The auditory scaffolding hypothesis states that early experience with sound underpins the development of domain-general sequence processing abilities, supported by studies observing impaired sequence processing in deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. To test this hypothesis, we administered a sequence processing task to 77 DHH children who use…

This study points to ways in which the amount and complexity of teacher talk in two preschool classrooms during transitions between activities differed from instructional activity settings throughout the day. What emerged were language characteristics that suggest not all transitions are created equal. In fact, as shown by qualitative excerpts of…

Emerging audio technologies over the last decade have provided a new, unprecedented window into the everyday lives of infants and young children. These new approaches will allow us to begin to address longstanding questions about the nature of language experiences across languages, communities and situations and the role of these experiences in…

Pragmatic competence has been increasingly recognized as a component of academic language proficiency assessment (Youn, 2018). However, the practicality of administering L2 pragmatic competence assessments involving interlocutors remains problematic (e.g., high labor cost) (Ikeda, 2017). The pandemic makes it even more difficult to administer…

This study longitudinally examined the effects of cognitive and sociopsychological individual differences (aptitude, motivation, personality) and the quantity and quality of second language (L2) experience on L2 speech gains in naturalistic settings. We elicited L2 spontaneous speech from 50 Chinese learners of English at the beginning and the end…

This dissertation examines heritage language learners of Spanish enrolled in university Spanish courses, focusing on their strategic use of suprasegmental speech features in two speaking tasks. The research investigates attitudes' influence on heritage language learners' speech production in different task types. Participants engaged in two…

This study examines the effect of native "vs." non-native prosody instruction on developing interpreter trainees' speech comprehensibility in English as a foreign language (EFL) using a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design. Twenty-three groups of 28 interpreter trainees at a University in Iran (six different branches) took part in…

This article analyses the practices, beliefs, and challenges of in-service Nepali EFL teachers who are required to carry out action research and submit a written report for their performance appraisal. We have analysed action research reports (n = 88) and interviews (n = 6) with public-school EFL teachers. The findings show that speaking,…

Although international students often report satisfaction with their studies and view Canada as being tolerant and multicultural, increasing anti-Asian sentiment triggered by the global pandemic has highlighted the importance of exploring whether international students, especially from South and East Asia, experience discrimination. This study…

This study investigated the role of orthographic information in the acquisition of non-native speech sounds by monolingual English listeners. Two potentially important orthographic variables were explored: Orthographic compatibility (whether the orthographic information supports or contradicts the distributional information) and orthographic…

Because most real-life foreign language speech is naturally unpredictable, spontaneous speech should be practiced in the foreign language classroom. Student teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) may benefit from practising methodology for spontaneous speech practice. This article reports the findings for a study into EFL student…

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, particularly chatbots with speech-recognition, are gaining attention as tools for ELT. However, this frontline development in contemporary ELT seems to stand in stark contrast to the multilingual effort, another innovative trend, as chatbots' speech recognition capabilities are primarily attuned to native…

Some listeners exhibit higher sensitivity to subphonemic acoustic differences (i.e., higher speech gradiency). Here, we asked whether higher gradiency in a listener's first language (L1) facilitates foreign language learning and explored the possible sources of individual differences in L1 gradiency. To address these questions, we tested 164…

This study explores the verbal engagement strategies that EFL instructors adopt when teaching English over Instagram. These instructors create videos where they teach English and share them on Instagram. Twenty-five highly engaging English teaching videos on Instagram were used as the data of this study. To discover the engagement strategies that…

The study aims to investigate guttural and emphatic sounds and the phenomenon of emphasis spread in Fallaahi Jordanian Arabic (FJA), a rural Jordanian dialect spoken in the north of Jordan. The study uses a non-linear approach, namely, the feature geometry approach to represent guttural and emphatic sounds and the phenomenon of emphasis spread.…