Purpose: This study aims to evaluate the sensitivity of the speech intelligibility index (SII) to the assumed speech dynamic range (DR) in different languages and with different types of stimuli. Method: Intelligibility prediction uses the absolute transfer function (ATF) to map the SII value to the predicted intelligibility for a given stimuli.…

The present study adopted a repetition priming paradigm to investigate the bidialectal (bilingual) representation of speakers with different native dialects by event-related potential (ERP) technique. Proficient Mandarin-Cantonese and Cantonese-Mandarin bidialectals participated in the study. They were required to judge whether a word was a…

There are media and research reports of international students from the People's Republic of China as being deficient in the capabilities for thinking critically. This paper argues for a shift in the frame for researching their critical thinking, moving the focus from the ethno-national label of "Chinese students" to "multilingual…

This descriptive exploratory study considers whether a simple sorting task can elicit readers' knowledge structure in learners' first and second language. In this investigation, knowledge structure is considered from a symbolic connectionist viewpoint as the fundamental pre-meaningful aspect of knowledge, where structure is the precursor of…

Studies adopting a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory framework have often fallen into one of two camps: those investigating variable linguistic subsystems (namely, CAF studies) and those concerned with non-linguistic variables displaying the characteristics of dynamic systems, with little concern for their connection to linguistic development.…

This dissertation examines the interface between music and language in "Huju", which is a Shanghai dialect based regional opera. Chapter I is a short introduction. Chapter II presents a thorough review of the studies on linguistic tone and music tune, and provides descriptive background information about "Huju" and Shanghai…

Getting a student's name right is the first step in welcoming him or her to school. Staff members who work with student-level data also know the importance of accurately and consistently recording a student's name in order to track student data over time, match files across data sets, and make meaning from the data. For students whose home…

Language shift happens when a group of people stops using one language in favor of another, such that subsequent generations no longer acquire the original language. Research on the sociolinguistics of language shift has tended to focus on languages in advanced states of endangerment, where most or all children in the community have already…

This study examined the mediating role of working memory (WM) in the relation between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and Chinese reading comprehension. Three tasks assessing differentially visual and verbal components of WM were programmed by E-prime 2.0. Data collected from 55 Chinese college students were analyzed using correlations and…

This paper examines 138 news articles published in Hong Kong print media on Putonghua as a medium of instruction (PMI) for teaching Chinese during a one-year period. Informed by theories of framing and the multiple streams approach (MSA), the study investigated the local Chinese print media's participation in the PMI policy process. Detailed…

Though students are taught translation technology, when confronted with real-life translation tasks, they frequently fail to use technologies flexibly and properly. To address this issue, this study first highlighted the concept of translation technological thinking competence (TTTC) and its significance. Then it proposed the Knowing-Acting…

The concept of learner engagement has traditionally been examined in the field of education and it has been found to be associated with positive educational outcomes. While several studies in second language acquisition have looked at learner engagement with corrective feedback, there is a dearth of research investigating its relevance to…

Background: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) demonstrate deficits in vocabulary development and novel word learning processes, which have been proposed to stem from their speech perception deficits. Aims: This study had two aims. The first was to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention incorporating a computer-based phonetic…

While there are many difficulties faced by world language educators, both teachers and students of certain languages--languages commonly identified with countries and cultures deemed to be hostile to the United States--often find themselves in uniquely paradoxical situations. This article begins with a brief anecdotal description of the personal…

The purpose of this research was to identify the common errors made in English writing by Malaysian Chinese primary year 6 ESL students and to determine the extent of the influence of the first language, Mandarin in ESL writing. The Mandarin language uses a logographic writing system while the English language is written in alphabetic scripts. The…