Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the phonological development of Spanish-speaking preschoolers who are acquiring African American English (AAE) in North Carolina (NC). Understanding the phonological structure of the Spanish-AAE language combination will improve diagnostic accuracy for this group of children. Method: Four Black…

Due to its influential nature on foreign language learning process, foreign language anxiety has been the focus of numerous studies in the literature of second language acquisition. In addition to its validation as a separate construct in late 80s, the last two decades have also witnessed the confirmation of skill-based anxieties as independent…

Sighted speakers of different languages vary systematically in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech. These differences influence how semantic elements are organized in gesture, but only when those gestures are produced with speech (co-speech gesture), not without speech (silent gesture). We ask whether the…

Previous research suggests that late bilinguals who speak typologically distant languages are the least likely to show evidence of non-selective lexical access processes. This study puts this claim to test by using the gating task to determine whether words beginning with speech sounds that are phonetically similar in Arabic and English (e.g.,…

This article provides an overview and evaluation of the uses--actual and potential--of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and spoken dialogue systems (SDS), related technologies that can be applied to second language speaking assessment, given particular definitions of the construct. Both technologies have only gradually moved in the direction of…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the development and execution of the video cover letter exercise. This learning innovation challenges students to develop a concise, targeted marketing message using video technologies and tools. Design/methodology/approach: In the first full semester of mandatory implementation, a pre-test/post-test design…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of code-switching on Spanish/English bilingual listeners' speech recognition of English and Spanish words in the presence of competing speech-shaped noise. Method: Participants were Spanish/English bilingual adults (N = 27) who were highly proficient in both languages. Target stimuli…

Purpose: Interactive storybook reading (ISR) improves the picture labeling vocabulary of children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). Vocabulary knowledge consistently predicts the later reading achievement of children who are DHH. In this study, ISR was modified to include teaching word meanings along with the vocabulary picture label.…

Canada's growing population of international students brings ethnolinguistic diversity and socioeconomic benefits to their host communities. However, students often experience social exclusion and lack of belonging, reporting little communication with local community members for many cultural, ethnic, and religious reasons. The present study,…

Contrastive focus, conveyed by prosodic cues, marks important information. Studies have shown that 6-year-olds learning English and Japanese can use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension: focus used in a "contrastive context" facilitates the identification of a target referent (speeding up processing), whereas focus used…

Heritage language (HL) speakers seem to diverge from monolingual speakers in the acquisition of syntax-discourse interface phenomena. However, most of the studies reporting this finding do not make any distinction between different types of syntax-discourse interface structures. Therefore, it is an open question whether these structures are…

Purpose: Language sampling analysis (LSA) plays an important role in evaluating language skills; hence, the study aimed to develop new assessment measures for the LSA in Turkish as alternatives to mean length of utterance (MLU) and the Language Assessment, Remediation and Screening Procedure. With this aim, Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) and…

One of the characteristics of a Dynamic Usage-Based (DUB) approach to the second language is that schematic patterns emerge through use and interaction where the intense focus is in input. Video or movie as an example of authentic input often provides a natural context for conversations to emerge among the students and teacher in class since…

This study aimed to develop and validate two parallel scales to measure the psychological L2 speaking and listening needs of 863 English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learners. The associations between three psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness) of L2 speaking and of L2 listening were examined to develop insights into…

One of the most recent developments in the field of L2 motivation is the construct of Directed Motivational Currents (DMCs). This novel motivational conceptualisation is characterised by its energising capacity to promote and sustain action in a multitude of contexts whenever an individual is determined to attain a goal/vision he or she regards as…