Reading aloud is recommended as a simple technique to measure speaking ability (Hughes & Hughes, 2020; Madsen, 1983). Reading aloud is currently used in the Pearson Test of English and a couple of other international English as a second language proficiency tests. Due to the simplicity of the technique, it can be used in conjunction with other…

This study investigated the effects of assisted oral reading on EFL learners' oral reading rates and took into account repetition times, passage features (length and type), and language proficiency. Forty-nine students from a university of technology took part in a 27-week oral reading program. Teaching assistants were assigned to assist…

Derivational suffixes are known to play a crucial role in assigning stress to multi-syllabic words among native English speakers. However, it is unclear whether second language (L2) learners of English can effectively use derivational suffixes as stress cues in written words. To address this gap, we studied if native Chinese-speaking adults…

The present study examines the impact of both short vowels and context on adult native English speakers' reading accuracy of Arabic orthography. To this end, two groups of adult Arabic learners with different proficiency levels were recruited: 30 second-year, and 30 third-year learners. Subjects were instructed to read 50 isolated words, 20…

This study focused on digital storytelling (DST) as a task in technology-mediated task-based language teaching and examined its effects on English speaking proficiency, willingness to communicate in English (WTCE), and group cohesion (GC). Two intact classes of Taiwanese EFL students, either as the DST group or as the comparison group, first…

This study considers the performance of tone pronunciation and morpheme intelligibility by L2 Polish Mandarin learners. A mixed-effects ordinal regression model and Tukey's HSD multiple test were used to examine the start-point, end-point, of syllables as a means of assessing their intelligibility by L2 Polish learners regarding the tones with the…

Nawat, the highly endangered indigenous language of El Salvador, is undergoing a revitalization process. This dissertation, conceived within this context, focuses on the second-language (L2) acquisition of features of Nawat pronunciation by learners who have Salvadoran Spanish as their first language (L1). Specifically, I assess the acquisition of…

Reading fluency is a skill, which is closely linked to reading comprehension. Learners' struggle with fluency in reading can be a significant hurdle to proficiency in their overall reading comprehension and competency. This paper, based on the thematic analysis approach, presents some theoretically pedagogical strategies discovered for developing…

This study investigates the utility of existing measures of Oral Reading Fluency (ORF), reading retell, and language proficiency for predicting reading achievement among Spanish speaking English language learners in the United States. Consistent with previous findings, ORF predicts a large proportion of the variance in reading achievement.…

The use of linking or glottalization contributes to the characteristic sound pattern of a language, and the use of one in place of the other may affect a speaker's comprehensibility and fluency in certain contexts. In this study, native speakers of Czech, a language that is associated with a frequent use of glottalization in vowel-initial word…

The study investigates to what extent a commitment to and a self-evaluation of a specific self-directed learning activity explain Korean college students' EFL proficiency (using TOEIC reading scores). Of the Korean college students who participated, 52 completed log writing of self-directed learning activities, and 44 completed a self-evaluating…

In this study we examined the extent to which "TOEIC"® Speaking test scores relate to evaluations by professionals in the international workplace, the target language use domain of TOEIC tests. Linguistic laypersons in 10 countries were invited to participate in an online research survey. The survey incorporated a stratified sample of…

This study investigated the systematic and principled teaching of foreign language (FL) literacy in two young learner classrooms in England. Over the course of 23 weeks, two classes of 9-11 year olds (N = 45) learned spoken and written language through an integrated pedagogy. The underpinning rationale was to explore principled ways of teaching FL…

Studies on L1 and L2 productions from the same participants might contribute significantly to language acquisition process. In this study, the researchers investigated read speech pausing patterns in coordinating conjunctions produced by Turkish, Swahili, Hausa, and Arabic speakers of English. The data for the study was collected in two phases; in…

This paper reports the qualitative analysis of an interlanguage study investigating Thai EFL students' pronunciation of English loanwords used in the Thai language. It aims to analyze the extent to which the stress and tonal systems in Thai affect the stress placement of English polysyllabic loanwords in the pronunciation of Thai students, as…