The aim of this experimental research is to investigate the effect of using Text-to-Speech Software (TTS), one of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) resources in teaching reading, in particular, different aspects of reading fluency. In this study we investigated teaching and learning of word stress, word intonation, pitch contour, and…

While a growing body of research has established the benefits of pronunciation training on second language (L2) production, these benefits have yet to be incorporated into the general skills language classroom in a systematic manner. Furthermore, although relatively new speech analysis software has been shown to be useful in providing visual…

The purpose of this study is to find out whether children learning English by music can improve their ability in segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation or not. In this regard, three hypotheses were proposed. A total of 30 female elementary students with the age between 9 to 12 years old were chosen. They were learning English in a private…

Many students of English language find pronunciation difficult to master. This work in progress paper discusses an incremental and iterative approach towards developing requirements for software applications to assist learners with the perception and production of English pronunciation in terms of phonemes and prosody. It was found that prompts…

Stress is one of the key suprasegmentals in English sound system. It plays an important role in intelligibility and comprehensibility. However, stress often poses problems for Chinese EFL Learners. Chinese learners of English often misplace the stress in English words and sentences which subsequently may interrupt the flow of communication and…

Using a non-speech-specific measure of prosody, rise time perception, Goswami and her colleagues have found that individuals with dyslexia perform significantly worse than nonimpaired readers. Studies have also found that children and adults with specific language impairment were impaired on these tasks. Despite the high comorbidity of these…

It has long been argued that prosodic cues may facilitate syntax acquisition (e.g., Morgan, 1986). Previous studies have shown that infants are sensitive to violations of typical correlations between clause-final prosodic cues (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 1987) and that prosody facilitates memory for strings of words (Soderstrom et al., 2005). This…

The aim of this study was to compare the prosodic profiles of English- and Spanish-speaking children with Williams syndrome (WS), examining cross-linguistic differences. Two groups of children with WS, English and Spanish, of similar chronological and nonverbal mental age, were compared on performance in expressive and receptive prosodic tasks…

The present study investigated the effects of training on the perception of Spanish stress, an important feature in the Spanish verbal morphology system. Participants were two intact classes of native English speakers enrolled in a six-week session of second-semester Spanish, as well as native English and native Spanish control groups. During the…

This study investigated phonological components of reading skill at two ages, using a novel pseudoword repetition task for assessing phonological memory (PM). Pseudowords were designed to incorporate control over segmental, prosodic and lexical features. In Experiment 1, the materials were administered to 3- and 4-year-old children together with a…

This dissertation introduces and evaluates a new methodology for studying aspects of human language processing and the factors to which it is sensitive. It makes use of the phoneme restoration illusion (Warren, 1970). A small portion of a spoken sentence is replaced by a burst of noise. Listeners typically mentally restore the missing phoneme(s),…

This dissertation investigates the linguistic and social constraints on the occurrence of creaky voice quality (creak) in Beijing Mandarin (BM), as well as the effect of linguistic and prosodic context on creak's social meanings for Mandarin listeners. It is a two-phase study, composed of 1) a production study of the distribution of creak in the…

Imitation in speech refers to the unintentional transfer of phonologically irrelevant acoustic-phonetic information of auditory input into speech motor output. Evidence for such imitation effects has been explained within the framework of episodic theories. However, it is largely unclear, which neural structures mediate speech imitation and how…

Purpose: Dysprosody is considered a core feature of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), especially impaired production of lexical stress. Few studies have tested the effects of intervention for dysprosody. This Phase II study with 3 children investigated the efficacy of a treatment targeting improved control of relative syllable durations in…

An implicit learning paradigm was used to assess children's sensitivity to syllable stress information in an artificial language. Study 1 demonstrated that preschool children, with and without specific language impairment (SLI), can generalize patterns of stress heard during a brief period of familiarization, and can also abstract underlying…