The importance of secondary-stressed (SS) and unstressed-unreduced (UU) syllable accuracy for spoken word recognition in English is as yet unclear. An acoustic study first investigated Russian learners' of English production of SS and UU syllables. Significant vowel quality and duration reductions in Russian-spoken SS and UU vowels were found,…

The role of prosodic information in sentence processing is not usually addressed in second language (L2) instruction, and neurocognitive studies on prosody-syntax interactions are rare. Here we compare event-related potentials (ERP) of Chinese and German learners of English L2 to those of native English speakers and show how first language (L1)…

As a case study of non-linguists' perceptions of accent, this paper investigates how accurately and on what basis Japanese-accented English (JAE) is discernible from other L2 varieties of English in New Zealand (NZ). The paper sheds light on how a feature salient in speech is associated with the perceived sociolinguistic identity of speakers. An…

The current study extracted, first, 17 general patterns of intonation. Additionally, the present study investigated the roles that might be played by the gender of Ilami EFL teachers in observing the 17 patterns of intonation. Finally, the study determined if intonation as a suprasegmental feature of speech is affected by the gender of Ilami EFL…

Spoken English has a stress-alternating rhythm that is not marked in its orthography. In two experiments, the authors evaluated whether stylistic alterations to print that marked stress pulses fostered the rendering of rhythm (experiment 1) and stress (experiment 2) during silent reading. In experiment 1, silent readers rated the helpfulness of…

The present study investigates the prosody/pragmatics interface in TBLT by extending the traditional morphological focus-on-form to a focus on intonational forms, with Spanish declaratives and imperatives. Twenty-eight intermediate L2 Spanish learners were assigned to one of two conditions that differed in the type of focus-on-form present during…

This study examined the roles of first-language (L1) Chinese and second-language (L2) English phonological skills in English and Chinese reading comprehension, respectively, and their association with reading comprehension difficulties among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. We tested 258 second graders on nonverbal intelligence,…

It is widely accepted that pauses and correspondence with intonation units are among the phonological cues that identify lexical chunks (conventionalised multiword sequences) in spoken first and second language, although conclusive empirical evidence is scant. This article reports on an exploratory study which seeks to identify the main…

Suprasegmental features are essential in conveying meaning; however, they are one of the neglected topics in teaching Turkish as a foreign/second language. This paper aims to examine read speech by Arabic students learning Turkish as a second language and describe their read speech in terms of stress and pause. Within this framework, 34 Syrian…

The prosodic features in reading aloud assignment has been associated with the students' decoding skill. The goal of the present study is to determine the reliability of prosody for assessing reading fluency of adult ESL students in Indonesia context. The participants were all Indonesian natives, undergraduate students, adult females and males who…

Foreign language teachers use the spoken form of the target language when they teach. One of their professional responsibilities while teaching is to form a good model of pronunciation for their students. In Turkey, English is the primary foreign language taught in all educational institutions. Prospective English teachers in the English Teacher…

The paper presents the research on the effectiveness of the future translator and / or interpreter training using modern methods which facilitate the development of their professional competency in bilateral interpreting. The authors analyse psychological and pedagogical experience, modern educational technologies and prospects for future…

Research on the efficacy of second language (L2) pronunciation instruction has produced mixed results, despite reports of significant improvement in many studies. Possible explanations for divergent outcomes include learner individual differences, goals and foci of instruction, type and duration of instructional input, and assessment procedures.…

Language learners' language experience is predicted to display a significant effect on their accurate perception of foreign language sounds (Flege, 1995). At the superasegmental level, there is still a debate regarding whether tone language speakers are better able to perceive foreign lexical tones than non-tone language speakers (i.e Lee et al.,…

The present trend in developing and using semi-direct speaking tests has been supported by test developers and researchers' claim of their increased practicality, higher reliability and concurrent validity with test scores in direct oral proficiency interviews. However, it is universally agreed within the language testing and assessment community…