Purpose: Listening is the gateway to learning in the mainstream classroom; however, classrooms are noisy environments, making listening challenging. Therefore, speech-in-noise tests that realistically incorporate the complexity of the classroom listening environment are needed. The aim of this article was to review the speech stimuli, noise…

This volume presents research on oracy development in early language learning, with a particular focus on the pedagogical implications for growingly plurilingual classrooms. The chapters offer empirical results from diverse international contexts which reveal common and differing experiences of teaching methodologies and assessment practices,…

The recent world pandemic has highlighted the need for effective procedures to teach language in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) environments. Fully online and asynchronous classrooms are especially challenged when addressing learning to speak a foreign language toward greater communicative competence. Current CALL research is…

This book innovatively connects the two fields of oracy and practice-oriented empirical research in English language education. It creates synergies and proposes innovative approaches to the study of oracy in the context of learning and teaching English as a second, additional or foreign language. The book also develops a contemporary and holistic…

This book is relevant for language testers, listening researchers, and oral proficiency teachers, in that it explores four broad themes related to the assessment of L2 listening ability: the use of authentic, real-world spoken texts; the effects of different speech varieties of listening inputs; the use of audio-visual texts; and assessing…

Analysis of the liquid, fricative, and affricate sounds in the phonological system of a misarticulating four year old found that the child's perception of certain sounds was superior to his productions, whereas for other sounds productive skill was superior to perceptual performance. A two-lexicon model of underlying representation best accounted…

This preliminary study examined effects of word visibility and prime association factors on visual spoken word recognition in lipreading, using a related/unrelated prime-target paradigm with 20 hearing adults. In related prime-target pairings, more targets with a high than low prime association were identified. In unrelated prime-target pairings,…

This study compared the ratings of 19 adolescents when listening to recordings of the speech of eight children with cerebral palsy and eight normal-speaking children. For all 22 adjective pairs, the normal speakers were rated significantly more positively. (Author/DB)

This commentary on EC 232 373 and EC 232 374 suggests that a theory that depends on categorizing events as either stuttering or nonstuttering must fail. It evaluates the merit of the voluntary/involuntary distinction in loss of speech production control, defends research on the nature of stuttering, and proposes additional research and theory.…

Small-set segmental identification experiments were conducted with three deaf-blind subjects who were highly experienced users of the Tadoma method. Systematic variations in the positioning of the hand on the speaker's face for Tadoma produced systematic effects on percent-correct scores, information transfer, and perception of individual…

Investigates the evolution of specific lexical and syntactical clues and the recurrence of various semantic fields in mothers' spontaneous speech to their infants. Content of mothers' speech was related to age in newborn to 10-month-old children. (Author/RH)

The commentary to EC 232 373 and EC 232 374 discusses whether stuttering is really what the listener perceives, the stutterer senses, or the dictionary states. It concludes that stuttering can probably be defined in appropriate contexts as any or all of these three things. (JDD)

The study examined adult-child interactions during conversation with respect to the effects of adult paralinguistic speech variations on the speech production of four four-year-old children. Analysis indicated that each child's response time latency (RTL) was significantly longer when the experimenter's RTL was longer. (Author/DB)

The follow-up study reports data from a population-based series of 23 Swedish children diagnosed in childhood as suffering from infantile autism and other childhood psychoses and followed through to the ages of 16-23 years. Intelligence quotient at diagnosis and communicative speech development before six years were the most important prognostic…

Listeners compared 10 individuals' suitability of speech at three stages of treatment for stuttering (before, immediately after, and six months after) with 10 non-stutterers. Ten speaking situations with different demands were rated using a newly developed instrument. Results indicated the instrument can be scored reliably and the factor…