The purpose of the study is to investigate whether English as a foreign language (EFL) learners are more willing to communicate and study with the same partners or different partners in speaking activities in pairs or small groups and to determine whether there are similarities or differences in learners' views regarding the same and different…

Fetal hearing experiences shape the linguistic and musical preferences of neonates. From the very first moment after birth, newborns prefer their native language, recognize their mother's voice, and show a greater responsiveness to lullabies presented during pregnancy. Yet, the neural underpinnings of this experience inducing plasticity have…

Purpose: Background noise and voice problems among teachers can degrade listening conditions in classrooms. The aim of this literature review is to understand how these acoustic degradations affect spoken language processing in 6- to 18-year-old children. Method: In a narrative report and meta-analysis, we systematically review studies that…

The present study examines the impact of implementing video captioning and subtitles on listening comprehension with special reference to the speaker's speed. A total of 64 undergraduate Saudi EFL learners were assigned into six groups: fast speaker with full captioning, fast speaker with subtitles, fast speaker with no captioning nor subtitles,…

Existing work on the acquisition of polarity-sensitive expressions (PSIs) suggests that children show an early sensitivity to the restricted distribution of negative polarity items (NPIs), but may be delayed in the acquisition of positive polarity items (PPIs). However, past studies primarily targeted PSIs that are highly frequent in children's…

Rubric scoring has been gaining traction as an emergent method to assess spoken-language interpreting, with two of the most well-known methods being rating scale-based holistic and analytic scoring. While the former provides a single global score, the latter generates separate scores on different dimensions of interpreting performance. Despite the…

In order to translate and be translated, low-diffusion languages often use strategies that differ from those used by widely spoken languages and therefore create particular challenges for translators. One such strategy is indirect translation (including also relay interpreting). Since there are conflicting opinions about this practice within the…

It is vital to understand the listening problems students face in a foreign language (FL) classroom. In the current study, students were provided with options to identify these problems. Twenty-eight A1 level Turkish secondary school students worked in pairs and had autonomy to control the audio while listening. While dialogic exchanges…

This cross-sectional study examined the effects of English language proficiency on Jordanian EFL students' production and comprehension of apology strategies. The participants were 270 Jordanian EFL learners and 90 native speakers of English. Data were collected using Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) and Multiplechoice Discourse Completion…

In this article, a learner-centered pedagogical process for scaffolding a deliberate use of MT is presented with the goal of promoting student agency and personal expression. By developing awareness that translations entail contextually-sensitive options, students learn to critically assess different forms while actively engaging with translation…

The neck-breaking changes imposed by the process of globalization demand a reconsideration of the mundane scholarly dealings. The constant need for communication in a scientific area to keep pace with the continuing advancements and the newly published research works, mainly in the Speech-language Pathology branch, pushes the researcher to look…

This study examined the impact of the manipulated task complexity (Robinson 2001a, 2001b, 2007, 2011; Robinson & Gilabert, 2007) on second language (L2) speech comprehensibility. I examined whether manipulated task complexity (a) impacts L2 speech comprehensibility, (b) aligns with L2 speakers' perception of task difficulty (cognitive…

As language acquisition research supports the value of the interactive scaffolded environment and awareness-raising communicative tasks for the development of pragmatic knowledge, the present study attempted to investigate the effect of Collaborative Translation Task (CTT) on learning and retention of request speech act strategies. The main…

Though research has shown that rhythmic training is beneficial for phonological speech processing, little empirical work has been carried out to assess whether rhythmic training in the classroom can help to improve pronunciation in a second language. This study tests the potential benefits of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French…

This study explores the most perceivable phonological features of Hong Kong (HK) L2 English speakers and how they affect the perception of HK L2 English speech from the perspective of both native and non-native English listeners. Conversational interviews were conducted to collect speech data from 20 HK speakers of English and 10 native speakers…