The current study explores variation in phonemic representation among Spanish--English dual language learners (DLLs, n = 60) who were dominant in English or in Spanish. Children were given a phonetic discrimination task with speech sounds that: 1) occur in English and Spanish, 2) are exclusive to English, and 3) are exclusive to Russian, during…

Despite considerable efforts made to understand the impact that instructional interventions have upon L2 reading development, we still lack a clear picture of the influence that PA and phonics instruction has upon reading in English as an L2. A search of the research literature published from 1990 to 2019 yielded 45 articles with 46 studies…

Determining later academic achievement, early literacy skills are all of the prerequisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for successful reading and writing during formal education. Early literacy skills consist of several sub-skills including phonology knowledge that determine primary-level reading. The present article is prepared for…

[For the complete volume, "CALL and Professionalisation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2021 (29th, Online, August 26-27, 2021)," see ED616972.]This study investigated whether a translation tool (Microsoft Translator -- MT) and its built-in speech features (Text-To-Speech synthesis -- TTS -- and speech recognition) can promote learners'…

The present article summarizes various aspects of teaching foreign languages to learners with dyslexia. In particular, although it is a matter examined broadly around the world, in Greece there are few references and limited research in this field. Furthermore, the lack of foreign language teachers' training in the field of specific learning…

The authors report two studies that examined how native- and second-language skills were related to second-language reading difficulties for native Chinese-speaking fourth graders learning to read English. In study 1, 50 poor English readers with Chinese-reading difficulties (the PB group) and 34 poor English readers without Chinese-reading…

The purpose of this study was to investigate practices of teaching early reading, and challenges teachers face in its implementation at the Ethiopian primary schools. The study was carried out in 224 grade two government primary schools found in the Amhara National regional State, west Gojjam zone, Ethiopia, in 2019/2020 academic year. To attain…

This study examined pinyin (the official phonetic system that transcribes the lexical tones and pronunciation of Chinese characters) invented spelling and English invented spelling in 72 Mandarin-speaking 6th graders who learned English as their second language. The pinyin invented spelling task measured segmental-level awareness including…

This study examines the relationship between different types of language learning aptitude (measured via the LLAMA test) and adult second language (L2) learners' attainment in speech production in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms. Picture descriptions elicited from 50 Japanese EFL learners from varied proficiency levels were analyzed…

Previous research has shown that learners of English as a second language have difficulties in understanding connected speech spoken by native English speakers. This study examines the role of the perception of reduced forms (e.g., contraction, elision, assimilation) of English words in connected speech comprehension and the phonological skills…

It has been observed in Japanese children learning to read that there is an early and rapid shift from exclusive reading of hiragana as syllabograms to the dual-use convention in which some hiragana also represent phonemic elements. Such rapid initial learning appears contrary to the standard theories of reading acquisition that require…

Learning to read is a complex task for beginners of English. They must coordinate many cognitive processes to read accurately and fluently, including recognizing words, constructing the meanings of sentences and text, and retaining the information read in memory. An essential part of the process for beginners involves learning the alphabetic…

Cross-language transfer is the extent, if any, to which phonological awareness in L1 facilitates learning to read in L2. This has been an area of investigation wherein researchers looked into the orthographic and phonological component processing skills L2 learners develop and utilize to facilitate word recognition. Given the difference between…

This study analysed the extent to which literate native speakers of a language with a phonemic alphabetic orthography rely on their first language (L1) orthography during second language (L2) speech production of a language that has a morphophonemic alphabetic orthography. The production of the English flapping rule by 15 adult native speakers of…

In this study, we describe two studies used to select appropriate assessments to measure phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, and fluency in the Spanish language for students receiving literacy instruction in Spanish. We first describe two studies in which we use linear regression and correlations to examine the appropriateness of different…