This article aims to identify common errors made by hearing students learning South African Sign Language (SASL) and enhance the understanding of language acquisition in this context. The researchers formulated three hypotheses, attributing errors to vocabulary gaps, misunderstandings due to improper signing, and the dual impact of spoken and…

Two acoustic studies of voice onset time (VOT) in sibilant-stop (ST) consonant clusters, produced by first language (L1) speakers of Polish, are presented. In the first, a baseline study of L1 Polish comparing ST clusters with initial singleton stops, a small degree of VOT shortening after /s/ was found for /p/, but not /t/. The second study…

This study explored speaking anxiety and attitudes towards speaking English in the classroom setting. The data collected from 91 Thai EFL grade 11 students, using questionnaires, classroom observations, and semi-structured interviews. The findings showed moderate levels of speaking anxiety and attitudes among grade 11 students. The Pearson…

The objective of this study was to identify, describe and classify errors in the Russian and English speech of the native Kazakh speakers working in the oil industry as well as to give a possible explanation of the reasons for their occurrence. The cross-linguistic interference characteristics of the Kazakhs' speech were investigated with the…

The aim of the study was to identify the factors that contribute to speaking anxiety in Thai adult EFL learners working in an online media company and enrolled in an English course provided by the company, as well as to discover the anxiety reduction techniques used by these learners. The results showed that significant contributors to speaking…

Complex systems of inflectional morphology provide a useful testing ground for input-based language acquisition theories. Two analyses were performed on a high-density (12%) naturalistic sample of two Polish-English children's (2;0 and 3;11) and their parents' use of Polish noun inflection: first, each child's use of inflectional affixes and their…

Developing effective oral business English (OBE) curricula requires clearly understanding student needs. This study evaluated the speaking needs of Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) undergraduates majoring in business English for specific purposes (ESP), aiming to inform the design of a teaching module that bridges the gap between…

The English past counterfactuality is difficult for non-native learners to learn and understand due to cross-language discrepancies. Oftentimes, individuals unavoidably develop the interlanguage and this language system becomes fossilized regardless of the amount of exposed time and input. The purpose of the study was twofold: (a) to examine 126…

An explorative case study has been conducted at a small rural school in the north east of Thailand to investigate the pronunciation errors that primary school students make when reading English aloud. This paper illustrates the opportunities and challenges of employing speech recognition software in rural classrooms by using it with specifically…

To confirm the role of social factors in mediating cognitive processes, this systematic replication study seeks to extend the generalizability of an exploratory study (McDonough, Crowther, Kielstra & Trofimovich 2015) that reported a positive association between eye gaze and second language (L2) speakers' responses to recasts. For this…

While the role of task repetition has received much attention in task-based research, few studies have examined how exact task repetition affects the performance of child second language learners. Also, little is known about the impact of exact task repetition on trade-off effects between linguistic performance areas among child learners. To help…

Previous studies on spoken word production have shown that native English speakers used phoneme-sized units (e.g., a word-initial phoneme, C) to produce English words, and native Mandarin Chinese speakers employed syllable-sized units (e.g., a word-initial consonant and vowel, CV) as phonological encoding units in Chinese. With spoken word…

Three categories of audio recordings, a web service platform, and commercial software were involved in this analysis process. The three categories of audio recordings included eight filtered student recordings, an audio recording provided by a Mandarin instructor from University Malaysia Sabah, and an audio recording generated by Text-to-Speech…

With the advancement of automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, ASR-based pronunciation assessment can diagnose learners' pronunciation problems. Meanwhile, ASR-based pronunciation training allows more opportunities for pronunciation practice. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of ASR technology in diagnosing English…

Having hardly learnt any English or having at best learnt wrong English (which is worse than no English) during their junior and secondary school years and having little or no exposure to English outside their classrooms, and partly due to certain weaknesses and shortcomings in what the teachers teach and how they teach, college students in some…