Using Conversation Analysis, this article explores the ways in which teasing is employed as an interactional tool to respond to learner-initiated departures in videotaped adult English as Foreign Language classrooms. The analysis focuses on the moments of classroom interaction where student contributions and behaviours initiate shifts from the…

In foreign language teaching, the transmission of the culture within which the target language grows is as important as teaching new words and grammar. All elements of the culture have their own special places within the vocabulary of the language. Reflecting not only the linguistic structure but also the culture of the society to which they…

For monolingual English-speaking children, judgment and production of stress in derived words, including words with phonologically neutral (e.g., -ness) and non-neutral suffixes (e.g., "-ity"), is important to both academic vocabulary growth and to word reading. For Mandarin-speaking adult English learners (AELs) the challenge of…

Hesitation, when speaking a foreign language, is studied through its components: beginnings, pauses, and repetitions. This paper aims to identify, through the study of this phenomenon, vulnerable zones among Iranian learners when they speak French. A case study of 30 adult learners shows that hesitation is not random and at different levels (A1 to…

We present the outcomes of a pronunciation training program conducted in a workplace setting with second language speakers who had lived in an English-speaking environment for an average of 19 years. The research questions concerned whether improvement would occur in the learners' perception of certain segments and prosody; in the…

This review article evaluates the intersection of the content of two recent anthologies in second language (L2) phonology. One of the books lays out both the methodological context and theoretical underpinnings of the field, whereas the other volume reports 11 empirical studies on the L2 acquisition of several aspects of pronunciation by adult…

This chapter presents the results of a study on interlanguage variation. The production of four L2 learners of Italian, tested four times at yearly intervals while engaged in four oral tasks, is compared to that of two native speakers, and analysed with quantitative CAF measures. Thus, time, task type, nativeness, as well as group vs. individual…

Adult English language learners in the United States approach the learning of English pronunciation from a wide variety of native language backgrounds. They may speak languages with sound systems that vary a great deal from that of English. The pronunciation goals and needs of adult English language learners are diverse. These goals and needs…