There is a long-standing gap in literacy achievement between African American and European American students (e.g., NAEP, 2019, 2022). A large body of research has examined different factors that continue to reinforce performance differences across students. One variable that has been a long-term interest to sociolinguists and applied scientists…

Sociolinguistic variation (SLV) entails that language is affected by social context (i.e. register, pragmatics). Interest in the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in a second language (L2-SLV), as a key component of communicative competence, has grown exponentially over the past thirty years (Geeslin & Long, 2014). Researchers have…

Purpose: This study examines the effectiveness of automatic speech recognition (ASR) for individuals with speech disorders, addressing the gap in performance between read and conversational ASR. We analyze the factors influencing this disparity and the effect of speech mode--specific training on ASR accuracy. Method: Recordings of read and…

When the written language that children learn to read and write is distinct from the oral language they acquired as their mother tongue, they may encounter substantial challenges. The linguistic distance between two varieties of the same language could have an impact on the literacy acquisition journey. The present study focuses on Arabic, a…

Intro. A full account of speech perception requires explaining how listeners organize the acoustic signal into speech objects (perceptual organization) and how listeners use their memory for language to impart meaning to the speech objects (linguistic memory). Traditionally these mechanisms have been investigated separately, and thus theorized as…

The distinction between "academic language" and its putative "conversational" or "everyday" counterpart continues to be used by some researchers, teacher educators, and practitioners to explain challenges faced by linguistically minoritized students in primary and secondary schools, in the United States and elsewhere.…

Background: In the governmental delineation of the speech-language therapist (SLT) profession and in preservice SLT education, Flemish SLTs are considered as gatekeepers of the standard language in Flanders. Yet, most Flemish clients typically use a colloquial language style. Following earlier research on how teachers' language style affects…

Optimality theory (OT) is the latest model of phonology which views the language acquisition process as a way of reordering universal constraints provided by Universal Grammar (UG) according to the language-specific grammar. It, therefore, presents a more promising model towards language universalities. This study aims to utilize the OT framework…

This study investigates how Japanese-speaking children learn interactional dependencies in conversations that determine the use of "un," a token typically used as a positive response for yes-no questions, backchannel, and acknowledgement. We hypothesise that children learn to produce un appropriately by recognising different types of…

Diasporic Indian languages in Malaysia are unique and distinguishable from their native variants. Past studies have indicated that dominant languages tend to overpower minority languages in multilingual communities, hence causing languages to shift. The aims of this study are to identify the language choices of Malaysian Tamils and to what extent…

In a world in which rampant misinformation and partial truths can spread like wildfire, adult English as a Second Language (ESL) conversation classes can become fertile ground for unplanned discussions about unexpected information. When a student introduces new information, it can lead to repair-driven side sequences in which student explanations…

This study explored the role of Arabic diglossia in the language production of Saudi learners of English as a second language, specifically in regard to the effect context formality has on the rate of negative transfer of certain morphosyntactic structures from Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Saudi Arabic (SA). Similar to other varieties of…

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the leadership styles of private school administrators, teachers' informal communication levels and teacher Job performance. The population of the study consists of 951 teachers working in private schools (primary and secondary schools) in Nicosia, Kyrenia and Famagusta district of the…

As language technologies have become more sophisticated and prevalent, there have been increasing concerns about bias in natural language processing (NLP). Such work often focuses on the effects of bias instead of sources. In contrast, this paper discusses how normative language assumptions and ideologies influence a range of automated language…

This vignette provides a glimpse into an approach to grammar instruction that sought to value students' voices and linguistic knowledge, position language as flexible and socially situated, and encourage dialogic interactions with language. This approach--a linguistically responsive approach--ultimately sought to disrupt hierarchies typically…