This article summarizes research on body language, embodiment, and the incorporation of proprioception, physical movement, gestures, and touch into second language education, particularly with regard to the pronunciation of English. It asserts that careful attention to breathing, vocalization, articulatory positions, pulmonic and tactile…

The purpose of this study was to systematically review the factors affecting the language, speech intelligibility, speech production, and lexical tone development of children with hearing loss who use spoken languages other than English. Relevant studies of children with hearing loss published between 2000 and 2011 were reviewed with reference to…

Data was collected from 45-minute conversational interviews of 20 Cubans, who arrived in the United States in 1980, to analyze vocalic processes in Cuban Spanish. Four vocalic processes found in Cuban Spanish (raising and devoicing of unstressed vowels, lengthening of stressed vowels, and diphthongization of stressed mid vowels) were examined.…

Examination of the perceptibility of carryover coarticulatory perturbations occurring at syllabic vowels in Mandarin Chinese suggests that, in connected speech, a portion of fundamental frequency at intertonemic onset is perturbed, including initial voiced consonants and vowels, and that the perturbations result from preservative as well as…

Neurophysiological aspects of the development and use of accents in language are considered, including the function of age of the second language learner, left brain hemisphere, language tasks, and other neuroanatomical considerations. (CB)

Pronunciation is reexamined from a "top-down" perspective that shifts the focus of attention in language instruction from individual phonemes to suprasegmentals and other features of the larger context of utterances, including prosody, phonological fluency, voice quality, and gestures. (57 references) (Author/LB)

The English spoken by Spanish-surnamed Americans of the southwestern United States often has a Spanish flavor, even though the speakers may have no competence in Spanish. This Chicano English is discussed in a series of descriptions based on a number of previous studies of regional variations. Each description covers pronunciation, intonation,…

Reviews the general trends of research concerned with second language phonology, citing several principal factors involved in foreign accent such as age and native language interference. More recent investigations show that pronunciation of a foreign language is influenced by factors of stylistic variation and stages of development unrelated to…

The sound system of English is described in all its complexity, from the relationship between spelling and pronunciation to the rules of connected speech, focusing on the methods and rationale of teaching pronunciation of English, particularly to English as a second language learners. (CB)

Reviews common pronunciation problems experienced by learners of English as a second language who are native speakers of Vietnamese, Cantonese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Greek, and Punjabi. (CB)