The current study investigated the effects of repetition on the learning of second language (L2) spoken word forms. Japanese university students learning L2 English were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions (one, three, and six exposures) and learned 40 words while hearing them and viewing their corresponding pictures. A…

Children are known to be fast learners due to their neural plasticity. Learning a non-native language (L2) requires the mastering of new production patterns. In classroom settings, learners are not only exposed to the acoustic input, but also to the unfamiliar grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the L2 orthography. We tested how 9-10-year-old…

This study examined how mode of input affects the learning of pronunciation and form-meaning connection of second language (L2) words. Seventy-five Japanese learners of English were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions (reading while listening, reading only, listening only), studied 40 low-frequency words while viewing their corresponding…

This study investigated the extent to which explicit and implicit instruction improve L1-Arabic speakers' articulation of English words whose cognates were acquired earlier in their L2 French. Sixty-eight secondary school students, explicit (n=35) and implicit (n=33), participated in a programme incorporating focus-on-pronunciation activities,…

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness for L2 English learners of a new direct approach to segmental pronunciation instruction that combined articulatory instruction with abdominal enhancement techniques. The participants were Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong, where the school curriculum relies chiefly on indirect…

The acquisition of a sound system is an integral component of second language (L2) communication, yet it is one of the most difficult skills to teach and is therefore largely ignored in L2 classrooms (Derwing, 2010). In laboratory settings, phonetic training studies have typically examined syllables, rather than words, with no referential meaning.…

This paper examines whether a web-based training on English discourse intonation leads to better spontaneous speech quality for Mandarin Chinese speakers who reside in the U.S. and in China. The four-week fully online training consisted of meta-instruction videos as well as listening and speaking activities, including instant visual pitch contour…

This project analyzes teacher behavior using a corpus of 110 hours of recorded instruction in order to document the realities of second-language pronunciation instruction. Teachers of six intact classes were recorded during a seven-week oral communication course. Four classes implemented a focus on pronunciation that was integrated into the…

While phonetic training in laboratory settings has been shown to be helpful for second language (L2) sounds learning in prior studies , it is still open to debate whether a perception- or a production-based approach can better help adults learn L2 sounds in classroom settings. This study aimed to fill this knowledge gap. The participants were…

This research analyzes the acoustic characteristics and conducts a perception test of Thai tones produced by Chinese learners learning Thai through the "Thai Tone Application". A comparison of Thai tones pronounced by 40 Chinese learners learning Thai at Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University with 40 Thai native speakers was also…

This study examined the production of L3 French words by Spanish--English bilinguals who had no prior knowledge of the L3. Using a shadowing task, 39 Spanish L1/English L2 and 18 Spanish monolingual speakers produced 26 tokens of word-initial voiceless plosive consonants in French, Spanish and English (15 Spanish and French tokens for the…

During spoken word processing, native (L1) listeners use allophonic variation to predictively rule out word competitors and speed up word recognition. There is some evidence that second language (L2) learners develop an awareness of allophonic distributions in their L2, but whether they use their knowledge to facilitate word recognition online,…

This study investigates the acoustic realizations of English phonemic contrasts by Korean EFL learners, comparing their productions with those of native English speakers. Focusing on the segmentally correct production, the research aims to determine if Korean learners' acoustic properties align with those of native speakers, influenced by second…

This study examined how discriminability and prototypicality of nonnative phones modulate the amplitude of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) event-related brain potential. We hypothesized that if a frequently occurring (standard) stimulus is not prototypical to a listener, a weaker predictive memory trace will be formed and a smaller MMN will be…

Children learning Chinese must cope with an opaque orthography lacking transparent relations between oral pronunciations and written characters: a challenge heightened for L2 learners. Use of digital Pinyin input may facilitate connections between oral and written language by allowing learners to access vocabulary they cannot yet write. We…