This study aims to investigate preschool and primary school preservice teachers' knowledge and awareness of early literacy skills. Basic qualitative research approach was applied and data were collected through interview forms. A total of 158 preservice teachers (78 preschool preservice teachers and 80 primary school preservice teachers) attending…

Songs and chants in EFL education are both artistic and pedagogical acts belonging to the same family of musical expressions, whose practical use in the classroom is not unfamiliar among teachers. Nevertheless, little effort has been made to distinguish between each other. In this sense, the popularity of songs in the context of EFL/ESL education…

In this mixed methods research study, the researcher examined the effects the use of the Conscious Competence Matrix (CCM) had on teacher efficacy when implementing professional development (PD) content in their teaching contexts. The CCM is a series of stages through which one passes in developing mastery of any skill set (Howell, 1982). While…

This dissertation investigated the acoustic and articulatory correlates of lexical stress in Mandarin second language (L2) learners of English, as well as in first language (L1) speakers. The present study used a minimal pair respective to stress location (e.g., OBject versus obJECT) obtained from a publicly available Mandarin Accented English…

During conversation, talkers may adapt their speech in a variety of ways. One form of speech adaptation is clear speech, in which a talker selectively hyperarticulates segments when faced with specific communication challenges. The present speech production experiment investigated how talkers adapt a common feature of American English dialects:…

In this review article, we discuss the construct of second language (L2) comprehensibility, which refers to listeners' judgments of ease or difficulty in understanding L2 speech. We first briefly describe intelligibility and comprehensibility, two measures that capture listener understanding of L2 speech. We then present evidence that supports the…

With the emergence of different varieties of English in the world, the issue of intelligibility has attracted many researchers' attention. While a large number of studies have focused on the intelligibility of different English varieties for native speakers, few of them have involved Chinese learners of English as participants; yet, they…

Purpose of the Study: The aim of this research is investigating the methods in Foreign Language Teaching To Linguistically Gifted Students. Methodology: This is an analytical-logical research that has been done through content analysis. Also the data of this research have been obtained through the library. Results: Communicative language teaching…

Purpose: Understanding speech in complex realistic acoustic environments requires effort. In everyday listening situations, speech quality is often degraded due to adverse acoustics, such as excessive background noise level (BNL) and reverberation time (RT), or talker characteristics such as foreign accent (Mattys, Davis, Bradlow, & Scott,…

Purpose: Previous studies with children and adults have demonstrated a "familiar talker advantage"--better word recognition for familiar talkers. The goal of the current study was to test whether this phenomenon is modulated by a child's language ability. Method: Sixty children with a range of language ability were trained to learn the…

Spoken word recognition depends on variations in fine-grained phonetics as listeners decode speech. However, many models of second language (L2) speech perception focus on units such as isolated syllables, and not on words. In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated how fine-grained phonetic details (i.e. duration of nasalization on…

The rating of proficiency tests that use the Inter-agency Roundtable (ILR) and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines claims that each major level is based on hierarchal linguistic functions that require mastery of multidimensional traits in such a way that each level subsumes the levels beneath it. These…

Research has suggested the important role of vocabulary knowledge in second language (L2) speaking proficiency. However, earlier studies tended to disregard the congruence in test format between assessing vocabulary knowledge and speaking skills with the former predominantly measured in written format. The current study measured vocabulary…

This paper examined whether a younger starting age of formal instruction on a foreign language is beneficial in expanding circle countries. An experimental study was designed to examine to what extent the five varieties of English language teachers are intelligible to Japanese- (JSLs) and Korean-speaking language learners (KSLs), who have…

Despite efforts to adopt inclusive education practices and foster cultural competence in classrooms across the globe, adequate training and shifts in teachers' mindsets frequently seem to lag behind. Studies continue to find that teachers in a variety of contexts hold negative views of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families.…