Comprehensibility, or ease of understanding, has emerged as an important construct in second language (L2) speech research. Many studies have examined the linguistic features that underlie this construct, but there has been limited work on behavioral and affective predictors. The goal of this study was therefore to examine the extent to which…

This study examined whether university students perceive holds (i.e., a listener's temporary cessation of dynamic movement) as a visual cue of nonunderstanding. Conversations between English second language (L2) university students were sampled to extract episodes of other-initiated repair through open clarification requests (e.g.,…

This replication study seeks to extend the generalizability of an exploratory study (McDonough et al., 2019) that identified holds (i.e., temporary cessation of dynamic movement by the listener) as a reliable visual cue of non-understanding. Conversations between second language (L2) English speakers in the Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca…

Eighty Japanese learners of English as a foreign language encountered 40 target words in one of four experimental conditions (three encounters, six encounters, three encounters with talker variability, and six encounters with talker variability). A picture-naming test was conducted three times (pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest)…

Comprehensibility has emerged as a useful and intuitive means of globally evaluating second language (L2) speakers in many research and instructional contexts. In most cases, L2 speakers' comprehensibility is assessed by external listeners who do not engage in extensive communication with the speakers, even though the degree to which a speaker is…

People often believe that some language varieties are more prestigious than others, which can trigger speech-centered biases and inform social judgments of the speaker. However, it is largely unknown what types of language experience and exposure might mitigate language biases, especially for second language (L2) learners. The goal of this study…

This study examined the effect of benchmarking and peer-assessment activities on second language (L2) French learners' self-assessments of accentedness, comprehensibility, and fluency. The learners, who included 25 L2 French students enrolled in a 15-week university-level French course, recorded two oral presentations at the beginning and the end…

The current study investigated the effects of repetition on the learning of second language (L2) spoken word forms. Japanese university students learning L2 English were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions (one, three, and six exposures) and learned 40 words while hearing them and viewing their corresponding pictures. A…

Teacher cognition has attracted increased attention among second language (L2) researchers and practitioners, likely because of its potential consequences for classroom practices, such as teaching and assessment. Prior research has revealed links between teacher beliefs about pronunciation teaching and teachers' own experience (e.g. amount of…

The current study investigated linguistic influences on comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and accentedness (linguistic nativelikeness) in second language (L2) learners' extemporaneous speech. Target materials included picture narratives from 40 native French speakers of English from different proficiency levels. The narratives were…

To confirm the role of social factors in mediating cognitive processes, this systematic replication study seeks to extend the generalizability of an exploratory study (McDonough, Crowther, Kielstra & Trofimovich 2015) that reported a positive association between eye gaze and second language (L2) speakers' responses to recasts. For this…

This study examined how mode of input affects the learning of pronunciation and form-meaning connection of second language (L2) words. Seventy-five Japanese learners of English were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions (reading while listening, reading only, listening only), studied 40 low-frequency words while viewing their corresponding…

This research report examines the occurrence of listener visual cues during nonunderstanding episodes and investigates raters' sensitivity to those cues. Nonunderstanding episodes (n = 21) and length-matched understanding episodes (n = 21) were taken from a larger dataset of video-recorded conversations between second language (L2) English…

Visual cues may help second language (L2) speakers perceive interactional feedback and reformulate their nontarget forms, particularly when paired with recasts, as recasts can be difficult to perceive as corrective. This study explores whether recasts have a visual signature and whether raters can perceive a recast's corrective function.…

This study investigated the relationship between pre-service English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers' pedagogical beliefs and their actual teaching practices. To determine the nature of this relationship, 99 teachers-in-training with little or no teaching experience were asked to complete a questionnaire seeking information about their…