Purpose: Although community colleges play a role in democratizing education and engaging in social integration, particularly in times of economic transition, there remains a lack of qualitative studies on academic achievement gaps between the various student populations attending community colleges. Therefore, this study examines the academic…

This research aimed to examine the differential effects of simile and metaphor on creativity. In the main study, 123 participants were recruited from a university in Taiwan. A within-subjects experimental design was used to investigate how variables related to simile and metaphor influenced these participants' fluency and originality scores. As…

Disfluencies, such as 'um' or 'uh', can cause adults to attribute uncertainty to speakers, but may also facilitate speech processing. To understand how these different functions affect children's learning, we asked whether (dis)fluency affects children's decision to select information from speakers (an explicit behavior) and their learning of…

This paper reviews how the construct of oral fluency in a second language (L2) has been defined and researched over the last twenty-five years. The emerging picture is somewhat kaleidoscopic, as domains of cognitive, social, individual and linguistic influences on L2 speech have been opened up for study. L2 fluency research presents a wealth of…

Human word learning is remarkable: We not only learn thousands of words but also form organized semantic networks in which words are interconnected according to meaningful links, such as those between "apple," "juicy," and "pear." These links play key roles in our abilities to use language. How do words become…

Speech disfluencies can guide the ways in which listeners interpret spoken language. Here, we examined whether three-year-olds, five-year-olds, and adults use filled pauses to anticipate that a speaker is likely to refer to a novel object. Across three experiments, participants were presented with pairs of novel and familiar objects and heard a…

Distractors in tests are included to divert attention away from correct answers choices. Knowing what types of distractors commonly appear in tests will benefit test takers as they can prepare themselves beforehand. Therefore, this qualitative study was aimed at making assumptions on plausible lexical distractors which are expected to appear in…

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'…

Previous research has addressed the effects of digital storytelling (DST) on verbal English competence and demonstrated that students engage more and learn more effectively. However, the relationship between learner engagement and speaking competence needs a further analysis of the methods wherein a specific DST tool facilitates learner engagement…

Research Findings: The Latino population within the U.S. is heterogeneous with diversity in education level, country of origin, and English language fluency. Latino children often enter school with limited English language skills. In the current study, we surveyed 448 Latino families of Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican descent regarding their home…

This study investigates how second language (L2) fluency is influenced by two factors: Pre-task planning and content familiarity. Planning was adopted as a between-participant variable, combined with content familiarity as a within-participant variable, in a 2 × 2 split-plot factorial design. Nineteen measures of fluency phenomena, constituting…

Background: Previous research suggests a negative stereotype toward people with fluency disorders (i.e. stuttering and/or cluttering), although recent findings suggest that exposure to an actual person who stutters (e.g. a live or video presentation) leads to more positive perceptions of some personality traits. However, there is a paucity of…

Does the language we speak affect the way we think, and if so, how? Previous researchers have considered this question by exploring the cognitive abilities of speakers of different languages. In the present study, we looked for evidence of linguistic relativity within a language and within participants by looking at memory recall for monolingual…

The present study was an attempt to investigate the impact of English verbal songs on connected speech aspects of adult English learners' speech production. 40 participants were selected based on the results of their performance in a piloted and validated version of NELSON test given to 60 intermediate English learners in a language institute in…

Studying task repetition for adult and young foreign language learners of English (EFL) has received growing interest in recent literature within the task-based approach (Bygate, 2009; Hawkes, 2012; Mackey, Kanganas, & Oliver, 2007; Pinter, 2007b). Earlier work suggests that second language (L2) learners benefit from repeating the same or a…