This paper sets out to peruse the role of various theories or more precisely, hypotheses invoked in second language acquisition (SLA) research by surveying three empirical studies pertaining to the critical period hypothesis in the SLA of phonetics and phonology. In particular, the three studies reviewed are titled in chronological order as (1)…

Direct object clitics in Latin American Spanish are subject to great variability in features across dialects. Variability also characterizes bilingual acquisition and especially clitic doubling structures in language contact contexts. We focus on the distribution of clitics and Differential Object Marking (DOM) in clitic doubling structures among…

Due to the variety of their local dialects and accents, Arab learners occasionally face some problems when pronouncing English letters and phonemes. These pronunciation errors are caused by the influence of native language interference. Each language in any part of the world has its linguistic characteristics and rules that control their…

Among focus-on-form studies, oral corrective feedback (CF) has probably received the greatest attention. The majority of studies in this area appear to support a positive role for oral CF in improving interlanguage development. However, theorists adopting a nativist view of second language acquisition continue to question its effectiveness. The…

English has a very dynamic status today. One can literally witness its circle widening day by day, engulfing in it a wide spectrum of varieties. English is a pluri-centric language, i.e. language with more than one accepted standard and set of norms for creativity. The spread of English across the globe took place due to two reasons: first, the…

When learning English, learners might face a challenging task in mastering pronunciation due to differences in both languages such as sound-to-letter correspondence, size of phoneme inventory, allophonic realization of sounds, place and manner of articulation, among others. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review both theoretical and…

This paper first considers what it means to become truly proficient in a language other than the native one. It then looks briefly at the evolution of dual language programs. Next, it focuses on the issue of whether the first language (L1) or the second language (L2) serves as the language of mediation. Other dual language program issues are then…

Stress is one of the key suprasegmentals in English sound system. It plays an important role in intelligibility and comprehensibility. However, stress often poses problems for Chinese EFL Learners. Chinese learners of English often misplace the stress in English words and sentences which subsequently may interrupt the flow of communication and…

Communicative competence is the ultimate goal of most learners of a second language and intelligible pronunciation a fundamental part of it. Unfortunately, learners often lack the opportunity to explore how intelligible their speech is for different audiences. Our research investigates whether synchronous-voice computer-mediated communication…