This investigation examines how students responded to the content and critical approach in an undergraduate course in Hispanic linguistics titled "Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World." To enhance learning, students participated in one of two high-impact practices (HIPs)--service-learning or a research investigation--as their final…

The current project examined whether and to what degree age of acquisition (AOA), defined as the first intensive exposure to a second language (L2) environment, can be predictive of the end state of postpubertal L2 oral proficiency attainment. Data were collected from 88 experienced Japanese learners of English and two groups of 20 baseline…

Arabic varieties show explicit linguistic behavior, especially at the syntactic level. This apparent diversity is mainly due to how syntactic rules confine the scope and the flexibility of movement of certain constituents inside and outside their syntactic domains. This paper examines solely how the mother tongue from which all these varieties…

Commercials regularly feature foreign accents. This paper aims to investigate whether the use of foreign accents in radio commercials is more effective for congruent than incongruent products, and whether foreign-accented commercials are evaluated differently than non-accented commercials. In an experiment, a group of 228 Dutch participants rated…

Purpose: This study investigated the fictional narrative performance of school-age African American children across 3 elicitation contexts that differed in the type of visual stimulus presented. Method: A total of 54 children in Grades 2 through 5 produced narratives across 3 different visual conditions: no visual, picture sequence, and single…

Italian-schooled Chinese migrant youth in Prato enact a Chinese diasporic identity which develops as a result of the diasporic stance they manifest through Mandarin-speaking practice, in addition to other practices associated with Mandarin. Being children of Chinese migrants with limited Italian literacy, the youth speak a Chinese dialect and…

Australian education policies aspire to meet the unique needs of all students including those from linguistically diverse backgrounds; however, a first step in achieving this aim is clear identification of such students. Many children from previous migrant families and new arrivals to Australia come from homes where at least one parent speaks a…

The present study investigated the neural correlates of infant discrimination of very similar linguistic varieties (Quebecois and Parisian French) using functional Near InfraRed Spectroscopy. In line with previous behavioral and electrophysiological data, there was no evidence that 3-month-olds discriminated the two regional accents, whereas…

As an immigration hub for a diverse group of Spanish speakers, Los Angeles lends itself to research on dialect contact and leveling. Studies regarding the Spanish spoken by natives of Los Angeles reveal considerable homogeneity with respect to pronunciation, vocabulary and terms of address. This uniformity is notable because two different dialect…

Language, procedure, and identity are L2 teaching/learning essentials that may promote agency and stimulate synergies among knowledge, practice, and reflection (Diaz Maggioli, 2014; Duff, 2012). This meta-report presents three studies that collectively advance agency and endorse linguistic foundations as enrichment, differentiated instruction as…

Khoisan languages are spoken by various culturally diverse communities of Southern Africa. These languages also present an important linguistic diversity. Some of Khoisan languages communities are generally under-researched, marginalized and experiencing sustained sociolinguistic forces that threaten them. For those that have been documented,…

Previous language attitude studies indicated that in many countries all over the world, English language learners perceived native accents, either American or British, more positively than the non-native accents such as the Japanese, Korean, and Austrian accents. However, in Malaysia it is still unclear which accent Malaysian learners of English…

This article presents an autoethnographic account of the author's linguistic development as a speaker of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Standard American English (SAE). Historically, formal settings such as academic spaces have undervalued the use of AAVE; thus, creating tension for speakers of the language. In this study, the…

Drawing on respective ideas from within both liberal political philosophy and Frankfurt School critical theory, this paper seeks to examine claims about autonomy and empowerment made on behalf of educational policies such as teacher-led codeswitching; a policy that seeks to empower students from racially marginalised groups by facilitating their…

Native Arabic speakers read in a language variety that is different from the one they use for everyday speech. The aim of the present study was: (1) to examine Spoken Arabic (SpA) and Standard Arabic (StA) voweled and unvoweled word reading among native-speaking sixth graders with developmental dyslexia; and (2) to determine whether SpA reading…