The primary aim of this study was to investigate prosodic prominence across three groups of Sylheti-English bilinguals: first-generation who arrived as adults, first-generation who arrived as children, and second-generation, i.e., born in the United Kingdom to parents who grew up in Bangladesh. To measure prominence, f0, duration, and intensity…

As the main symptom in palliative care, pain requires careful assessment. Repeating patient answers is one recommended communication technique for helping convey to patients that they have been heard, and to encourage them to say more. We examined 23 episodes where experienced doctors repeat patients' answers with mirrored rhythm and…

Languages differ in the importance of acoustic dimensions for speech categorization. This poses a potential challenge for second language (L2) learners, and the extent to which adult L2 learners can acquire new perceptual strategies for speech categorization remains unclear. This study investigated the effects of extensive English L2 immersion on…

We examined the independent contributions of prosodic sensitivity and morphological awareness to word reading, text reading accuracy, and reading comprehension. We did so in a longitudinal study of English-speaking children (N = 70). At 5-7 years of age, children completed the metalinguistic measures along with control measures of phonological…

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…

We advocate the in-depth integration of information technology and education in the digital age, and we also encourage teachers of all disciplines to actively carry out online and offline blended learning. This study attempts to use an empirical research to apply the Blended Learning to the oral English teaching in the first year of senior high…

The role of prosodic information in sentence processing is not usually addressed in second language (L2) instruction, and neurocognitive studies on prosody-syntax interactions are rare. Here we compare event-related potentials (ERP) of Chinese and German learners of English L2 to those of native English speakers and show how first language (L1)…

Prosodic awareness (the rhythmic patterning of speech) accounts for unique variance in reading development. However, studies have thus far focused on early readers and utilised literacy measures which fail to distinguish between monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. The current study investigated the factors that are specifically associated with…

Background: Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) is a motor speech disorder in which a variety of segmental and suprasegmental errors lead to the perception of a new accent in speech. Whilst changes in intonation have been identified to contribute considerably to the perceived alteration in accent, research has rarely focused on how these changes impact…

This article reports an empirical study investigating L2 acquisition of the Mandarin Chinese "shì…de" cleft construction by adult English-speaking learners within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009). A Sentence Completion task, an interpretation task, two Acceptability Judgement tasks, and a felicity…

This empirical study investigates the beliefs of teachers and students regarding strategies for learning and teaching Chinese tones, which constitute a crucial feature of the spoken language and often cause problems for learners. Two online questionnaires that listed 11 Chinese tone learning strategies and 7 tone teaching strategies were…

This article investigates the perceptual effect of a high plateau in the intonation contour. Plateaux are flat stretches of contour and have been observed associated with high tones in Standard Southern British (SSB) English. The hypothesis that plateaux may make the accents with which they are associated sound higher in pitch than sharp peaks of…

It has been widely shown that infants and adults are capable of using only prosodic information to discriminate between languages. However, it remains unclear which aspects of prosody, either rhythm or intonation, listeners attend to for language discrimination. Previous researchers have suggested that rhythm, the duration and timing of speech…

This article focuses on an oversubscribed UK higher education music conservatoire that centres its selection procedures on individual performance auditions. In this mixed-method study, centrally-held assessment scores are used to show that A-level music grades are a more effective predictor of final degree result than performance at audition. This…

This paper presents an analysis of the potential problems of importing media communication in the form of a television programme from another culture. In Hong Kong, as elsewhere in the world, the local television companies frequently buy successful television programmes from, for example, the USA or Britain with the expectation that they will be…