We report the results of a 2-year longitudinal comparison of grade 3 and grade 4 English-as-a-second-language learners in an experimental, comprehension-based program and those in a regular (i.e., more typical) language learning program. The goal was to examine the extent to which sustained, long-term comprehension practice in both listening and…

This study was motivated by the continuous quest to explore ways of enhancing students' learning and achievement in social studies in Nigerian secondary schools. The focus of this investigation was the assessment of the communication proficiency of social studies teachers, believing that the teachers' proficiency is a strong factor in effective…

In second language learning, to possess a perfect pronunciation, the importance of stress and rhythm should not be ignored. This articles explores the nature of sentence and word stress as well as rhythm, thus putting forward some feasible ways of training and acquiring a good English stress and rhythm in EFLT (English as Foreign Language…

Children's early word productions often differ from the target form, sometimes exhibiting vowel lengthening when word-final coda consonants are omitted (e.g., "dog" /d[open o]g/ [arrow right] [d[open o]:]). It has typically been assumed that such lengthening compensates for a missing prosodic unit (a mora). However, this study raises the…

According to many views of literacy development, prereaders use a logographic approach when they attempt to link print and speech. If so, these children should find pairs in which the spelling-pronunciation links are consistent with their writing system no easier to learn than arbitrary pairs. We tested this idea by comparing the ability of U.S.…

Listeners are faced with enormous variation in pronunciation, yet they rarely have difficulty understanding speech. Although much research has been devoted to figuring out how listeners deal with variability, virtually none (outside of sociolinguistics) has focused on the source of the variation itself. The current experiments explore whether…

In four experiments, we investigated how listeners compensate for reduced /t/ in Dutch. Mitterer and Ernestus [Mitterer, H., & Ernestus, M. (2006). "Listeners recover /t/s that speakers lenite: evidence from /t/-lenition in Dutch." "Journal of Phonetics," 34, 73-103] showed that listeners are biased to perceive a /t/ more easily after /s/ than…

This study investigated talker-dependent and talker-independent perceptual adaptation to foreign-accent English. Experiment 1 investigated talker-dependent adaptation by comparing native English listeners' recognition accuracy for Chinese-accented English across single and multiple talker presentation conditions. Results showed that the native…

The findings of an exploratory survey related to students' perceptions of factors, including accent and pronunciation, influencing their learning were presented. Data were collected from students through a self-administered questionnaire at one Southeastern University. A big majority (82.4%) of the respondents indicated that instructors'…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how an instructor's accent influences students' learning achievement. Furthermore, this study also explored how students' accent preference may affect their learning. Unlike native voices, accented voices were not natural to the native speakers; therefore, it required more cognitive resources for…

This article describes the use of African American English (AAE) in the written and oral language of African American adolescents who struggle with writing. Written and oral language samples of 22 African American 10th-grade students were transcribed, analyzed, and coded for AAE, grammatical errors, spelling errors, and punctuation errors. Four…

This study compares characteristics of fluency in student audio journals recorded in a laboratory setting with those recorded using mobile audio devices. Forty graduate students enrolled in four oral communication courses at an American university recorded weekly audio journals for a 10-week term. Students chose the environment in which they…

The need for adequate functional English literacy and numeracy instruction for the herdsmen in Osun State in Nigeria arose as a result of the persistent clashes between the herdsmen and their neighbours. In all, 48 participants (22 adults and 26 children and youths) took part in the International Reading Association assisted functional literacy…

Points out certain practices in second language teaching such as choral response which tend to encourage pronunciation errors. (DS)

Extracted from the work of Dr. Angel Rosenblat, Venezuela, whose book on the subject is based on the Academy rules published in 1952. (DS)