The present experiments tested bilingual infants' developmental narrowing for the interpretation of sounds that form words. These studies addressed how language specialization proceeds when the environment provides varied and divergent input. Experiment 1 (N = 32) demonstrated that bilingual 14- and 19-month-olds learned a pair of object labels…

Prior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8,…

This study examines the relationship between the repetition of oral monologue tasks and immediate gains in L2 fluency. It considers the effect of aural-oral task repetition on speech rate, frequency of clause-final and midclause filled pauses, and overt self-repairs across different task types and proficiency levels and relates these findings to…

L2 reading attitude has been the subject of more recent studies in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), and many have attempted to define this construct and find its correlates such as gender and L1 and L2 proficiency level. This study builds on the previous studies and aims at highlighting the connection between L2 and L1 reading attitudes and…

According to the United Nations, nearly a quarter of a billion people now live outside their country of birth, and it is predicted that this number will increase dramatically over the next decade or so. This international movement of people means that, increasingly, teachers and educators work with immigrant and refugee children and families who…

This study examined how key factors of FFI (degree of explicitness, L1 similarity, proficiency level, and grammar type) influence the accuracy of production. A total of 22 experimental studies, all of which had Korean participants and productive assessments of speech or writing, were selected for analysis. Results revealed that explicit grammar…

The development of meaningful environments at school for the learning of Science as well as of foreign languages is an educational concern. CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), aimed at the students' acquisition of both the foreign Language and specific subject Content, is an approach that may promote the learning of English in use…

Every speaker of a native language undergoes an interlanguage continuum or the way that the language learners go through from the first to the second language. Interlanguage is an essential theory for teachers to know what goes on in the learning process. It makes the teachers look at the varieties of mistaken linguistic forms with an eye for…

While it is well established that non-native speakers differ from native speakers in their perception and/or production of Mandarin lexical tones, empirical studies focusing on non-native "learners" are still limited. The objective of this study is to add to the current understanding of lexical tone perception by comparing native…

This article reports results from a longitudinal study from age 4 to 7 of comprehension and production of narrative macrostructure in Swedish monolingual children (N = 17). "Baby Birds/Baby Goats" from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) were used to elicit narratives and ask comprehension questions at age…

Purpose: The intelligibility of an accent strongly depends on the specific talker-listener pairing. To explore the causes of this phenomenon, we investigated the relationship between acoustic-phonetic similarity and accent intelligibility across native (1st language) and nonnative (2nd language) talker-listener pairings. We also used online…

With the present implementation of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) in the Philippines, this study investigated the language practices of teachers and learners (collectively 'participants') in the teaching and learning of English as a second language (ESL) in two Third Grade classrooms in a multilingual city in the Philippines.…

Cognitive psychology research has shown that interleaving, wherein learners practice multiple skills or concepts at once, facilitates learning more than does blocking, wherein learners practice only one skill or concept at a time. Despite the advantage of interleaving over blocking observed across a number of domains, limited attention has been…

Concerns about poor L1 reading skills in undergraduate students have been expressed in several contexts. These skills form a basis for building robust L2 reading comprehension skills, vital for translators. This study, which is part of a larger organization-based action research study to improve L1 reading levels, aimed to explore how L1 reading…

The present study investigates Taiwanese researchers' perceptions, problems, and strategies of trying to get published in English in the field of English teaching. This discipline presents an interesting case for publishing, as in Taiwan, this group of researchers is highly expected to use English as a medium in writing for research. Through…