This article reports on a study which aimed to determine the effect of strength of accent on listening comprehension of interactive lectures. Test takers (N = 21,726) listened to an interactive lecture given by one of nine speakers and responded to six comprehension items. The test taker responses were analyzed with the Rasch computer program…

The effects of production and listening training on the subsequent comprehension of foreign-accented speech were investigated in a training-test paradigm. During training, German nonnative (L2) and English native (L1) participants listened to a story spoken by a German speaker who replaced all English /?/s with /t/ (e.g., *"teft" for…

This study explores whether emphasizing the phonetic components of "kanji," Chinese characters used in Japanese, facilitates second language (L2) learners' novel character learning. Previous L2 studies on Chinese characters indicate that phonology plays a major part in word identification. However, this view remains controversial,…

Purpose: The world Englishes (WE) paradigm gravitating around the recent models of English has been theoretically discussed in the applied linguistics profession: that is, English today has gone beyond the general description of post-colonial and institutionalized varieties and is being defined as the linguistic diversity realized by all global…

Given the vast research on the existence of distinctive student-teacher expectations about their roles in the classroom and their significance in shaping prospective actions, there is a scarcity of studies that examine Arab student expectations and contrast them with their teachers' expectancies. Realizing this research gap, this study aims to…

Sociolinguistic research on language attitudes has revealed that non-standard accented speakers are usually perceived more negatively than members of the dominant speech community. Few studies, however, have examined whether a speaker's ethnicity, evidenced by nonlinguistic factors such as appearance, may play a role in listeners' perception of…

This study aims to examine English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' perceptions of the factors influencing their in-class willingness to communicate (WTC) in English. Having been selected through criterion sampling method, the participants consisted of 32 undergraduate EFL learners who took the English course at Balikesir University in…

The current study investigated the extent to which L2 learners' productive vocabulary knowledge could predict multiple dimensions of spontaneous speech production. A total of 39 English as a foreign language (EFL) participants with varying L2 proficiency levels first completed a productive vocabulary knowledge task (Lex30). Their spontaneous…

Purpose: The objective was to investigate acoustic cue processing in lexical-tone recognition by pediatric cochlear-implant (CI) recipients who are native Mandarin speakers. Method: Lexical-tone recognition was assessed in pediatric CI recipients and listeners with normal hearing (NH) in 2 tasks. In Task 1, participants identified naturally…

Using the concept of "racial microaggressions" as an analytical tool, this study reports on white monolingual pre-service teachers' self-identified linguistic microaggressions by exploring their attitudinal and affective responses to those who speak languages other than English. The assumption is that teachers' pedagogical practices and…

This systematic review study sought to examine the teaching of English language skills in Saudi Arabia by systematically analyzing the previous studies on language skills which were published within the past ten years and identify the research areas to be bridged in the future. The study employed the systematic review approach. The search strategy…

Although Article 15 of the Iranian constitution endorses non-Persian Languages, speakers of these minority languages are latently obligated to speak Persian, the majority language, in most social settings. Consequently, these Iranian L2 speakers of Persian give rise to certain attitudes towards their accented speech, particularly from speakers of…

Proficiency in English language today doesn't depend on the way language is taught or spoken in classrooms but on creativity and productivity of its diverse teachers and learners. Non-native speakers outnumber native speakers today calling for promoting equity and the concept of World Englishes through respecting diversification in language…

Literacy is regarded as a fundamental skill for people to communicate successfully in all areas of life. In the light of the poor performance of learners, an investigation concerning reading is imperative to enhance literacy in South Africa. This study explores the use of tablets to enhance English reading among learners in Grade 5 from selected…

In the past decade, techniques traditionally used in the audiovisual translation (AVT) industry have been applied to foreign language teaching (FL) with promising results. Both teachers and researchers have provided useful data on various AVT typologies (i.e., subtitling, dubbing, audio description) to improve specific learning areas: vocabulary…