English is widely regarded as a global language, and it has become increasingly important for global communication. As a result, the demand for English language education has been on the rise. In China, a significant number of individuals are engaged in learning the English language. However, many English learners in China encounter challenges…

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,…

In traditional, generative phonology, sound patterns are represented in terms of abstract features, typically based on the articulatory properties of the sounds. The present study makes use of an artificial language learning experiment to explore when and how learners extend a novel phonological pattern to novel segments. Adult, English-speaking…

How could individual differences in processing non-speech acoustic signals influence their cue weighting strategies for L2 speech contrasts? The present study investigated this question by testing forty L1 Chinese-L2 English listeners with two tasks: one for testing the listeners' sensitivity to pitch and temporal information of non-speech…

The current study investigates the influence of L2 English learners' belief about their interlocutor's English proficiency on phonetic accommodation and explores whether interaction-induced phonetic convergence could improve L2 English learners' vowel pronunciation. Results from two experiments show that when the subjects believed that their…

The prominent role of allophonic cues in English speech segmentation has widely been recognized by phonologists and psycholinguists. However, very meager inquiry was devoted to analysing the perception of these noncontrastive allophonic cues by Arab EFL learners. Accordingly, the present study is an attempt to examine the exploitation of…

Informed by Segalowitz's (Cognitive bases of second language fluency, Routledge, 2010) L2 speech production model and MacIntyre et al.'s (Mod Lang J 82(4):545-562, 1998. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1998.tb05543.x) L2 willingness to communicate model, this study sought to understand the influence of cognitive, affective and sociocultural…

Language learners' actual speech performances constitute an essential aspect of studies on second language learning and teaching. Although there is ample research on fluency and pauses in English, current literature does not touch on this issue from a multilingual perspective by comparing both read and spontaneous speech performances. In this…