The current article presents a state-of-the-art review of research on the social factors that have been found to impact how learners acquire and use a second language (L2) sound system. These factors include ethnic group identification, gender, and study abroad experience. The research synthesis presents the key findings on each social factor,…

Teachers' accents have become important in World Englishes (WE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF) studies. However, limited studies investigate how English teachers view their accents and how such perceptions affect their teaching practice. This study uses narrative inquiry to explore two Filipino English language teachers' perceptions and…

A growing number of researchers have been exploring the cognitions of second language teachers (L2) in a wide scope. The purpose of this study is to investigate English language teachers' L2 pronunciation cognitions and their classroom practices. The sample consists of 164 English teachers and academics in English language and language education.…

This article investigates the language practices of a bilingual mariachi instructor teaching mariachi music to Latinx English dominant students. This ethnographic study draws on the concept of chronotope (Bakhtin 1981) to explore the spatiotemporal aspects of learning, particularly in terms of the teachers' selective use of language correction…

While previous work has shown a relationship between pronunciation attitudes and pronunciation performance, the connection between language learning motivation and pronunciation attitudes has been underexplored. This study investigated the relationship between 195 foreign language learners' attitudes toward pronunciation, the foreign languages…

Gardener's (1985) socio-cultural model shows that culture is among the variables that can affect learning languages. In addition, a series of studies were prompted by Dörnyie (2005) to gauge the effect of motivation on language learning. This correlational study endeavored to find out any possible interaction between these variables, i.e.,…

Age of onset has long been assumed to predict outcomes in second/foreign language accent. Yet beyond early childhood, acquiring a new accent has much to do with social-affective factors such as learner identity and motivation, as well as cognitive factors such as learning strategies (Pfenninger, 2017). Newer perspectives acknowledge this…

Although there have been several comparative studies of willingness to communicate in a first language (L1 WTC), there is a dearth of comparative research on L2 WTC, especially between groups with distinct cultural and educational backgrounds. This study synthesises the L2 motivational self system (ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self) and attitudes…

The position of the English language in the world has recently undergone an enormous shift. The global spread of English has altered its status from being a homogeneous and standard language spoken by a few powerful countries into an international language or lingua franca spoken by a wide variety of speakers around the world (Llurda, 2004). The…

An exploration of pronunciation tutorials designed for speakers of English as an additional language (EAL) in a university context in Australia suggests that developing abilities to speak clearly involves more than just focusing on the sounds that are uttered. Students' comments and observations collected during pronunciation tutorials highlight…

International teaching assistants (ITA's) perform a variety of instructional roles in undergraduate education within North American universities. ITA training programs often exist to prepare them for such roles. Empirical work has examined ITA training courses, but most often through the practitioner's lens of program evaluation, which obscures…

This paper discusses the interrelations among accent-based biases, social identity and ethnocentrism. Construction of social identity creates a set of ethnocentric values within a person, which indirectly or directly plays a pivotal role in generating accent related biases. Starting with Tajfel's (1959) social identity theory and then the…

This research is a multi-aspect exploratory investigation of Russian English institutional written discourse and highlights its features demonstrated by Russian native learners, tertiary students of English for the tourism and hospitality industry. The author approaches the theme from the perspectives of World Englishes and the pedagogical agenda.…

This paper, through the use of Joycean narrative inquiry, offers a qualitative narrative analysis of two types of language input the South Korean community was exposed to when the doors opened to a large number of western teachers in 1993 (i.e., General American and Received Pronunciation). Specifically, this paper provides examples of lexical…

The constructs of teacher cognition and teacher identity have recently gained considerable attention in second language teacher education research for their crucial roles in understanding teacher learning. While a number of current studies have examined the contributions of both constructs, the connections between cognition and identity are yet to…