Recent studies indicate that many foreign students now choose to go to the Philippines for university and language education. In this paper, we examine how Filipino Teachers' English (FTE) is represented on English language schools' webpages to market the Philippines as an alternative destination for acquiring "good" English among…

Many studies evidence the flexibility of speech perception in the first language (L1), which allows rapid adaptation to unfamiliar foreign accents. Two influential studies by Bradlow and Bent (2008) and a follow-up study by Baese-Berk et al. (2013) found that increased variability as a function of the number of talkers and accents facilitated the…

This study examines relative weighting of two acoustic cues, vowel duration and spectra, in the perception of high front vowels by Japanese learners of English. Studies found that Japanese speakers rely heavily on duration to distinguish /i?/ and [character omitted] in American English (AmE) as influenced by phonemic length in Japanese /ii/ and…

The effects of repeated oral reading and timed reading on L2 oral reading fluency were examined among Japanese university students (N = 50) over 12 weeks. Three quasi-experimental groups were used in the study. Group 1 practiced two types of reading: Repeated oral reading with chunking practice and timed reading. Group 2 did timed reading only.…

This study investigates the phenomena of second language (L2, hereafter) inner voice for three Japanese-American English bilinguals who had long-term exposure to the L2 in naturalistic contexts, that is, by living and/or working or studying in the U.S. American English learners of L2 Japanese were included in the study as well, although only one…

The fact that people with minimal linguistic skill can manage in unfamiliar or reduced linguistic environments suggests that there are universal mechanisms of meaning construction that operate at a level well beyond the particular structure or semantics of any one language. The authors examine this possibility in the domain of discourse by…

This paper reports the results of a survey of 101 Japanese university students' perceptions of different varieties of English using an open-ended questionnaire. Participants indicated their first impressions of varieties of English that they had named. This methodology allows participants themselves to provide the specific varieties as well as the…

This study investigated contemporary Japanese college students' attitudes towards Japan English (JE) and American English (AE) through a verbal guise test (VGT) as well as a questionnaire. Forty-four Japanese college students listened to four Japanese and four North Americans reading a text in English, rated them in terms of solidarity-related…

This paper explores the ambivalent nature of Japanese attitudes toward English vis-a-vis the Japanese language, followed by a discussion of Japanese efforts in incorporating the concept of English as an International Language (EIL) into their educational system and teaching practice as a solution to this dilemma. While the Japanese have an…

Language attitude studies have tended to assume that informants who listen to and evaluate speech stimuli are able to identify with consistent accuracy the varieties of English in question. However, misidentification could reduce the validity of any results obtained, particularly when it involves the evaluations of non-native English-speaking…

Patterns of developmental change in phonetic perception are critical to theory development. Many previous studies document a decline in nonnative phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months of age. However, much less experimental attention has been paid to developmental change in native-language phonetic perception over the same time period. We…

According to Smith and Nelson [Smith, L.E., Nelson, C.E., 1985. "International intelligibility of English: directions and resources." "World Englishes" 3, 333-342.], "intelligibility" refers to word/utterance recognition, whereas "comprehensibility" is the understanding of word/utterance meaning. This study…

Compares the cognitive representation of number of 24 American, 25 Chinese, 24 Japanese, and 40 Korean first-graders, and 20 Korean kindergartners. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean children preferred to use a construction of tens and ones to show numbers, whereas English-speaking children preferred to use a collection of units. (RJC)

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL), introduces "Developing a New Course for Adult Learners," edited by Marguerite Ann Snow and Lia Kamhi-Stein. This volume in TESOL's Language Curriculum Development Series presents the stories of teachers, curriculum developers, and administrators from all over the world who…

Articles on speech acts and intercultural communication include: "Investigating the Production of Speech Act Sets" (Andrew Cohen); "Non-Native Refusals: A Methodological Perspective" (Noel Houck, Susan M. Gass); "Natural Speech Act Data versus Written Questionnaire Data: How Data Collection Method Affects Speech Act…