Speaking in a foreign language classroom can be extremely anxiety provoking for some students. There are many studies on foreign language anxiety (FLA). The studies show that anxiety influences achievement and performance in speaking. However, most of the previous research have investigated FLA in English speaking contexts. Hence, this study aims…

Tasks with different design factors may dissimilarly affect oral production, and thus can be adopted for different pedagogical purposes. However, the functions of task types are not fully explored. To address this gap, this study investigates the influence of content familiarity and task repetition on sixty English as a foreign language learners'…

In spoken discourse, understanding irony requires the apprehension of subtle cues, such as the speaker's tone of voice (prosody), which often reveal the speaker's affective stance toward the listener in the context of the utterance. To shed light on the interplay of linguistic content and prosody on impressions of spoken criticisms and compliments…

Factors that affect comprehension of accented English (e.g., Harding, 2011) have been well studied, but little research examines how listeners' proficiency affects their sensitivity to second language (L2) accent. The current study investigated the effect of test takers' English proficiency on their comprehension ratings and ability to correctly…

Learner corpus studies using syntactic complexity as a construct for characterizing learner proficiency have found that higher proficiency permits learners to produce more complex syntactic structures. However, the majority of previous studies have focused on writing, almost exclusively with adult second language (L2) learners. Given the…

This dissertation documents a collection of sociolinguistic and sociophonetic studies of the speech of bilingual Korean Americans in California. Korean Americans are an ethnic minority in the United States whose speech patterns in Korean and English remain understudied. The goal of the studies is to begin sketching out the acoustic traits that…

Children struggle with the interpretation of pronouns in direct speech ("Ann said, 'I get a cookie'"), but not in indirect speech ("Ann said that she gets a cookie") (Köder & Maier, 2016). Yet children's books consistently favor direct over indirect speech (Baker & Freebody, 1989). To reconcile these seemingly…

By maximizing class time with more peer-to-peer interaction, students can develop interpersonal skills essential for communicating in a global society. While technology empowers the world language student with a global classroom, this short-form article discusses the value of "unplugged" activities based on ACTFL's Proficiency and World…

This is a conceptual paper based on the existing literature related to three famous language learning theories; Audio-lingual Method, Communicative method and the hypotheses of Stephen D. Krashen. These three schools of thought are not usually seen as similar or it is not common to find much literature regarding these theories having any common…

This study focuses on the use of project-based learning focusing on drama to promote the speaking skills of EFL learners. It also aims to investigate how the use of project-based learning focusing on drama is beneficial to learners' speaking skills. The participants of this study were EFL learners majoring in English who were enrolled in Learning…

Sound levels and acoustic characteristic information was obtained in classrooms serving children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) in grades K-2 in a variety of settings across the United States and Canada. Sound levels were easily measured using iPads, and acoustic characteristics were documented. Noise levels exceeded the American National…

Effective collaboration between student peers is not spontaneous. A system that can measure collaboration in real-time may be useful, as it could alert an instructor to pairs that need help in collaborating effectively. We tested whether superficial measures of speech and user interface actions would suffice for measuring collaboration. Pairs of…

This research investigates the effect of production on 4.5- to 6-year-old children's recognition of newly learned words. In Experiment 1, children were taught four novel words in a produced or heard training condition during a brief training phase. In Experiment 2, children were taught eight novel words, and this time training condition was in a…

We investigate whether infant-directed speech (IDS) could facilitate word form learning when compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). To study this, we examine the distribution of word forms at two levels, acoustic and phonological, using a large database of spontaneous speech in Japanese. At the acoustic level we show that, as has been documented…

The goal of research was to achieve a deep comprehension of English speech acts of illocutionary force. The method applied was ethnography of communication. In relation with an approach, I applied the qualitative one. In the data collection procedures, I applied the ethnography method, i.e. field observation, recording, transcription, interview,…