step in both L1 and L2 development. Due to its simplistic approach and the lack of new investment in teacher training, research regarding the impact on PGR skills are important. This study tested the relative…

The purpose of this study was to explore five developmental patterns of English letter-name knowledge for emergent bilingual children. We considered five patterns demonstrated by English monolingual children: visual similarity effect, uppercase familiarity effect, first name/first initial effects, consonant-order effect, and frequency effect. We…

We investigated how grapheme familiarity and grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) congruence affect adult learners' ability to make use of orthographic input (OI) during phono-lexical acquisition. Native English speakers, with no Russian experience (naïve) or learners of Russian, heard auditory forms, saw pictured meanings, and saw written input…

Analysis of a corpus of errors in pronouncing Proper Nouns used in English collected from the spontaneous speech of a sample of Arab informants showed that Arabic speakers have the following problems: (i) mispronouncing English vowels in "Google," "Moodle," "Uber," "Nixon," "London;" (ii) replacing…

This study aimed to develop a Vietnamese word recognition test for Taiwanese undergraduate students and to investigate students' performances at different learning stages. The formal test consists of 100 words as test items. With each word, test takers were asked to select the correct Vietnamese word form corresponding to the pronunciation they…

36 Saudi EFL freshmen students, at the College of Languages and Translation, took a listening-spelling test in which they filled out 100 blanks in a dialogue. Results indicated that 63% of the spelling errors were phonemic and 37% were graphemic. It was also found that the subjects had more problems with whole words than problems with graphemes…

When inferring the meaning of unknown words in a second language, learners make use of a variety of cues including the cross-linguistic formal similarities of loanwords and cognates. However, because learners do not always recognize these cross-linguistic relationships, cognate strategy training has been recommended. The present study investigated…

Reading acquisition involves connections between the spoken language and the writing system. The English-language writing system holds an inconsistent alphabetic system, thus encouraging readers to develop representations between the grapheme and the word. Reading in English as a Foreign language supposes a challenge, especially when the reader's…

Ofsted's (2021. Curriculum research review series: Languages (OCRR). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/curriculum-research-review-series) sees 'phonics' as one of three key 'pillars of progression' in language learning. This paper critically examines this view, beginning with the OCRR's definition of 'phonics'. Focussing on the teaching…

The age at which people acquire a word influences word recognition, known as the age of acquisition (AoA) effect. In the first language (L1), AoA effects are widely found in various languages and experimental tasks. Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis proposes that AoA effects reflect the loss of network plasticity during the learning of mappings between…