This study investigated phonological whole-word measures in bilingual Arabic-English speakers to explore how the target approximations influence children's phonological development. To this end, fifteen bilingual Arabic-English speakers and nine monolingual Arabic-speaking children aged 36-48 months (mean = 42) participated in a parent-child…

Replication studies have become an emerging line of research in recent decades, including in computer-assisted language learning (CALL). Exact replication, which closely follows a study's protocol, is rare as it is hard to recreate results without establishing a highly controlled environment. However, using data available online, we were able to…

The current narrative review focuses on cross-language influences (CLI) in spelling English as a foreign language (EFL). We identify three types of distance between first language (L1) and English that may impact English spelling, namely distance in writing system, in orthography and in phonology. The review describes and specifies the spelling…

When it comes to learning an additional language, it is important that teachers prepare students to communicate with different speakers, respecting and understanding the different English-accented speeches around the world. This article helps English teachers from different parts of the world embrace language variation in their lessons,…

Bringing to the field of third language (L3) research a new population of speakers, namely heritage speaker (HS) L3 learners, this study investigates the accents of 19 German-Italian HSs in L3 English. In an accent rating experiment, the speech samples of the HSs and three control groups (monolingual speakers of English, Italian, and German) were…

A bilingual's language system is highly interactive. When hearing a second language (L2), bilinguals access native-language (L1) words that share sounds across languages. In the present study, we examine whether input modality and L2 proficiency moderate the extent to which bilinguals activate L1 phonotactic constraints (i.e., rules for combining…

This study revisits the roles of different aspects of phonological vocabulary knowledge in second language (L2) listening. Japanese learners of English (n = 114) completed the TOEIC Listening test and three phonological vocabulary tests assessing (a) ability to recognize the meanings of aural forms (meaning recognition), (b) ability to recall the…

This paper examines the understudied phenomenon of consonant gemination in the pronunciation of English among Levantine Arabic learners of English (LA learners). The very few studies that touched on gemination among LA learners attributed gemination to spelling in the target language (English). This study challenges this analysis and demonstrates…

Statistical learning (SL) approaches to reading maintain that proficient reading requires assimilation of rich statistical regularities in the writing system. Reading skills in developing first-language readers are predicted by individual differences in sensitivity to regularities in mappings from orthography to phonology (O-P) and semantics…

This study examines the effects of input quality on early phonological acquisition by investigating whether interadult variation in specific phonetic properties in the input is reflected in the production of their children. We analysed the English coda stop release patterns in the spontaneous speech of fourteen mothers and compared them with the…

The present study seeks to determine whether superior musical hearing is correlated with successful production of second language (L2) intonation patterns. Fifty Polish speakers of English at the university level were recorded before and after an extensive two-semester accent training course in English. Participants were asked to read aloud a…

Background: Spelling acquisition requires the assimilation of the regularities of the writing system, but these regularities may differ between the native and a foreign language. English spelling acquisition is a challenge for Spanish-speaking children due to differences in the orthographic systems. The aim of this study was to examine to what…

Previous research has established that phonetics has been marginalized within language teaching, proving to be particularly challenging for learners in EFL contexts. This paper presents EPSSML (https://www.usc.gal/multimlab/), an e-learning platform designed within Mayer's (2008, 2009) Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning to instruct English…

This study investigates the simplifications used with English consonant clusters by EFL learners of Saudi Najdi Arabic dialect (a dialect spoken in the central region of Saudi Arabia). More particularly, it focused on the Saudi Najdi speakers when they pronounce English final three-consonant clusters such as /lps/ as in "helps." The…

This study combines qualitative and quantitative methods to explore 15 English program (EP) students' attitudes toward English varieties and how they negotiate social meanings and construct their identity through stylistic practices in classroom discourse and English as a lingua franca (ELF) interactions. Through a verbal guise test,…