This study tracked the development of Hong Kong's assessment practices for English pronunciation over the past four decades, with reference to the nativeness and intelligibility principles in L2 pronunciation research and pedagogy. Specifically, it evaluated changes in assessors' comments on candidates' English pronunciation performance in…

The shift to online instruction brought about by the novel coronavirus exacerbated language teaching and learning constraints already highlighted by foreign language (FL) research. However, it is important that FL courses keep preparing learners for global careers and interactions with native speakers--whether courses take place in-person,…

The effects of international phonetic alphabet (IPA) instruction on English as a foreign language (EFL) adult learners' pronunciation have been well-recognized. However, not many studies on the topic were conducted in the Vietnamese context. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate (1) the impact of IPA learning on Vietnamese EFL adult…

Millions engage in learning a Second Language (L2) using their mobile devices with a wide range of success. Concomitantly, there exists a growing interest in research on the effects of mobile-assisted language learning and predictors of learner outcomes (e.g., Loewen et al., 2020; Sudina & Plonsky, 2023). However, few of these apps and studies…

Many foreign language learners encounter difficulties in pronouncing English language sounds, which potentially leads to misunderstanding in oral communication. Sometimes, the Albanian learners find pronunciation quite tricky when learning English language because they have to replicate lots of new strange sounds that are completely unknown to…

Developing spoken English abilities is of utmost importance for students of Damphu Central School (DCS). By researching the current curriculum, its effectiveness in improving spoken English, and the primary factors of the students' proficiency, the goals of this study were to provide significant recommendations for developing the English language…

Repeated viewing of the same video is a common strategy among autonomous language learners as well as a much used pedagogical strategy among foreign language (FL) teachers. Learners may watch the same video more than once, to increase global comprehension of the target language or to focus their attention on linguistic aspects, such as new…

This study investigated the extent to which explicit and implicit instruction improve L1-Arabic speakers' articulation of English words whose cognates were acquired earlier in their L2 French. Sixty-eight secondary school students, explicit (n=35) and implicit (n=33), participated in a programme incorporating focus-on-pronunciation activities,…

This paper investigates the effectiveness of students playing the "Spaceteam ESL" video game to enhance their pronunciation of English words and sentences. To achieve this goal, the researcher conducted a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest research design. The formation of the experimental group and control group employed the practice…

Instruction in second language (L2) English phoneme pronunciation almost invariably includes a focus on improving the learners' use of their articulatory organs to pronounce the relevant sounds. However, the pronunciation of many English sounds also relies on effort from the abdominal region, and under-utilization of this region can often…

Research has demonstrated that pronunciation teaching can be effective, but there have been very few classroom-based studies that have focused on the perception aspect of pronunciation. This article explains the theory and practical application of a conceptual approach and reports on its impact on perception of English word stress. The…

In this study, we conduct a longitudinal experiment to explore the effects of adaptive phonetic training on the identification of the English vowels /i/ and /I/ by learners in China. The vowel /i/ in English has a low F1 value, a high F2 value, and a long duration. In contrast, the vowel /i/ has a high F1 value, a low F2 value, and a short…

Developing the ability to pronounce a word clearly is an essential component of oral communication. Hence, the present study aims to examine how the use of Quizlet, a digital flashcard tool, can contribute to enhancing the pronunciation abilities of 9th-grade Turkish EFL students at a state high school in Gaziantep. The study included a total of…

Building up on Munro and Derwing, the current study set out to re-examine and generalize the Functional Load (FL) principle (Brown, 1988) as a tool to identify a set of relatively crucial segmental features for successful understanding in L2 communication. In Experiment 1, 40 Japanese learners of English in English-as-Foreign-Language settings…

Video captioning has been investigated extensively in the Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) literature to aid second language vocabulary acquisition. However, a little is known about how video captioning could foster learners' pronunciation, which is a component of second language vocabulary acquisition proposed by Nation (Nation,…