Switches to English during French Service Encounters: Relationships with L2 French Speakers' Willingness to Communicate and Motivation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McNaughton, Stephanie; McDonough, Kim

2015-01-01

This exploratory study investigated second language (L2) French speakers' service encounters in the multilingual setting of Montreal, specifically whether switches to English during French service encounters were related to L2 speakers' willingness to communicate or motivation. Over a two-week period, 17 French L2 speakers in Montreal submitted…

When pitch Accents Encode Speaker Commitment: Evidence from French Intonation.

PubMed

Michelas, Amandine; Portes, Cristel; Champagne-Lavau, Maud

2016-06-01

Recent studies on a variety of languages have shown that a speaker's commitment to the propositional content of his or her utterance can be encoded, among other strategies, by pitch accent types. Since prior research mainly relied on lexical-stress languages, our understanding of how speakers of a non-lexical-stress language encode speaker commitment is limited. This paper explores the contribution of the last pitch accent of an intonation phrase to convey speaker commitment in French, a language that has stress at the phrasal level as well as a restricted set of pitch accents. In a production experiment, participants had to produce sentences in two pragmatic contexts: unbiased questions (the speaker had no particular belief with respect to the expected answer) and negatively biased questions (the speaker believed the proposition to be false). Results revealed that negatively biased questions consistently exhibited an additional unaccented F0 peak in the preaccentual syllable (an H+!H* pitch accent) while unbiased questions were often realized with a rising pattern across the accented syllable (an H* pitch accent). These results provide evidence that pitch accent types in French can signal the speaker's belief about the certainty of the proposition expressed in French. It also has implications for the phonological model of French intonation.

Differential Difficulties in Perception of Tashlhiyt Berber Consonant Quantity Contrasts by Native Tashlhiyt Listeners vs. Berber-Naïve French Listeners.

PubMed

Hallé, Pierre A; Ridouane, Rachid; Best, Catherine T

2016-01-01

In a discrimination experiment on several Tashlhiyt Berber singleton-geminate contrasts, we find that French listeners encounter substantial difficulty compared to native speakers. Native listeners of Tashlhiyt perform near ceiling level on all contrasts. French listeners perform better on final contrasts such as fit-fitt than initial contrasts such as bi-bbi or sir-ssir. That is, French listeners are more sensitive to silent closure duration in word-final voiceless stops than to either voiced murmur or frication duration of fully voiced stops or voiceless fricatives in word-initial position. We propose, tentatively, that native speakers of French, a language in which gemination is usually not considered to be phonemic, have not acquired quantity contrasts but yet exhibit a presumably universal sensitivity to rhythm, whereby listeners are able to perceive and compare the relative temporal distance between beats given by successive salient phonetic events such as a sequence of vowel nuclei.

Native and Nonnative Speakers' Pragmatic Interpretations of English Texts.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hinkel, Eli

1994-01-01

Considering the complicating effect of cultural differences in writing conventions, this study examines discourse tradition as influenced by Confucian/Taoist precepts and those of U.S. academic environments, the latter requiring rational argumentation, justification, and proof. Pedagogical implications of native-speaker and nonnative-speaker…

Native-Speakerism and the Complexity of Personal Experience: A Duoethnographic Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lowe, Robert J.; Kiczkowiak, Marek

2016-01-01

This paper presents a duoethnographic study into the effects of native-speakerism on the professional lives of two English language teachers, one "native", and one "non-native speaker" of English. The goal of the study was to build on and extend existing research on the topic of native-speakerism by investigating, through…

Differential Difficulties in Perception of Tashlhiyt Berber Consonant Quantity Contrasts by Native Tashlhiyt Listeners vs. Berber-Naïve French Listeners

PubMed Central

Hallé, Pierre A.; Ridouane, Rachid; Best, Catherine T.

2016-01-01

In a discrimination experiment on several Tashlhiyt Berber singleton-geminate contrasts, we find that French listeners encounter substantial difficulty compared to native speakers. Native listeners of Tashlhiyt perform near ceiling level on all contrasts. French listeners perform better on final contrasts such as fit-fitt than initial contrasts such as bi-bbi or sir-ssir. That is, French listeners are more sensitive to silent closure duration in word-final voiceless stops than to either voiced murmur or frication duration of fully voiced stops or voiceless fricatives in word-initial position. We propose, tentatively, that native speakers of French, a language in which gemination is usually not considered to be phonemic, have not acquired quantity contrasts but yet exhibit a presumably universal sensitivity to rhythm, whereby listeners are able to perceive and compare the relative temporal distance between beats given by successive salient phonetic events such as a sequence of vowel nuclei. PMID:26973551

Modern Greek Language: Acquisition of Morphology and Syntax by Non-Native Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andreou, Georgia; Karapetsas, Anargyros; Galantomos, Ioannis

2008-01-01

This study investigated the performance of native and non native speakers of Modern Greek language on morphology and syntax tasks. Non-native speakers of Greek whose native language was English, which is a language with strict word order and simple morphology, made more errors and answered more slowly than native speakers on morphology but not…

Listeners feel the beat: entrainment to English and French speech rhythms.

PubMed

Lidji, Pascale; Palmer, Caroline; Peretz, Isabelle; Morningstar, Michele

2011-12-01

Can listeners entrain to speech rhythms? Monolingual speakers of English and French and balanced English-French bilinguals tapped along with the beat they perceived in sentences spoken in a stress-timed language, English, and a syllable-timed language, French. All groups of participants tapped more regularly to English than to French utterances. Tapping performance was also influenced by the participants' native language: English-speaking participants and bilinguals tapped more regularly and at higher metrical levels than did French-speaking participants, suggesting that long-term linguistic experience with a stress-timed language can differentiate speakers' entrainment to speech rhythm.

The Perception and Representation of Segmental and Prosodic Mandarin Contrasts in Native Speakers of Cantonese

PubMed Central

Zhang, Xujin; Samuel, Arthur G.; Liu, Siyun

2011-01-01

Previous research has found that a speaker’s native phonological system has a great influence on perception of another language. In three experiments, we tested the perception and representation of Mandarin phonological contrasts by Guangzhou Cantonese speakers, and compared their performance to that of native Mandarin speakers. Despite their rich experience using Mandarin Chinese, the Cantonese speakers had problems distinguishing specific Mandarin segmental and tonal contrasts that do not exist in Guangzhou Cantonese. However, we found evidence that the subtle differences between two members of a contrast were nonetheless represented in the lexicon. We also found different processing patterns for non-native segmental versus non-native tonal contrasts. The results provide substantial new information about the representation and processing of segmental and prosodic information by individuals listening to a closely-related, very well-learned, but still non-native language. PMID:22707849

Production of lexical stress in non-native speakers of American English: Kinematic correlates of stress and transfer

PubMed Central

Chakraborty, Rahul; Goffman, Lisa

2013-01-01

Purpose To assess the influence of L2 proficiency on production characteristics of rhythmic sequences in L1 (Bengali) and L2 (English), with emphasis on linguistic transfer. One goal was to examine, using kinematic evidence, how L2- proficiency influences the production of iambic and trochaic words, focusing on temporal and spatial aspects of prosody. A second goal was to assess whether prosodic structure influences judgment of foreign accent. Method Twenty Bengali-English bilinguals, 10 with low proficiency and 10 with high proficiency in English, and 10 monolingual English speakers participated. Lip and jaw movements were recorded while the bilinguals produced Bengali and English words embedded in sentences. Lower lip movement amplitude and duration were measured in trochaic and iambic words. Six native English listeners judged the nativeness of the bilingual speakers. Results Evidence of L1 to L2 transfer was observed through duration but not amplitude cues. More proficient L2 speakers varied duration to mark iambic stress. Perceptually, the high proficiency group received relatively higher native-like accent ratings. Trochees were judged as more native than iambs. Interpretation Even in the face of L1-L2 lexical stress transfer, non-native speakers demonstrated knowledge of prosodic contrasts. Movement duration appears to be more amenable to modifications than amplitude. PMID:21106699

(Non)Native Speakering: The (Dis)Invention of (Non)Native Speakered Subjectivities in a Graduate Teacher Education Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aneja, Geeta A.

2017-01-01

Despite its imprecision, the native-nonnative dichotomy has become the dominant paradigm for categorizing language users, learners, and educators. The "NNEST Movement" has been instrumental in documenting the privilege of native speakers, the marginalization of their nonnative counterparts, and why an individual may be perceived as one…

Articulatory settings of French-English bilingual speakers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilson, Ian

2005-04-01

The idea of a language-specific articulatory setting (AS), an underlying posture of the articulators during speech, has existed for centuries [Laver, Historiogr. Ling. 5 (1978)], but until recently it had eluded direct measurement. In an analysis of x-ray movies of French and English monolingual speakers, Gick et al. [Phonetica (in press)] link AS to inter-speech posture, allowing measurement of AS without interference from segmental targets during speech, and they give quantitative evidence showing AS to be language-specific. In the present study, ultrasound and Optotrak are used to investigate whether bilingual English-French speakers have two ASs, and whether this varies depending on the mode (monolingual or bilingual) these speakers are in. Specifically, for inter-speech posture of the lips, lip aperture and protrusion are measured using Optotrak. For inter-speech posture of the tongue, tongue root retraction, tongue body and tongue tip height are measured using optically-corrected ultrasound. Segmental context is balanced across the two languages ensuring that the sets of sounds before and after an inter-speech posture are consistent across languages. By testing bilingual speakers, vocal tract morphology across languages is controlled for. Results have implications for L2 acquisition, specifically the teaching and acquisition of pronunciation.

The Role of Interaction in Native Speaker Comprehension of Nonnative Speaker Speech.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polio, Charlene; Gass, Susan M.

1998-01-01

Because interaction gives language learners an opportunity to modify their speech upon a signal of noncomprehension, it should also have a positive effect on native speakers' (NS) comprehension of nonnative speakers (NNS). This study shows that interaction does help NSs comprehend NNSs, contrasting the claims of an earlier study that found no…

Initial Teacher Training Courses and Non-Native Speaker Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Jason

2016-01-01

This article reports on a study contrasting 41 native speakers (NSs) and 38 non-native speakers (NNSs) of English from two short initial teacher training courses, the Cambridge Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults and the Trinity College London CertTESOL. After a brief history and literature review, I present findings on teachers'…

The Employability of Non-Native-Speaker Teachers of EFL: A UK Survey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clark, Elizabeth; Paran, Amos

2007-01-01

The native speaker still has a privileged position in English language teaching, representing both the model speaker and the ideal teacher. Non-native-speaker teachers of English are often perceived as having a lower status than their native-speaking counterparts, and have been shown to face discriminatory attitudes when applying for teaching…

Decoding the Myths of the Native and Non-Native English Speakers Teachers (NESTs & NNESTs) on Saudi EFL Tertiary Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alghofaili, Noor Motlaq; Elyas, Tariq

2017-01-01

Many people believe the myth that being taught by a native speaker is the best way to learn a language. This belief has influenced many Saudi schools, language institutes, and universities to include the nativeness factor as part of a language instructor's job requirements. Using an open ended questionnaire, this study aims to investigate the…

Learners' Selective Perceptions of Information during Instructed Learning in French: Consequences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Drewelow, Isabelle

2011-01-01

The present study examined how American learners of French perceived the influence of instruction on their existing stereotypes about the French people to determine the effects of these stereotypes on their language learning and cultural openness. During a semester, 22 undergraduate students, all native English speakers enrolled in 4 sections of…

Infants' Selectively Pay Attention to the Information They Receive from a Native Speaker of Their Language.

PubMed

Marno, Hanna; Guellai, Bahia; Vidal, Yamil; Franzoi, Julia; Nespor, Marina; Mehler, Jacques

2016-01-01

From the first moments of their life, infants show a preference for their native language, as well as toward speakers with whom they share the same language. This preference appears to have broad consequences in various domains later on, supporting group affiliations and collaborative actions in children. Here, we propose that infants' preference for native speakers of their language also serves a further purpose, specifically allowing them to efficiently acquire culture specific knowledge via social learning. By selectively attending to informants who are native speakers of their language and who probably also share the same cultural background with the infant, young learners can maximize the possibility to acquire cultural knowledge. To test whether infants would preferably attend the information they receive from a speaker of their native language, we familiarized 12-month-old infants with a native and a foreign speaker, and then presented them with movies where each of the speakers silently gazed toward unfamiliar objects. At test, infants' looking behavior to the two objects alone was measured. Results revealed that infants preferred to look longer at the object presented by the native speaker. Strikingly, the effect was replicated also with 5-month-old infants, indicating an early development of such preference. These findings provide evidence that young infants pay more attention to the information presented by a person with whom they share the same language. This selectivity can serve as a basis for efficient social learning by influencing how infants' allocate attention between potential sources of information in their environment.

What is French for déjà vu? Descriptions of déjà vu in native French and English speakers.

PubMed

Fortier, Jonathan; Moulin, Chris J A

2015-11-01

Little is known about how people characterise and classify the experience of déjà vu. The term déjà vu might capture a range of different phenomena and people may use it differently. We examined the description of déjà vu in two languages: French and English, hypothesising that the use of déjà vu would vary between the two languages. In French, the phrase déjà vu can be used to indicate a veridical experience of recognition - as in "I have already seen this face before". However, the same is not true in English. In an online questionnaire, we found equal rates of déjà vu amongst French and English speakers, and key differences in how the experience was described. As expected, the French group described the experience as being more frequent, but there was the unexpected finding that they found it to be more troubling. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Speech-on-speech masking with variable access to the linguistic content of the masker speech for native and non-native speakers of English

PubMed Central

Calandruccio, Lauren; Bradlow, Ann R.; Dhar, Sumitrajit

2013-01-01

Background Masking release for an English sentence-recognition task in the presence of foreign-accented English speech compared to native-accented English speech was reported in Calandruccio, Dhar and Bradlow (2010). The masking release appeared to increase as the masker intelligibility decreased. However, it could not be ruled out that spectral differences between the speech maskers were influencing the significant differences observed. Purpose The purpose of the current experiment was to minimize spectral differences between speech maskers to determine how various amounts of linguistic information within competing speech affect masking release. Research Design A mixed model design with within- (four two-talker speech maskers) and between-subject (listener group) factors was conducted. Speech maskers included native-accented English speech, and high-intelligibility, moderate-intelligibility and low-intelligibility Mandarin-accented English. Normalizing the long-term average speech spectra of the maskers to each other minimized spectral differences between the masker conditions. Study Sample Three listener groups were tested including monolingual English speakers with normal hearing, non-native speakers of English with normal hearing, and monolingual speakers of English with hearing loss. The non-native speakers of English were from various native-language backgrounds, not including Mandarin (or any other Chinese dialect). Listeners with hearing loss had symmetrical, mild sloping to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Data Collection and Analysis Listeners were asked to repeat back sentences that were presented in the presence of four different two-talker speech maskers. Responses were scored based on the keywords within the sentences (100 keywords/masker condition). A mixed-model regression analysis was used to analyze the difference in performance scores between the masker conditions and the listener groups. Results Monolingual speakers of English with normal

Taiwanese University Students' Attitudes to Non-Native Speakers English Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Feng-Ru

2016-01-01

Numerous studies have been conducted to explore issues surrounding non-native speakers (NNS) English teachers and native speaker (NS) teachers which concern, among others, the comparison between the two, the self-perceptions of NNS English teachers and the effectiveness of their teaching, and the students' opinions on and attitudes towards them.…

On the Role of Linguistic Contextual Factors for Morphosyntactic Stabilization in High-Level L2 French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bartning, Inge; Lundell, Fanny Forsberg; Hancock, Victorine

2012-01-01

The purpose of this article is to offer contextual linguistic explanations for morphosyntactic deviances (MSDs) in high-level second language (L2) French (30 nonnative speakers vs. 10 native speakers). It is hypothesized that the distribution of formulaic sequences (FSs) and the complexity of information structure will influence the occurrence of…

The Acquisition of English Focus Marking by Non-Native Speakers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baker, Rachel Elizabeth

This dissertation examines Mandarin and Korean speakers' acquisition of English focus marking, which is realized by accenting particular words within a focused constituent. It is important for non-native speakers to learn how accent placement relates to focus in English because appropriate accent placement and realization makes a learner's English more native-like and easier to understand. Such knowledge may also improve their English comprehension skills. In this study, 20 native English speakers, 20 native Mandarin speakers, and 20 native Korean speakers participated in four experiments: (1) a production experiment, in which they were recorded reading the answers to questions, (2) a perception experiment, in which they were asked to determine which word in a recording was the last prominent word, (3) an understanding experiment, in which they were asked whether the answers in recorded question-answer pairs had context-appropriate prosody, and (4) an accent placement experiment, in which they were asked which word they would make prominent in a particular context. Finally, a new group of native English speakers listened to utterances produced in the production experiment, and determined whether the prosody of each utterance was appropriate for its context. The results of the five experiments support a novel predictive model for second language prosodic focus marking acquisition. This model holds that both transfer of linguistic features from a learner's native language (L1) and features of their second language (L2) affect learners' acquisition of prosodic focus marking. As a result, the model includes two complementary components: the Transfer Component and the L2 Challenge Component. The Transfer Component predicts that prosodic structures in the L2 will be more easily acquired by language learners that have similar structures in their L1 than those who do not, even if there are differences between the L1 and L2 in how the structures are realized. The L2

Native Speaker Dichotomy: Stakeholders' Preferences and Perceptions of Native and Non-Native Speaking English Language Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atamturk, Nurdan; Atamturk, Hakan; Dimililer, Celen

2018-01-01

Addressing the perceptions and the preferences of the upper-secondary school students, teachers, parents and administrators of the native speaking (NS) and non-native speaking (NNS) English teachers as well as investigating the variables affecting these preferences and perceptions, this study explores whether or not the native speaker myth is…

Perception of Intonation in Native and Non-Native Speakers of English.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berkovits, Rochele

1980-01-01

Indicates that native and nonnative speakers alike can make use of intonation if they explicitly listen for it, although prosodic features are generally ignored when other cues (semantic and pragmatic) are available. (Author/RL)

The Influence of the Pinyin and Zhuyin Writing Systems on the Acquisition of Mandarin Word Forms by Native English Speakers

PubMed Central

Hayes-Harb, Rachel; Cheng, Hui-Wen

2016-01-01

The role of written input in second language (L2) phonological and lexical acquisition has received increased attention in recent years. Here we investigated the influence of two factors that may moderate the influence of orthography on L2 word form learning: (i) whether the writing system is shared by the native language and the L2, and (ii) if the writing system is shared, whether the relevant grapheme-phoneme correspondences are also shared. The acquisition of Mandarin via the Pinyin and Zhuyin writing systems provides an ecologically valid opportunity to explore these factors. We first asked whether there is a difference in native English speakers' ability to learn Pinyin and Zhuyin grapheme-phoneme correspondences. In Experiment 1, native English speakers assigned to either Pinyin or Zhuyin groups were exposed to Mandarin words belonging to one of two conditions: in the “congruent” condition, the Pinyin forms are possible English spellings for the auditory words (e.g., < nai> for [nai]); in the “incongruent” condition, the Pinyin forms involve a familiar grapheme representing a novel phoneme (e.g., < xiu> for [ɕiou]). At test, participants were asked to indicate whether auditory and written forms matched; in the crucial trials, the written forms from training (e.g., < xiu>) were paired with possible English pronunciations of the Pinyin written forms (e.g., [ziou]). Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 except that participants additionally saw pictures depicting word meanings during the exposure phase, and at test were asked to match auditory forms with the pictures. In both experiments the Zhuyin group outperformed the Pinyin group due to the Pinyin group's difficulty with “incongruent” items. A third experiment confirmed that the groups did not differ in their ability to perceptually distinguish the relevant Mandarin consonants (e.g., [ɕ]) from the foils (e.g., [z]), suggesting that the findings of Experiments 1 and 2 can be attributed to

Adding More Fuel to the Fire: An Eye-Tracking Study of Idiom Processing by Native and Non-Native Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Siyanova-Chanturia, Anna; Conklin, Kathy; Schmitt, Norbert

2011-01-01

Using eye-tracking, we investigate on-line processing of idioms in a biasing story context by native and non-native speakers of English. The stimuli are idioms used figuratively ("at the end of the day"--"eventually"), literally ("at the end of the day"--"in the evening"), and novel phrases ("at the end of the war"). Native speaker results…

The Effect of Task Complexity on Functional Adequacy, Fluency and Lexical Diversity in Speaking Performances of Native and Non-Native Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

De Jong, Nivja H.; Steinel, Margarita P.; Florijn, Arjen F.; Schoonen, Rob; Hulstijn, Jan H.

2012-01-01

This study investigated how task complexity affected native and non-native speakers' speaking performance in terms of a measure of communicative success (functional adequacy), three types of fluency (breakdown fluency, speed fluency, and repair fluency), and lexical diversity. Participants (208 non-native and 59 native speakers of Dutch) carried…

Stereotypes of Cantonese English, Apparent Native/Non-Native Status, and Their Effect on Non-Native English Speakers' Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hu, Guiling; Lindemann, Stephanie

2009-01-01

This study examined the effect of information about native/non-native speaker status on non-native listeners' perception of English words with word-final stops. A survey study conducted with 38 Chinese learners of English in Guangzhou, China examined their stereotypes about Cantonese English. They described it negatively and named features…

During Threaded Discussions Are Non-Native English Speakers Always at a Disadvantage?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shafer Willner, Lynn

2014-01-01

When participating in threaded discussions, under what conditions might non¬native speakers of English (NNSE) be at a comparative disadvantage to their classmates who are native speakers of English (NSE)? This study compares the threaded discussion perspectives of closely-matched NNSE and NSE adult students having different levels of threaded…

French Liaison: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Influences on Speech Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dautricourt, Robin Guillaume

2010-01-01

French liaison is a phonological process that takes place when an otherwise silent word-final consonant is pronounced before a following vowel-initial word. It is a process that has been evolving for centuries, and whose patterns of realization are influenced by a wide range of interacting linguistic and social factors. French speakers therefore…

Native Speakers as Teachers in Turkey: Non-Native Pre-Service English Teachers' Reactions to a Nation-Wide Project

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coskun, Abdullah

2013-01-01

Although English is now a recognized international language and the concept of native speaker is becoming more doubtful every day, the empowerment of the native speakers of English as language teaching professionals is still continuing (McKay, 2002), especially in Asian countries like China and Japan. One of the latest examples showing the…

New and Not so New Horizons: Brief Encounters between UK Undergraduate Native-Speaker and Non-Native-Speaker Englishes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henderson, Juliet

2011-01-01

This paper explores the apparent contradiction between the valuing and promoting of diverse literacies in most UK HEIs, and the discursive construction of spoken native-speaker English as the medium of good grades and prestige academic knowledge. During group interviews on their experiences of university internationalisation, 38 undergraduate…

Connective Choice between Native and Japanese Speakers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tabuki, Masatoshi; Shimatani, Hiroshi

A study investigated the use of connectors in English conversation between native Japanese-speakers and teachers outside the classroom. Data were drawn from six videotaped conversations between pairs of Japanese students, all learning beginning-level English, with conversational support provided by English teachers. The functions of four…

Promoting Communities of Practice among Non-Native Speakers of English in Online Discussions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Hoe Kyeung

2011-01-01

An online discussion involving text-based computer-mediated communication has great potential for promoting equal participation among non-native speakers of English. Several studies claimed that online discussions could enhance the academic participation of non-native speakers of English. However, there is little research around participation…

Psychophysical Boundary for Categorization of Voiced-Voiceless Stop Consonants in Native Japanese Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tamura, Shunsuke; Ito, Kazuhito; Hirose, Nobuyuki; Mori, Shuji

2018-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychophysical boundary used for categorization of voiced-voiceless stop consonants in native Japanese speakers. Method: Twelve native Japanese speakers participated in the experiment. The stimuli were synthetic stop consonant-vowel stimuli varying in voice onset time (VOT) with…

The Status of Native Speaker Intuitions in a Polylectal Grammar.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Debose, Charles E.

A study of one speaker's intuitions about and performance in Black English is presented with relation to Saussure's "langue-parole" dichotomy. Native speakers of a language have intuitions about the static synchronic entities although the data of their speaking is variable and panchronic. These entities are in a diglossic relationship to each…

Hierarchies of Authenticity in Study Abroad: French from Canada versus French from France?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wernicke, Meike

2016-01-01

For many decades, Francophone regions in Canada have provided language study exchanges for French as a second language (FSL) learners within their own country. At the same time, FSL students and teachers in Canada continue to orient to a native speaker standard associated with European French. This Eurocentric orientation manifested itself in a…

The Sociolinguistics of Foreign-Language Classrooms: Contributions of the Native, the Near-Native, and the Non-Native Speaker. Issues in Language Program Direction, A Series of Annual Volumes.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blyth, Carl, Ed.

This collection of papers is divided into five parts. Part 1, "The Native Speaker," includes "The (Non)Native Standard Language in Foreign Language Education: A Critical Perspective" (Robert W. Train) and "The Native Speaker, the Student, and Woody Allen: Examining Traditional Roles in the Foreign Language Classroom"…

A Study of Non-Native English Speakers' Academic Performance at Santa Ana College.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Slark, Julie; Bateman, Harold

A study was conducted in 1980-81 at Santa Ana College (SAC) to collect data on the English communication skills of non-native English speakers and to determine if a relationship existed between these skills and student's educational success. A sample of 22 classes, with an enrollment of at least 50% non-native English speakers and representing a…

Evaluation of Speakers with Foreign-Accented Speech in Japan: The Effect of Accent Produced by English Native Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsurutani, Chiharu

2012-01-01

Foreign-accented speakers are generally regarded as less educated, less reliable and less interesting than native speakers and tend to be associated with cultural stereotypes of their country of origin. This discrimination against foreign accents has, however, been discussed mainly using accented English in English-speaking countries. This study…

Multicompetence and Native Speaker Variation in Clausal Packaging in Japanese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Amanda; Gullberg, Marianne

2012-01-01

Native speakers show systematic variation in a range of linguistic domains as a function of a variety of sociolinguistic variables. This article addresses native language variation in the context of multicompetence, i.e. knowledge of two languages in one mind (Cook, 1991). Descriptions of motion were elicited from functionally monolingual and…

TESOL Teachers' Engagement with the Native Speaker Model: How Does Teacher Education Impact on Their Beliefs?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nguyen, Mai Xuan Nhat Chi

2017-01-01

This research investigates non-native English teachers' engagement with the native speaker model, i.e. whether they agree/disagree with measuring English teaching and learning performance against native speaker standards. More importantly, it aims to unearth the impact of teacher education on teachers' attitudes and beliefs about…

Topic Continuity in Informal Conversations between Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morris-Adams, Muna

2013-01-01

Topic management by non-native speakers (NNSs) during informal conversations has received comparatively little attention from researchers, and receives surprisingly little attention in second language learning and teaching. This article reports on one of the topic management strategies employed by international students during informal, social…

Report: Immersion French at Meriden Junior School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Esposito, Marie-Josee

2006-01-01

In this article, the author describes the French immersion program at Meriden Junior School, an Anglican school for girls from pre-Kindergarten to Year 12 in Sydney. Four teachers (one of whom is the coordinator) and three assistants are involved in the program. They include six French native speakers and one non-French-born teacher who speaks…

Perceiving non-native speech: Word segmentation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mondini, Michèle; Miller, Joanne L.

2004-05-01

One important source of information listeners use to segment speech into discrete words is allophonic variation at word junctures. Previous research has shown that non-native speakers impose their native-language phonetic norms on their second language; as a consequence, non-native speech may (in some cases) exhibit altered patterns of allophonic variation at word junctures. We investigated the perceptual consequences of this for word segmentation by presenting native-English listeners with English word pairs produced either by six native-English speakers or six highly fluent, native-French speakers of English. The target word pairs had contrastive word juncture involving voiceless stop consonants (e.g., why pink/wipe ink; gray ties/great eyes; we cash/weak ash). The task was to identify randomized instances of each individual target word pair (as well as control pairs) by selecting one of four possible choices (e.g., why pink, wipe ink, why ink, wipe pink). Overall, listeners were more accurate in identifying target word pairs produced by the native-English speakers than by the non-native English speakers. These findings suggest that one contribution to the processing cost associated with listening to non-native speech may be the presence of altered allophonic information important for word segmentation. [Work supported by NIH/NIDCD.

Uses of Background Experience in a Preparatory Reading and Writing Class: An Analysis of Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Becket, Diana

2005-01-01

The goal of the study reported in this article is to analyze ways students in the first course of a three-quarter college preparatory sequence in reading and writing write about their experiences in their essays. The student participants were three native speakers of English and three native speakers of Punjabi, who had lived and studied in the…

"I May Be a Native Speaker but I'm Not Monolingual": Reimagining "All" Teachers' Linguistic Identities in TESOL

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ellis, Elizabeth M.

2016-01-01

Teacher linguistic identity has so far mainly been researched in terms of whether a teacher identifies (or is identified by others) as a native speaker (NEST) or nonnative speaker (NNEST) (Moussu & Llurda, 2008; Reis, 2011). Native speakers are presumed to be monolingual, and nonnative speakers, although by definition bilingual, tend to be…

The Use of Native Speaker Norms in Critical Period Hypothesis Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andringa, Sible

2014-01-01

In critical period hypothesis (CPH) research, native speaker (NS) norm groups have often been used to determine whether nonnative speakers (NNSs) were able to score within the NS range of scores. One goal of this article is to investigate what NS samples were used in previous CPH research. The literature review shows that NS control groups tend to…

Speech-on-speech masking with variable access to the linguistic content of the masker speech for native and nonnative english speakers.

PubMed

Calandruccio, Lauren; Bradlow, Ann R; Dhar, Sumitrajit

2014-04-01

Masking release for an English sentence-recognition task in the presence of foreign-accented English speech compared with native-accented English speech was reported in Calandruccio et al (2010a). The masking release appeared to increase as the masker intelligibility decreased. However, it could not be ruled out that spectral differences between the speech maskers were influencing the significant differences observed. The purpose of the current experiment was to minimize spectral differences between speech maskers to determine how various amounts of linguistic information within competing speech Affiliationect masking release. A mixed-model design with within-subject (four two-talker speech maskers) and between-subject (listener group) factors was conducted. Speech maskers included native-accented English speech and high-intelligibility, moderate-intelligibility, and low-intelligibility Mandarin-accented English. Normalizing the long-term average speech spectra of the maskers to each other minimized spectral differences between the masker conditions. Three listener groups were tested, including monolingual English speakers with normal hearing, nonnative English speakers with normal hearing, and monolingual English speakers with hearing loss. The nonnative English speakers were from various native language backgrounds, not including Mandarin (or any other Chinese dialect). Listeners with hearing loss had symmetric mild sloping to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Listeners were asked to repeat back sentences that were presented in the presence of four different two-talker speech maskers. Responses were scored based on the key words within the sentences (100 key words per masker condition). A mixed-model regression analysis was used to analyze the difference in performance scores between the masker conditions and listener groups. Monolingual English speakers with normal hearing benefited when the competing speech signal was foreign accented compared with native

Accent, Intelligibility, and the Role of the Listener: Perceptions of English-Accented German by Native German Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hayes-Harb, Rachel; Watzinger-Tharp, Johanna

2012-01-01

We explore the relationship between accentedness and intelligibility, and investigate how listeners' beliefs about nonnative speech interact with their accentedness and intelligibility judgments. Native German speakers and native English learners of German produced German sentences, which were presented to 12 native German speakers in accentedness…

White Native English Speakers Needed: The Rhetorical Construction of Privilege in Online Teacher Recruitment Spaces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ruecker, Todd; Ives, Lindsey

2015-01-01

Over the past few decades, scholars have paid increasing attention to the role of native speakerism in the field of TESOL. Several recent studies have exposed instances of native speakerism in TESOL recruitment discourses published through a variety of media, but none have focused specifically on professional websites advertising programs in…

Disrupted behaviour in grammatical morphology in French speakers with autism spectrum disorders.

PubMed

Le Normand, Marie-Thérèse; Blanc, Romuald; Caldani, Simona; Bonnet-Brilhault, Frédérique

2018-01-18

Mixed and inconsistent findings have been reported across languages concerning grammatical morphology in speakers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Some researchers argue for a selective sparing of grammar whereas others claim to have identified grammatical deficits. The present study aimed to investigate this issue in 26 participants with ASD speaking European French who were matched on age, gender and SES to 26 participants with typical development (TD). The groups were compared regarding their productivity and accuracy of syntactic and agreement categories using the French MOR part-of-speech tagger available from the CHILDES. The groups significantly differed in productivity with respect to nouns, adjectives, determiners, prepositions and gender markers. Error analysis revealed that ASD speakers exhibited a disrupted behaviour in grammatical morphology. They made gender, tense and preposition errors and they omitted determiners and pronouns in nominal and verbal contexts. ASD speakers may have a reduced sensitivity to perceiving and processing the distributional structure of syntactic categories when producing grammatical morphemes and agreement categories. The theoretical and cross-linguistic implications of these findings are discussed.

Nonnative Speakers Do Not Take Competing Alternative Expressions into Account the Way Native Speakers Do

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robenalt, Clarice; Goldberg, Adele E.

2016-01-01

When native speakers judge the acceptability of novel sentences, they appear to implicitly take competing formulations into account, judging novel sentences with a readily available alternative formulation to be less acceptable than novel sentences with no competing alternative. Moreover, novel sentences with a competing alternative are more…

Selected Bibliography of Spanish for Native Speaker Sources.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rodriguez Pino, Cecilia, Comp.

This bibliography was prepared for middle school and high school teachers participating in a conference at New Mexico State University (July 14-18, 1993), to assist in research and pedagogical endeavors in the teaching of Spanish to native speakers. It is presented in two parts. The first is a bibliography edited by Francisco J. Ronquillo, which…

Non-Native English Speakers and Nonstandard English: An In-Depth Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polat, Brittany

2012-01-01

Given the rising prominence of nonstandard varieties of English around the world (Jenkins 2007), learners of English as a second language are increasingly called on to communicate with speakers of both native and non-native nonstandard English varieties. In many classrooms around the world, however, learners continue to be exposed only to…

"Vous" or "tu"? Native and Non-Native Speakers of French on a Sociolinguistic Tightrope

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dewaele, Jean-Marc

2004-01-01

Sociolinguistic rules governing choice of pronouns of address are notoriously difficult in French, despite the fact that the number of variants is rather limited: the more formal "vous" versus the more informal "tu." Children with French as L1 learn to use pronouns of address appropriately as part of their socialization process. The learning curve…

French Phonology for Teachers: A Programmed Introduction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Green, Jerald R.; Poulin, Norman A.

This programed, self-instructional course has the following terminal objectives: (1) to present some notions of the science of linguistics and the major branches of linguistics, (2) to teach the segmental and suprasegmental phonemes of French, (3) to identify the major articulatory problems of French for the native speaker of English, (4) to…

Cross-cultural differences in adult Theory of Mind abilities: A comparison of native-English speakers and native-Chinese speakers on the Self/Other Differentiation task.

PubMed

Bradford, Elisabeth Ef; Jentzsch, Ines; Gomez, Juan-Carlos; Chen, Yulu; Zhang, Da; Su, Yanjie

2018-02-01

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to compute and attribute mental states to ourselves and other people. It is currently unclear whether ToM abilities are universal or whether they can be culturally influenced. To address this question, this research explored potential differences in engagement of ToM processes between two different cultures, Western (individualist) and Chinese (collectivist), using a sample of healthy adults. Participants completed a computerised false-belief task, in which they attributed beliefs to either themselves or another person, in a matched design, allowing direct comparison between "Self"- and "Other"-oriented conditions. Results revealed that both native-English speakers and native-Chinese individuals responded significantly faster to self-oriented than other-oriented questions. Results also showed that when a trial required a "perspective-shift," participants from both cultures were slower to shift from Self-to-Other than from Other-to-Self. Results indicate that despite differences in collectivism scores, culture does not influence task performance, with similar results found for both Western and non-Western participants, suggesting core and potentially universal similarities in the ToM mechanism across these two cultures.

English Speakers Attend More Strongly than Spanish Speakers to Manner of Motion when Classifying Novel Objects and Events

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kersten, Alan W.; Meissner, Christian A.; Lechuga, Julia; Schwartz, Bennett L.; Albrechtsen, Justin S.; Iglesias, Adam

2010-01-01

Three experiments provide evidence that the conceptualization of moving objects and events is influenced by one's native language, consistent with linguistic relativity theory. Monolingual English speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in an English-speaking context performed better than monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual…

Spanish Native-Speaker Perception of Accentedness in Learner Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moranski, Kara

2012-01-01

Building upon current research in native-speaker (NS) perception of L2 learner phonology (Zielinski, 2008; Derwing & Munro, 2009), the present investigation analyzed multiple dimensions of NS speech perception in order to achieve a more complete understanding of the specific linguistic elements and attitudinal variables that contribute to…

Speaker and Accent Variation Are Handled Differently: Evidence in Native and Non-Native Listeners

PubMed Central

Kriengwatana, Buddhamas; Terry, Josephine; Chládková, Kateřina; Escudero, Paola

2016-01-01

Listeners are able to cope with between-speaker variability in speech that stems from anatomical sources (i.e. individual and sex differences in vocal tract size) and sociolinguistic sources (i.e. accents). We hypothesized that listeners adapt to these two types of variation differently because prior work indicates that adapting to speaker/sex variability may occur pre-lexically while adapting to accent variability may require learning from attention to explicit cues (i.e. feedback). In Experiment 1, we tested our hypothesis by training native Dutch listeners and Australian-English (AusE) listeners without any experience with Dutch or Flemish to discriminate between the Dutch vowels /I/ and /ε/ from a single speaker. We then tested their ability to classify /I/ and /ε/ vowels of a novel Dutch speaker (i.e. speaker or sex change only), or vowels of a novel Flemish speaker (i.e. speaker or sex change plus accent change). We found that both Dutch and AusE listeners could successfully categorize vowels if the change involved a speaker/sex change, but not if the change involved an accent change. When AusE listeners were given feedback on their categorization responses to the novel speaker in Experiment 2, they were able to successfully categorize vowels involving an accent change. These results suggest that adapting to accents may be a two-step process, whereby the first step involves adapting to speaker differences at a pre-lexical level, and the second step involves adapting to accent differences at a contextual level, where listeners have access to word meaning or are given feedback that allows them to appropriately adjust their perceptual category boundaries. PMID:27309889

Politeness Strategies among Native and Romanian Speakers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ambrose, Dominic

1995-01-01

Background: Politeness strategies vary from language to language and within each society. At times the wrong strategies can have disastrous effects. This can occur when languages are used by non-native speakers or when they are used outside of their own home linguistic context. Purpose: This study of spoken language compares the politeness…

Students Writing Emails to Faculty: An Examination of E-Politeness among Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biesenbach-Lucas, Sigrun

2007-01-01

This study combines interlanguage pragmatics and speech act research with computer-mediated communication and examines how native and non-native speakers of English formulate low- and high-imposition requests to faculty. While some research claims that email, due to absence of non-verbal cues, encourages informal language, other research has…

Teaching the Native English Speaker How to Teach English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Odhuu, Kelli

2014-01-01

This article speaks to teachers who have been paired with native speakers (NSs) who have never taught before, and the feelings of frustration, discouragement, and nervousness on the teacher's behalf that can occur as a result. In order to effectively tackle this situation, teachers need to work together with the NSs. Teachers in this scenario…

The influence of lexical characteristics and talker accent on the recognition of English words by speakers of Japanese.

PubMed

Yoneyama, Kiyoko; Munson, Benjamin

2017-02-01

Whether or not the influence of listeners' language proficiency on L2 speech recognition was affected by the structure of the lexicon was examined. This specific experiment examined the effect of word frequency (WF) and phonological neighborhood density (PND) on word recognition in native speakers of English and second-language (L2) speakers of English whose first language was Japanese. The stimuli included English words produced by a native speaker of English and English words produced by a native speaker of Japanese (i.e., with Japanese-accented English). The experiment was inspired by the finding of Imai, Flege, and Walley [(2005). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 896-907] that the influence of talker accent on speech intelligibility for L2 learners of English whose L1 is Spanish varies as a function of words' PND. In the currently study, significant interactions between stimulus accentedness and listener group on the accuracy and speed of spoken word recognition were found, as were significant effects of PND and WF on word-recognition accuracy. However, no significant three-way interaction among stimulus talker, listener group, and PND on either measure was found. Results are discussed in light of recent findings on cross-linguistic differences in the nature of the effects of PND on L2 phonological and lexical processing.

The Native Speaker, the Student, and Woody Allen: Examining Traditional Roles in the Foreign Language Classroom.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Finger, Anke

This paper uses a language classroom role-playing scene from a Woody Allen movie to examine the language student who has traditionally been asked to emulate and copy the native speaker and to discuss roles that teachers ask students to play. It also presents the changing paradigm of the native speaker and his or her role inside and outside the…

Collaborative Dialogue in Learner-Learner and Learner-Native Speaker Interaction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dobao, Ana Fernandez

2012-01-01

This study analyses intermediate and advanced learner-learner and learner-native speaker (NS) interaction looking for collaborative dialogue. It investigates how the presence of a NS interlocutor affects the frequency and nature of lexical language-related episodes (LREs) spontaneously generated during task-based interaction. Twenty-four learners…

Phraseology and Frequency of Occurrence on the Web: Native Speakers' Perceptions of Google-Informed Second Language Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Geluso, Joe

2013-01-01

Usage-based theories of language learning suggest that native speakers of a language are acutely aware of formulaic language due in large part to frequency effects. Corpora and data-driven learning can offer useful insights into frequent patterns of naturally occurring language to second/foreign language learners who, unlike native speakers, are…

A Study on Metadiscoursive Interaction in the MA Theses of the Native Speakers of English and the Turkish Speakers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Köroglu, Zehra; Tüm, Gülden

2017-01-01

This study has been conducted to evaluate the TM usage in the MA theses written by the native speakers (NSs) of English and the Turkish speakers (TSs) of English. The purpose is to compare the TM usage in the introduction, results and discussion, and conclusion sections by both groups' randomly selected MA theses in the field of ELT between the…

ERP evidence for different strategies in the processing of case markers in native speakers and non-native learners

PubMed Central

Mueller, Jutta L; Hirotani, Masako; Friederici, Angela D

2007-01-01

Background The present experiments were designed to test how the linguistic feature of case is processed in Japanese by native and non-native listeners. We used a miniature version of Japanese as a model to compare sentence comprehension mechanisms in native speakers and non-native learners who had received training until they had mastered the system. In the first experiment we auditorily presented native Japanese speakers with sentences containing incorrect double nominatives and incorrect double accusatives, and with correct sentences. In the second experiment we tested trained non-natives with the same material. Based on previous research in German we expected an N400-P600 biphasic ERP response with specific modulations depending on the violated case and whether the listeners were native or non-native. Results For native Japanese participants the general ERP response to the case violations was an N400-P600 pattern. Double accusatives led to an additional enhancement of the P600 amplitude. For the learners a native-like P600 was present for double accusatives and for double nominatives. The additional negativity, however, was present in learners only for double nominative violations, and it was characterized by a different topographical distribution. Conclusion The results indicate that native listeners use case markers for thematic as well as syntactic structure building during incremental sentence interpretation. The modulation of the P600 component for double accusatives possibly reflects case specific syntactic restrictions in Japanese. For adult language learners later processes, as reflected in the P600, seem to be more native-like compared to earlier processes. The anterior distribution of the negativity and its selective emergence for canonical sentences were taken to suggest that the non-native learners resorted to a rather formal processing strategy whereby they relied to a large degree on the phonologically salient nominative case marker. PMID:17331265

Development of a speaker discrimination test for cochlear implant users based on the Oldenburg Logatome corpus.

PubMed

Mühler, Roland; Ziese, Michael; Rostalski, Dorothea

2009-01-01

The purpose of the study was to develop a speaker discrimination test for cochlear implant (CI) users. The speech material was drawn from the Oldenburg Logatome (OLLO) corpus, which contains 150 different logatomes read by 40 German and 10 French native speakers. The prototype test battery included 120 logatome pairs spoken by 5 male and 5 female speakers with balanced representations of the conditions 'same speaker' and 'different speaker'. Ten adult normal-hearing listeners and 12 adult postlingually deafened CI users were included in a study to evaluate the suitability of the test. The mean speaker discrimination score for the CI users was 67.3% correct and for the normal-hearing listeners 92.2% correct. A significant influence of voice gender and fundamental frequency difference on the speaker discrimination score was found in CI users as well as in normal-hearing listeners. Since the test results of the CI users were significantly above chance level and no ceiling effect was observed, we conclude that subsets of the OLLO corpus are very well suited to speaker discrimination experiments in CI users. Copyright 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Proficiency Differences in Syntactic Processing of Monolingual Native Speakers Indexed by Event-related Potentials

PubMed Central

Pakulak, Eric; Neville, Helen J.

2010-01-01

While anecdotally there appear to be differences in the way native speakers use and comprehend their native language, most empirical investigations of language processing study university students and none have studied differences in language proficiency which may be independent of resource limitations such as working memory span. We examined differences in language proficiency in adult monolingual native speakers of English using an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm. ERPs were recorded to insertion phrase structure violations in naturally spoken English sentences. Participants recruited from a wide spectrum of society were given standardized measures of English language proficiency, and two complementary ERP analyses were performed. In between-groups analyses, participants were divided, based on standardized proficiency scores, into Lower Proficiency (LP) and Higher Proficiency (HP) groups. Compared to LP participants, HP participants showed an early anterior negativity that was more focal, both spatially and temporally, and a larger and more widely distributed positivity (P600) to violations. In correlational analyses, we utilized a wide spectrum of proficiency scores to examine the degree to which individual proficiency scores correlated with individual neural responses to syntactic violations in regions and time windows identified in the between-group analyses. This approach also employed partial correlation analyses to control for possible confounding variables. These analyses provided evidence for the effects of proficiency that converged with the between-groups analyses. These results suggest that adult monolingual native speakers of English who vary in language proficiency differ in the recruitment of syntactic processes that are hypothesized to be at least in part automatic as well as of those thought to be more controlled. These results also suggest that in order to fully characterize neural organization for language in native speakers it is

Nativelike Right-Dislocation in Near-Native French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Donaldson, Bryan

2011-01-01

Recent research on advanced and near-native second-language (L2) speakers has focused on the acquisition of interface phenomena, for example at the syntax-pragmatics interface. Proponents of the Interface Hypothesis (e.g. Sorace, 2005; Sorace and Filiaci, 2006; Tsimpli and Sorace, 2006; Sorace and Serratrice, 2009) argue that (external) interfaces…

Judgement of Countability and Plural Marking in English by Native and Non-Native English Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsang, Art

2017-01-01

Learning whether English nouns are countable or not is a source of great difficulty for many ESL/EFL learners. In the present study, a grammaticality judgement task comprised of a range of nouns representative of the different facets of the countability system in English was distributed to 82 native speakers of English (NSs) and 98 non-native…

Impact of Cyrillic on Native English Speakers' Phono-lexical Acquisition of Russian.

PubMed

Showalter, Catherine E

2018-03-01

We investigated the influence of grapheme familiarity and native language grapheme-phoneme correspondences during second language lexical learning. Native English speakers learned Russian-like words via auditory presentations containing only familiar first language phones, pictured meanings, and exposure to either Cyrillic orthographic forms (Orthography condition) or the sequence (No Orthography condition). Orthography participants saw three types of written forms: familiar-congruent (e.g., -[kom]), familiar-incongruent (e.g., -[rɑt]), and unfamiliar (e.g., <ФИЛ>-[fil]). At test, participants determined whether pictures and words matched according to what they saw during word learning. All participants performed near ceiling in all stimulus conditions, except for Orthography participants on words containing incongruent grapheme-phoneme correspondences. These results suggest that first language grapheme-phoneme correspondences can cause interference during second language phono-lexical acquisition. In addition, these results suggest that orthographic input effects are robust enough to interfere even when the input does not contain novel phones.

Classroom Interactions as Cross-Cultural Encounters: Native Speakers in EFL Lessons

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Luk, Jasmine C. M.; Lin, Angel M. Y.

2006-01-01

This book is about native English speakers teaching English as a global language in non-English speaking countries. Through analysis of naturally occurring dialogic encounters, the authors examine the multifaceted ways in which teachers and students utilize diverse communicative resources to construct, display, and negotiate their identities as…

Limits on Bilingualism Revisited: Stress Deafness in Simultaneous French-Spanish Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dupoux, Emmanuel; Peperkamp, Sharon; Sebastian-Galles, Nuria

2010-01-01

We probed simultaneous French-Spanish bilinguals for the perception of Spanish lexical stress using three tasks, two short-term memory encoding tasks and a speeded lexical decision. In all three tasks, the performance of the group of simultaneous bilinguals was intermediate between that of native speakers of Spanish on the one hand and French late…

Using Audiovisual TV Interviews to Create Visible Authors that Reduce the Learning Gap between Native and Non-Native Language Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Inglese, Terry; Mayer, Richard E.; Rigotti, Francesca

2007-01-01

Can archives of audiovisual TV interviews be used to make authors more visible to students, and thereby reduce the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers in college classes? We examined students in a college course who learned about one scholar's ideas through watching an audiovisual TV interview (i.e., visible author format)…

French Interrogative Structures: A New Pedagogical Norm for the 21st-Century Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Antes, Theresa A.

2016-01-01

This study investigated interrogative structures most frequently used by native speakers of French, in an attempt to reconcile differences between language forms taught in the French as a foreign language classroom and those that are encountered in authentic input. Radio, television, and magazine interviews provided multiple examples of…

Development of English and French Language and Literacy Skills in EL1 and EL French Immersion Students in the Early Grades

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Au-Yeung, Karen; Hipfner-Boucher, Kathleen; Chen, Xi; Pasquarella, Adrian; D'Angelo, Nadia; Deacon, S. Hélène

2015-01-01

In this article, we report two studies that compared the development of English and French language and literacy skills in French immersion students identified as native English speakers (EL1s) and English learners (ELs). In study 1, 81 EL1s and 147 ELs were tested in the fall and spring terms of grade 1. The EL1s and ELs had similar outcomes and…

Subglottal resonances of adult male and female native speakers of American English.

PubMed

Lulich, Steven M; Morton, John R; Arsikere, Harish; Sommers, Mitchell S; Leung, Gary K F; Alwan, Abeer

2012-10-01

This paper presents a large-scale study of subglottal resonances (SGRs) (the resonant frequencies of the tracheo-bronchial tree) and their relations to various acoustical and physiological characteristics of speakers. The paper presents data from a corpus of simultaneous microphone and accelerometer recordings of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words embedded in a carrier phrase spoken by 25 male and 25 female native speakers of American English ranging in age from 18 to 24 yr. The corpus contains 17,500 utterances of 14 American English monophthongs, diphthongs, and the rhotic approximant [[inverted r

The Types and Effects of Peer Native Speakers' Feedback on CMC

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diez-Bedmar, Maria Belen; Perez-Paredes, Pascual

2012-01-01

Online collaborative writing tasks are frequently undertaken in forums and wikis. Variation between these two communication modes has yet to be examined, particularly type of feedback and its effects. We investigated the type of feedback and the impact of English native-speakers' feedback on Spanish peers' discourse restructuring in the context of…

Acquisition of the Internal and External Constraints of Variable Schwa Deletion by French Immersion Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Uritescu, Dorin; Mougeon, Raymond; Rehner, Katherine; Nadasdi, Terry

2004-01-01

This article is one among a series of studies on the acquisition of patterns of linguistic variation observable in the speech of native speakers of Canadian French by French immersion (FI) students. The present study is centered on deletion of the central vowel schwa, a widespread feature of casual spoken French. In this study, FI students are…

Perception of a non-native speech contrast: Voiced and voiceless stops as perceived by Tamil speakers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tur, Sylwia

2004-05-01

The effect of linguistic experience plays a significant role in how speech sounds are perceived. The findings of many studies imply that the perception of non-native contrasts depends on their status in the native language of the listener. Tamil is a language with a single voicing category. All stop consonants in Tamil are phonemically voiceless, though allophonic voicing has been observed in spoken Tamil. The present study examined how native Tamil speakers and English controls perceived voiced and voiceless bilabial, alveolar, and velar stops in English. Voice onset time (VOT) was manipulated for editing of naturally produced stimuli with increasingly longer continuum. Perceptual data was collected from 16 Tamil and 16 English speakers. Experiment 1 was an AX task in which subjects responded same or different to 162 pairs of stimuli. Experiment 2 was a forced choice ID task in which subjects identified 99 individually presented stimuli as pa, ta, ka or ba, da, ga. Experiments show statistically significant differences between Tamil and English speakers in their perception of English stop consonants. Results of the study imply that the allophonic status of voiced stops in Tamil does not aid the Tamil speakers in perceiving phonemically voiced stops in English.

Using Listener Judgments to Investigate Linguistic Influences on L2 Comprehensibility and Accentedness: A Validation and Generalization Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Kazuya; Trofimovich, Pavel; Isaacs, Talia

2017-01-01

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…

Native language shapes automatic neural processing of speech.

PubMed

Intartaglia, Bastien; White-Schwoch, Travis; Meunier, Christine; Roman, Stéphane; Kraus, Nina; Schön, Daniele

2016-08-01

The development of the phoneme inventory is driven by the acoustic-phonetic properties of one's native language. Neural representation of speech is known to be shaped by language experience, as indexed by cortical responses, and recent studies suggest that subcortical processing also exhibits this attunement to native language. However, most work to date has focused on the differences between tonal and non-tonal languages that use pitch variations to convey phonemic categories. The aim of this cross-language study is to determine whether subcortical encoding of speech sounds is sensitive to language experience by comparing native speakers of two non-tonal languages (French and English). We hypothesized that neural representations would be more robust and fine-grained for speech sounds that belong to the native phonemic inventory of the listener, and especially for the dimensions that are phonetically relevant to the listener such as high frequency components. We recorded neural responses of American English and French native speakers, listening to natural syllables of both languages. Results showed that, independently of the stimulus, American participants exhibited greater neural representation of the fundamental frequency compared to French participants, consistent with the importance of the fundamental frequency to convey stress patterns in English. Furthermore, participants showed more robust encoding and more precise spectral representations of the first formant when listening to the syllable of their native language as compared to non-native language. These results align with the hypothesis that language experience shapes sensory processing of speech and that this plasticity occurs as a function of what is meaningful to a listener. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An Approach to Teaching the Past Tenses in French.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abrate, Jayne

1983-01-01

Discusses a method of teaching French past tenses in which students are taught to choose the appropriate tense by learning to view the situation as a native speaker, instead of by trying to memorize and apply very specific grammar rules and all their exceptions. (EKN)

Mediated Vocabulary in Native Speaker-Learner Interactions during an Oral Portfolio Activity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tocaimaza-Hatch, C. Cecilia

2016-01-01

This project investigated vocabulary learning from a sociocultural perspective--in particular, the way in which lexical knowledge was mediated in Spanish second language (L2) learners' and native speakers' (NSs') interactions. Nine students who were enrolled in an advanced conversation course completed an oral portfolio assignment consisting of…

The Role of Colloquial French in Communication and Implications for Language Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bonin, Therese M.

1978-01-01

This article discusses comprehension problems encountered by students of French as a second language as a result of the mismatch between the standard language they learn in classrooms and the language used by native speakers. (CLK)

Adaptive Communication: Languages with More Non-Native Speakers Tend to Have Fewer Word Forms

PubMed Central

Bentz, Christian; Verkerk, Annemarie; Kiela, Douwe; Hill, Felix; Buttery, Paula

2015-01-01

Explaining the diversity of languages across the world is one of the central aims of typological, historical, and evolutionary linguistics. We consider the effect of language contact-the number of non-native speakers a language has-on the way languages change and evolve. By analysing hundreds of languages within and across language families, regions, and text types, we show that languages with greater levels of contact typically employ fewer word forms to encode the same information content (a property we refer to as lexical diversity). Based on three types of statistical analyses, we demonstrate that this variance can in part be explained by the impact of non-native speakers on information encoding strategies. Finally, we argue that languages are information encoding systems shaped by the varying needs of their speakers. Language evolution and change should be modeled as the co-evolution of multiple intertwined adaptive systems: On one hand, the structure of human societies and human learning capabilities, and on the other, the structure of language. PMID:26083380

Structural Correlates for Lexical Efficiency and Number of Languages in Non-Native Speakers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grogan, A.; Parker Jones, O.; Ali, N.; Crinion, J.; Orabona, S.; Mechias, M. L.; Ramsden, S.; Green, D. W.; Price, C. J.

2012-01-01

We used structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and voxel based morphometry (VBM) to investigate whether the efficiency of word processing in the non-native language (lexical efficiency) and the number of non-native languages spoken (2+ versus 1) were related to local differences in the brain structure of bilingual and multilingual speakers.…

A Personal Statement about a Four-Year Curriculum for Heritage and Native Speakers of Spanish Programs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stering, Edward

This document shares a vision for a 4-year curriculum for Heritage Speakers of Spanish (HSS)/Spanish for Native Speakers (SNS), describing a course developed for SNS students within Mercy High School in San Francisco, California. The vision foresees an ever-increasing number of HSS and SNS students completing college level degree programs then…

Proficiency and Working Memory Based Explanations for Nonnative Speakers' Sensitivity to Agreement in Sentence Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coughlin, Caitlin E.; Tremblay, Annie

2013-01-01

This study examines the roles of proficiency and working memory (WM) capacity in second-/foreign-language (L2) learners' processing of agreement morphology. It investigates the processing of grammatical and ungrammatical short- and long-distance number agreement dependencies by native English speakers at two proficiencies in French, and the…

Using the L1 "Errors" of Native Speakers in the EFL Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rebuck, Mark

2011-01-01

While it is common for teachers to focus on learners' errors in the EFL classroom, little attention is given to the "errors" that native English speakers make in their mother tongue. This paper reports on a study to assess the reaction of Japanese university students to an activity that primarily required identifying…

Words and pictures: An electrophysiological investigation of domain specific processing in native Chinese and English speakers

PubMed Central

Yum, Yen Na; Holcomb, Phillip J.; Grainger, Jonathan

2011-01-01

Comparisons of word and picture processing using Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) are contaminated by gross physical differences between the two types of stimuli. In the present study, we tackle this problem by comparing picture processing with word processing in an alphabetic and a logographic script, that are also characterized by gross physical differences. Native Mandarin Chinese speakers viewed pictures (line drawings) and Chinese characters (Experiment 1), native English speakers viewed pictures and English words (Experiment 2), and naïve Chinese readers (native English speakers) viewed pictures and Chinese characters (Experiment 3) in a semantic categorization task. The varying pattern of differences in the ERPs elicited by pictures and words across the three experiments provided evidence for i) script-specific processing arising between 150–200 ms post-stimulus onset, ii) domain-specific but script-independent processing arising between 200–300 ms post-stimulus onset, and iii) processing that depended on stimulus meaningfulness in the N400 time window. The results are interpreted in terms of differences in the way visual features are mapped onto higher-level representations for pictures and words in alphabetic and logographic writing systems. PMID:21439991

An Analysis of Speech Disfluencies of Turkish Speakers Based on Age Variable

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altiparmak, Ayse; Kuruoglu, Gülmira

2018-01-01

The focus of this research is to verify the influence of the age variable on fluent Turkish native speakers' production of the various types of speech disfluencies. To accomplish this, four groups of native speakers of Turkish between ages 4-8, 18-23, 33-50 years respectively and those over 50-years-old were constructed. A total of 84 participants…

A language-familiarity effect for speaker discrimination without comprehension.

PubMed

Fleming, David; Giordano, Bruno L; Caldara, Roberto; Belin, Pascal

2014-09-23

The influence of language familiarity upon speaker identification is well established, to such an extent that it has been argued that "Human voice recognition depends on language ability" [Perrachione TK, Del Tufo SN, Gabrieli JDE (2011) Science 333(6042):595]. However, 7-mo-old infants discriminate speakers of their mother tongue better than they do foreign speakers [Johnson EK, Westrek E, Nazzi T, Cutler A (2011) Dev Sci 14(5):1002-1011] despite their limited speech comprehension abilities, suggesting that speaker discrimination may rely on familiarity with the sound structure of one's native language rather than the ability to comprehend speech. To test this hypothesis, we asked Chinese and English adult participants to rate speaker dissimilarity in pairs of sentences in English or Mandarin that were first time-reversed to render them unintelligible. Even in these conditions a language-familiarity effect was observed: Both Chinese and English listeners rated pairs of native-language speakers as more dissimilar than foreign-language speakers, despite their inability to understand the material. Our data indicate that the language familiarity effect is not based on comprehension but rather on familiarity with the phonology of one's native language. This effect may stem from a mechanism analogous to the "other-race" effect in face recognition.

English Native Speakers' L2 Acquisition of the Spanish Clitic Se

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bailey, Carolina

2013-01-01

This study investigated the acquisition of the Spanish clitic se by English native speakers in passive, middle, and impersonal constructions. Little research has been done on this topic in SLA within a UG framework (Bayona, 2005; Bruhn de Garavito, 1999). VanPatten (2004) proposed the Processing Instruction (PI) model arguing for the necessity of…

Second Life for Distance Language Learning: A Framework for Native/Non-Native Speaker Interactions in a Virtual World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tusing, Jennifer; Berge, Zane L.

2010-01-01

This paper examines a number of theoretical principles governing second language teaching and learning and the ways in which these principles are being applied in 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life. Also examined are the benefits to language learning afforded by the Second Life interface, including access, the availability of native speakers of…

The perception of phonological quantity based on durational cues by native speakers, second-language users and nonspeakers of Finnish.

PubMed

Ylinen, Sari; Shestakova, Anna; Alku, Paavo; Huotilainen, Minna

2005-01-01

Some languages, such as Finnish, use speech-sound duration as the primary cue for a phonological quantity distinction. For second-language (L2) learners, quantity is often difficult to master if speech-sound duration plays a less important role in the phonology of their native language (L1). By comparing the categorization performance of native speakers of Finnish, Russian L2 users of Finnish, and non-Finnish-speaking Russians, the present study aimed to determine whether the L2 users, whose native language does not have a quantity distinction, have been able to establish categories for Finnish quantity. The results suggest that the native speakers and some of the L2 users that have been exposed to Finnish for a longer time have access to phonological quantity categories, whereas the L2 users with shorter exposure and the non-Finnish-speaking subjects do not. In addition, by comparing categorization and discrimination tasks it was found that the native speakers show a phoneme-boundary effect for quantity that is cued by duration only, whereas the non-Finnish-speaking subjects and the subjects with low proficiency in Finnish do not.

Non-Native Speaker Interaction Management Strategies in a Network-Based Virtual Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peterson, Mark

2008-01-01

This article investigates the dyad-based communication of two groups of non-native speakers (NNSs) of English involved in real time interaction in a type of text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) tool known as a MOO. The object of this semester long study was to examine the ways in which the subjects managed their L2 interaction during…

Writing Science Like an English Native Speaker: How Far Can and Should Non-Native Speakers of English Go?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burrough-Boenisch, Joy

This paper discusses how a native English-speaking scientist should write and how they actually write scientific articles. This is complemented by considering the aspects of English that journal editors reported as influencing their assessment of manuscripts submitted by second language authors. Some of the ways in which native language and…

Conceptualization of American English Native Speaker Norms: A Case Study of an English Language Classroom in South Korea

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahn, Kyungja

2011-01-01

This case study aims to reveal how conceptualization of native speakership was constructed and reinforced in a South Korean university classroom of English as a foreign language (EFL). In addition, it examines how this conceptualization positions native speakers, a non-native EFL teacher, and learners, and what learning opportunities were provided…

Gender agreement violations modulate beta oscillatory dynamics during sentence comprehension: A comparison of second language learners and native speakers.

PubMed

Lewis, Ashley Glen; Lemhӧfer, Kristin; Schoffelen, Jan-Mathijs; Schriefers, Herbert

2016-08-01

For native speakers, many studies suggest a link between oscillatory neural activity in the beta frequency range and syntactic processing. For late second language (L2) learners on the other hand, the extent to which the neural architecture supporting syntactic processing is similar to or different from that of native speakers is still unclear. In a series of four experiments, we used electroencephalography to investigate the link between beta oscillatory activity and the processing of grammatical gender agreement in Dutch determiner-noun pairs, for Dutch native speakers, and for German L2 learners of Dutch. In Experiment 1 we show that for native speakers, grammatical gender agreement violations are yet another among many syntactic factors that modulate beta oscillatory activity during sentence comprehension. Beta power is higher for grammatically acceptable target words than for those that mismatch in grammatical gender with their preceding determiner. In Experiment 2 we observed no such beta modulations for L2 learners, irrespective of whether trials were sorted according to objective or subjective syntactic correctness. Experiment 3 ruled out that the absence of a beta effect for the L2 learners in Experiment 2 was due to repetition of the target nouns in objectively correct and incorrect determiner-noun pairs. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that when L2 learners are required to explicitly focus on grammatical information, they show modulations of beta oscillatory activity, comparable to those of native speakers, but only when trials are sorted according to participants' idiosyncratic lexical representations of the grammatical gender of target nouns. Together, these findings suggest that beta power in L2 learners is sensitive to violations of grammatical gender agreement, but only when the importance of grammatical information is highlighted, and only when participants' subjective lexical representations are taken into account. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All

Non-Native Speakers of the Language of Instruction: Self-Perceptions of Teaching Ability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Samuel, Carolyn

2017-01-01

Given the linguistically diverse instructor and student populations at Canadian universities, mutually comprehensible oral language may not be a given. Indeed, both instructors who are non-native speakers of the language of instruction (NNSLIs) and students have acknowledged oral communication challenges. Little is known, though, about how the…

Word recognition materials for native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin.

PubMed

Nissen, Shawn L; Harris, Richard W; Dukes, Alycia

2008-06-01

To select, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate word recognition materials that can be used to measure the speech perception abilities of native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin in quiet. Frequently used bisyllabic words produced by male and female talkers of Taiwan Mandarin were digitally recorded and subsequently evaluated using 20 native listeners with normal hearing at 10 intensity levels (-5 to 40 dB HL) in increments of 5 dB. Using logistic regression, 200 words with the steepest psychometric slopes were divided into 4 lists and 8 half-lists that were relatively equivalent in psychometric function slope. To increase auditory homogeneity of the lists, the intensity of words in each list was digitally adjusted so that the threshold of each list was equal to the midpoint between the mean thresholds of the male and female half-lists. Digital recordings of the word recognition lists and the associated clinical instructions are available on CD upon request.

Strategies for the Production of Spanish Stop Consonants by Native Speakers of English.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zampini, Mary L.

A study examined patterns in production of Spanish voiced and voiceless stop consonants by native English speakers, focusing on the interaction between two acoustic cues of stops: voice closure interval and voice onset time (VOT). The study investigated whether learners acquire the appropriate phonetic categories with regard to these stops and if…

Linguistic Support for Non-Native English Speakers: Higher Education Practices in the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Snow Andrade, Maureen; Evans, Norman W.; Hartshorn, K. James

2014-01-01

Higher education institutions in English-speaking nations host significant populations of non-native English speakers (NNES), both international and resident. English language proficiency is a critical factor to their success. This study reviews higher education practices in the United States related to this population. Findings indicate…

The Influence of Orthography on the Production of Alphabetic, Second-Language Allophones by Speakers of a Non-Alphabetic Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Han, Jeong-Im; Kim, Joo-Yeon

2017-01-01

This study investigated the influence of orthographic information on the production of allophones in a second language (L2). Two proficiency levels of native Mandarin speakers learned novel Korean words with potential variants of /h/ based on auditory stimuli, and then they were provided various types of spellings for the variants, including the…

THRICE: A Technique for Improving the American English Language Delivery of Non-Native Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coates, Thomas J.; Regdon, Patricia M.

1974-01-01

THRICE is an acronym for a set of rules and exercises for foreigners learning correct English pronunciation. The THRICE technique was developed for non-native speakers who have a good knowledge of English but whose pronunciation is poor; the student is taught appropriate speech delivery through self-conditioning techniques. (CK)

English Language Schooling, Linguistic Realities, and the Native Speaker of English in Hong Kong

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hansen Edwards, Jette G.

2018-01-01

The study employs a case study approach to examine the impact of educational backgrounds on nine Hong Kong tertiary students' English and Cantonese language practices and identifications as native speakers of English and Cantonese. The study employed both survey and interview data to probe the participants' English and Cantonese language use at…

Floating Numeral Quantifiers as an Unaccusative Diagnostic in Native, Heritage, and L2 Japanese Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fukuda, Shin

2017-01-01

This study investigates the knowledge of unaccusativity in Japanese native, heritage, and second/foreign language speakers with respect to licensing of floating numeral quantifiers (FNQs) by unaccusative and unergative subjects (the "FNQ diagnostic"). Two acceptability judgment experiments were conducted to examine (i) whether and how…

Chinese-French Case Study of English Language Learning via Wikispaces, Animoto and Skype

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hartwell, Laura M.; Zou, Bin

2013-01-01

This paper reports on the learning experience of Chinese and French students participating in a computer mediated communication (CMC) collaboration conducted in English and supported by Wikispaces, Animoto, and Skype. Several studies have investigated CMC contexts in which at least some participants were native speakers. Here, we address the…

Disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers of English

PubMed Central

Rezaeian, Mohsen

2015-01-01

OBJECTIVES: English has become the most frequently used language for scientific communication in the biomedical field. Therefore, scholars from all over the world try to publish their findings in English. This trend has a number of advantages, along with several disadvantages. METHODS: In the current article, the most important disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers of English are reviewed. RESULTS: The most important disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers may include: Overlooking, either unintentionally or even deliberately, the most important local health problems; failure to carry out groundbreaking research due to limited medical research budgets; violating generally accepted codes of publication ethics and committing research misconduct and publications in open-access scam/predatory journals rather than prestigious journals. CONCLUSIONS: The above mentioned disadvantages could eventually result in academic establishments becoming irresponsible or, even worse, corrupt. In order to avoid this, scientists, scientific organizations, academic institutions, and scientific associations all over the world should design and implement a wider range of collaborative and comprehensive plans. PMID:25968115

Disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers of English.

PubMed

Rezaeian, Mohsen

2015-01-01

English has become the most frequently used language for scientific communication in the biomedical field. Therefore, scholars from all over the world try to publish their findings in English. This trend has a number of advantages, along with several disadvantages. In the current article, the most important disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers of English are reviewed. The most important disadvantages of publishing biomedical research articles in English for non-native speakers may include: Overlooking, either unintentionally or even deliberately, the most important local health problems; failure to carry out groundbreaking research due to limited medical research budgets; violating generally accepted codes of publication ethics and committing research misconduct and publications in open-access scam/predatory journals rather than prestigious journals. The above mentioned disadvantages could eventually result in academic establishments becoming irresponsible or, even worse, corrupt. In order to avoid this, scientists, scientific organizations, academic institutions, and scientific associations all over the world should design and implement a wider range of collaborative and comprehensive plans.

The Influence of Orthography on the Production of Alphabetic, Second-Language Allophones by Speakers of a Non-alphabetic Language.

PubMed

Han, Jeong-Im; Kim, Joo-Yeon

2017-08-01

This study investigated the influence of orthographic information on the production of allophones in a second language (L2). Two proficiency levels of native Mandarin speakers learned novel Korean words with potential variants of /h/ based on auditory stimuli, and then they were provided various types of spellings for the variants, including the letters for [[Formula: see text

The Functional Unit in Phonological Encoding: Evidence for Moraic Representation in Native Japanese Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kureta, Yoichi; Fushimi, Takao; Tatsumi, Itaru F.

2006-01-01

Speech production studies have shown that the phonological form of a word is made up of phonemic segments in stress-timed languages (e.g., Dutch) and of syllables in syllable timed languages (e.g., Chinese). To clarify the functional unit of mora-timed languages, the authors asked native Japanese speakers to perform an implicit priming task (A. S.…

Selectivity in L1 Attrition: Differential Object Marking in Spanish Near-Native Speakers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chamorro, Gloria; Sturt, Patrick; Sorace, Antonella

2016-01-01

Previous research has shown L1 attrition to be restricted to structures at the interfaces between syntax and pragmatics, but not to occur with syntactic properties that do not involve such interfaces ("Interface Hypothesis", Sorace and Filiaci in "Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian." "Second Lang…

The effects of native language on Indian English sounds and timing patterns

PubMed Central

Sirsa, Hema; Redford, Melissa A.

2013-01-01

This study explored whether the sound structure of Indian English (IE) varies with the divergent native languages of its speakers or whether it is similar regardless of speakers' native languages. Native Hindi (Indo-Aryan) and Telugu (Dravidian) speakers produced comparable phrases in IE and in their native languages. Naïve and experienced IE listeners were then asked to judge whether different sentences had been spoken by speakers with the same or different native language backgrounds. The findings were an interaction between listener experience and speaker background such that only experienced listeners appropriately distinguished IE sentences produced by speakers with different native language backgrounds. Naïve listeners were nonetheless very good at distinguishing between Hindi and Telugu phrases. Acoustic measurements on monophthongal vowels, select obstruent consonants, and suprasegmental temporal patterns all differentiated between Hindi and Telugu, but only 3 of the measures distinguished between IE produced by speakers of the different native languages. The overall results are largely consistent with the idea that IE has a target phonology that is distinct from the phonology of native Indian languages. The subtle L1 effects on IE may reflect either the incomplete acquisition of the target phonology or, more plausibly, the influence of sociolinguistic factors on the use and evolution of IE. PMID:24860200

Word Durations in Non-Native English

PubMed Central

Baker, Rachel E.; Baese-Berk, Melissa; Bonnasse-Gahot, Laurent; Kim, Midam; Van Engen, Kristin J.; Bradlow, Ann R.

2010-01-01

In this study, we compare the effects of English lexical features on word duration for native and non-native English speakers and for non-native speakers with different L1s and a range of L2 experience. We also examine whether non-native word durations lead to judgments of a stronger foreign accent. We measured word durations in English paragraphs read by 12 American English (AE), 20 Korean, and 20 Chinese speakers. We also had AE listeners rate the `accentedness' of these non-native speakers. AE speech had shorter durations, greater within-speaker word duration variance, greater reduction of function words, and less between-speaker variance than non-native speech. However, both AE and non-native speakers showed sensitivity to lexical predictability by reducing second mentions and high frequency words. Non-native speakers with more native-like word durations, greater within-speaker word duration variance, and greater function word reduction were perceived as less accented. Overall, these findings identify word duration as an important and complex feature of foreign-accented English. PMID:21516172

Language-Specific Stress Perception by 9-Month-Old French and Spanish Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Skoruppa, Katrin; Pons, Ferran; Christophe, Anne; Bosch, Laura; Dupoux, Emmanuel; Sebastian-Galles, Nuria; Limissuri, Rita Alves; Peperkamp, Sharon

2009-01-01

During the first year of life, infants begin to have difficulties perceiving non-native vowel and consonant contrasts, thus adapting their perception to the phonetic categories of the target language. In this paper, we examine the perception of a non-segmental feature, i.e. stress. Previous research with adults has shown that speakers of French (a…

Factor Structure Evaluation of the French Version of the Digital Natives Assessment Scale.

PubMed

Wagner, Vincent; Acier, Didier

2017-03-01

"Digital natives" concept defines young adults particularly familiar with emerging technologies such as computers, smartphones, or Internet. This notion is still controversial and so far, the primary identifying criterion was to consider their date of birth. However, literature highlighted the need to describe specific characteristics. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the factor structure of a French version of the Digital Natives Assessment Scale (DNAS). The sample of this study includes 590 participants from a 6-week massive open online course and from Web sites, electronic forums, and social networks. The DNAS was translated in French and then back-translated to English. A principal component analysis with orthogonal rotation followed by a confirmatory factorial analysis showed that a 15-item four-correlated component model provided the best fit for the data of our sample. Factor structure of this French-translated version of the DNAS was rather similar than those found in earlier studies. This study provides evidence of the DNAS robustness through cross-cultural and cross-generational validation. The French version of the DNAS appears to be appropriate as a quick and effective questionnaire to assess digital natives. More studies are needed to better define further features of this particular group.

A Comparative Study on the Use of Compliment Response Strategies by Persian and English Native Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shabani, Mansour; Zeinali, Maryam

2015-01-01

The significance of pragmatic knowledge and politeness strategies has recently been emphasized in language learning and teaching. Most communication failures originate in the lack of pragmatic awareness which is evident among EFL learners while communicating with English native speakers. The present study aimed at investigating compliment response…

Listening Natively across Perceptual Domains?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Langus, Alan; Seyed-Allaei, Shima; Uysal, Ertugrul; Pirmoradian, Sahar; Marino, Caterina; Asaadi, Sina; Eren, Ömer; Toro, Juan M.; Peña, Marcela; Bion, Ricardo A. H.; Nespor, Marina

2016-01-01

Our native tongue influences the way we perceive other languages. But does it also determine the way we perceive nonlinguistic sounds? The authors investigated how speakers of Italian, Turkish, and Persian group sequences of syllables, tones, or visual shapes alternating in either frequency or duration. We found strong native listening effects…

Native- and Non-Native Speaking English Teachers in Vietnam: Weighing the Benefits

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walkinshaw, Ian; Duong, Oanh Thi Hoang

2012-01-01

This paper examines a common belief that learners of English as a foreign language prefer to learn English from native-speaker teachers rather than non-native speakers of English. 50 Vietnamese learners of English evaluated the importance of native-speakerness compared with seven qualities valued in an English language teacher: teaching…

The Impact of Focus on Pronoun Resolution in Native and Non-Native Sentence Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Patterson, Clare; Esaulova, Yulia; Felser, Claudia

2017-01-01

Non-native speakers' sensitivity to discourse-level cues in pronoun interpretation has not been widely researched. We carried out three antecedent-choice questionnaire experiments which investigate the impact of focus on within-sentence pronoun resolution in native and non-native speakers of German and native speakers of Russian. Focus was…

The bank of standardized stimuli (BOSS): comparison between French and English norms.

PubMed

Brodeur, Mathieu B; Kehayia, Eva; Dion-Lessard, Geneviève; Chauret, Mélissa; Montreuil, Tina; Dionne-Dostie, Emmanuelle; Lepage, Martin

2012-12-01

Throughout the last decades, numerous picture data sets have been developed, such as the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set, and have been normalized for variables such as name and familiarity; however, due to cultural and linguistic differences, norms can vary from one country to another. The effect due specifically to culture has already been demonstrated by comparing samples from different countries where the same language is spoken. On the other hand, it is still not clear how differences between languages may affect norms. The present study explores this issue by collecting and comparing norms on names and many other features from French Canadian speakers and English Canadian speakers living in Montreal, who thus live in similar cultural environments. Norms were collected for the photos of objects from the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) by asking participants to name the objects, to categorize them, and to rate their familiarity, visual complexity, object agreement, viewpoint agreement, and manipulability. Names and ratings from the French speakers are available in Appendix A, available in the supplemental materials. The results show that most of the norms are comparable across linguistic groups and also that the ratings given are correlated across linguistic groups. The only significant group differences were found in viewpoint agreement and visual complexity. Overall, there was good concordance between the norms collected from French and English native speakers living in the same cultural setting.

Variation et heterogeneite de recits en francais de jeunes eleves tunisiens (Variation and Heterogeneity of the French Narrative Productions of Young Tunisian Students).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anane, Chiraz

2001-01-01

This study analyzes narrative productions in the French of 10 Tunisian pupils selected from 2 schools (1 in an urban area, 1 in a rural area) in Tunisia (Tunis). The purpose of the study was to observe the development of the French language in native Tunisian Arabic speakers. Particular attention is focused on the narrative structure and time…

Listening Behaviors in Japanese: "Aizuchi" and Head Nod Use by Native Speakers and Second Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hanzawa, Chiemi

2012-01-01

The purpose of the present study is to investigate similarities and differences in the listening behaviors of native speakers and learners of Japanese, focusing on the production of "aizuchi" and head nods. The term "aizuchi" is often interchangeably used with the word backchannel, and these are characterized as the…

Extending Talk on a Prescribed Discussion Topic in a Learner-Native Speaker eTandem Learning Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Black, Emily

2017-01-01

Opportunities for language learners to access authentic input and engage in consequential interactions with native speakers of their target language abound in this era of computer mediated communication. Synchronous audio/video calling software represents one opportunity to access such input and address the challenges of developing pragmatic and…

Native Speaker Norms and China English: From the Perspective of Learners and Teachers in China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

He, Deyuan; Zhang, Qunying

2010-01-01

This article explores the question of whether the norms based on native speakers of English should be kept in English teaching in an era when English has become World Englishes. This is an issue that has been keenly debated in recent years, not least in the pages of "TESOL Quarterly." However, "China English" in such debates…

Exploring Native and Non-Native Intuitions of Word Frequency.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schmitt, Norbert; Dunham, Bruce

1999-01-01

Asked native and nonnative speakers to give judgments of frequency for near synonyms in second-language lexical sets and compared those responses to modern corpus word counts. Native speakers were able to discern the core word in lexical sets either 77% or 85%, and nonnative speakers at 71% or 79%. (Author/VWL)

Effective Prediction of Errors by Non-native Speakers Using Decision Tree for Speech Recognition-Based CALL System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Hongcui; Kawahara, Tatsuya

CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) systems using ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) for second language learning have received increasing interest recently. However, it still remains a challenge to achieve high speech recognition performance, including accurate detection of erroneous utterances by non-native speakers. Conventionally, possible error patterns, based on linguistic knowledge, are added to the lexicon and language model, or the ASR grammar network. However, this approach easily falls in the trade-off of coverage of errors and the increase of perplexity. To solve the problem, we propose a method based on a decision tree to learn effective prediction of errors made by non-native speakers. An experimental evaluation with a number of foreign students learning Japanese shows that the proposed method can effectively generate an ASR grammar network, given a target sentence, to achieve both better coverage of errors and smaller perplexity, resulting in significant improvement in ASR accuracy.

Revisiting the role of language in spatial cognition: Categorical perception of spatial relations in English and Korean speakers.

PubMed

Holmes, Kevin J; Moty, Kelsey; Regier, Terry

2017-12-01

The spatial relation of support has been regarded as universally privileged in nonlinguistic cognition and immune to the influence of language. English, but not Korean, obligatorily distinguishes support from nonsupport via basic spatial terms. Despite this linguistic difference, previous research suggests that English and Korean speakers show comparable nonlinguistic sensitivity to the support/nonsupport distinction. Here, using a paradigm previously found to elicit cross-language differences in color discrimination, we provide evidence for a difference in sensitivity to support/nonsupport between native English speakers and native Korean speakers who were late English learners and tested in a context that privileged Korean. Whereas the former group showed categorical perception (CP) when discriminating spatial scenes capturing the support/nonsupport distinction, the latter did not. An additional group of native Korean speakers-relatively early English learners tested in an English-salient context-patterned with the native English speakers in showing CP for support/nonsupport. These findings suggest that obligatory marking of support/nonsupport in one's native language can affect nonlinguistic sensitivity to this distinction, contra earlier findings, but that such sensitivity may also depend on aspects of language background and the immediate linguistic context.

Linguistic Skills of Adult Native Speakers, as a Function of Age and Level of Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mulder, Kimberley; Hulstijn, Jan H.

2011-01-01

This study assessed, in a sample of 98 adult native speakers of Dutch, how their lexical skills and their speaking proficiency varied as a function of their age and level of education and profession (EP). Participants, categorized in terms of their age (18-35, 36-50, and 51-76 years old) and the level of their EP (low versus high), were tested on…

An Event-Related Potential (ERP) Investigation of Filler-Gap Processing in Native and Second Language Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dallas, Andrea; DeDe, Gayle; Nicol, Janet

2013-01-01

The current study employed a neuro-imaging technique, Event-Related Potentials (ERP), to investigate real-time processing of sentences containing filler-gap dependencies by late-learning speakers of English as a second language (L2) with a Chinese native language background. An individual differences approach was also taken to examine the role of…

Native Speakers of Arabic and ESL Texts: Evidence for the Transfer of Written Word Identification Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hayes-Harb, Rachel

2006-01-01

English as a second language (ESL) teachers have long noted that native speakers of Arabic exhibit exceptional difficulty with English reading comprehension (e.g., Thompson-Panos & Thomas-Ruzic, 1983). Most existing work in this area has looked to higher level aspects of reading such as familiarity with discourse structure and cultural knowledge…

Examining the Native Speakers' Understanding of Communicative Purposes of a Written Genre in Modern Standard Chinese.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yunxia, Zhu

1997-01-01

Examines the different attitudes of native speakers in understanding a written genre of Modern Standard Chinese--sales letters. The study focuses on the use of formulaic components appearing in real Chinese sales letters and compares these components with the advice given in textbooks. Findings reveal a gap between business teaching and business…

Effects of Verbal Components in 3D Talking-Head on Pronunciation Learning among Non-Native Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ali, Ahmad Zamzuri Mohamad; Segaran, Kogilathah; Hoe, Tan Wee

2015-01-01

This study was designed to investigate the benefit of inclusion of various verbal elements in 3D talking-head on pronunciation learning among non-native speakers. In particular, the study examines the effects of three different multimedia presentation strategies in 3D talking-head Mobile-Assisted-Language-Learning (MALL) on the learning…

Do Native Speakers of North American and Singapore English Differentially Perceive Comprehensibility in Second Language Speech?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Kazuya; Shintani, Natsuko

2016-01-01

The current study examined the extent to which native speakers of North American and Singapore English differentially perceive the comprehensibility (ease of understanding) of second language (L2) speech. Spontaneous speech samples elicited from 50 Japanese learners of English with various proficiency levels were first rated by 10 Canadian and 10…

EFL Learners' Perceived Use of Conversation Maintenance Strategies during Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication with Native English Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ino, Atsushi

2014-01-01

This study investigated the perceived use of conversation maintenance strategies during synchronous computer-mediated communication with native English speakers. I also correlated the relationships of the strategies used with students' speaking ability and comprehensive proficiency level. The research questions were: (1) how were the learners'…

3D Talking-Head Mobile App: A Conceptual Framework for English Pronunciation Learning among Non-Native Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ali, Ahmad Zamzuri Mohamad; Segaran, Kogilathah

2013-01-01

One of the critical issues pertaining learning English as second language successfully is pronunciation, which consequently contributes to learners' poor communicative power. This situation is moreover crucial among non-native speakers. Therefore, various initiatives have been taken in order to promote effective language learning, which includes…

Contact, Context, and Collocation: The Emergence of Sociostylistic Variation in L2 French Learners during Study Abroad

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Terry, Kristen M. Kennedy

2017-01-01

This study uses a mixed-effects model to examine the acquisition of targetlike patterns of phonological variation by 17 English-speaking learners of French during study abroad in France. Naturalistic speech data provide evidence for the incipient acquisition of a phonological variable showing sociostylistic variation in native speaker speech: the…

Effects of Language Background on Gaze Behavior: A Crosslinguistic Comparison Between Korean and German Speakers

PubMed Central

Goller, Florian; Lee, Donghoon; Ansorge, Ulrich; Choi, Soonja

2017-01-01

Languages differ in how they categorize spatial relations: While German differentiates between containment (in) and support (auf) with distinct spatial words—(a) den Kuli IN die Kappe stecken (”put pen in cap”); (b) die Kappe AUF den Kuli stecken (”put cap on pen”)—Korean uses a single spatial word (kkita) collapsing (a) and (b) into one semantic category, particularly when the spatial enclosure is tight-fit. Korean uses a different word (i.e., netha) for loose-fits (e.g., apple in bowl). We tested whether these differences influence the attention of the speaker. In a crosslinguistic study, we compared native German speakers with native Korean speakers. Participants rated the similarity of two successive video clips of several scenes where two objects were joined or nested (either in a tight or loose manner). The rating data show that Korean speakers base their rating of similarity more on tight- versus loose-fit, whereas German speakers base their rating more on containment versus support (in vs. auf). Throughout the experiment, we also measured the participants’ eye movements. Korean speakers looked equally long at the moving Figure object and at the stationary Ground object, whereas German speakers were more biased to look at the Ground object. Additionally, Korean speakers also looked more at the region where the two objects touched than did German speakers. We discuss our data in the light of crosslinguistic semantics and the extent of their influence on spatial cognition and perception. PMID:29362644

Representational deficit or processing effect? An electrophysiological study of noun-noun compound processing by very advanced L2 speakers of English

PubMed Central

De Cat, Cecile; Klepousniotou, Ekaterini; Baayen, R. Harald

2015-01-01

The processing of English noun-noun compounds (NNCs) was investigated to identify the extent and nature of differences between the performance of native speakers of English and advanced Spanish and German non-native speakers of English. The study sought to establish whether the word order of the equivalent structure in the non-native speakers' mothertongue (L1) had an influence on their processing of NNCs in their second language (L2), and whether this influence was due to differences in grammatical representation (i.e., incomplete acquisition of the relevant structure) or processing effects. Two mask-primed lexical decision experiments were conducted in which compounds were presented with their constituent nouns in licit vs. reversed order. The first experiment used a speeded lexical decision task with reaction time registration, and the second a delayed lexical decision task with EEG registration. There were no significant group differences in accuracy in the licit word order condition, suggesting that the grammatical representation had been fully acquired by the non-native speakers. However, the Spanish speakers made slightly more errors with the reversed order and had longer response times, suggesting an L1 interference effect (as the reverse order matches the licit word order in Spanish). The EEG data, analyzed with generalized additive mixed models, further supported this hypothesis. The EEG waveform of the non-native speakers was characterized by a slightly later onset N400 in the violation condition (reversed constituent order). Compound frequency predicted the amplitude of the EEG signal for the licit word order for native speakers, but for the reversed constituent order for Spanish speakers—the licit order in their L1—supporting the hypothesis that Spanish speakers are affected by interferences from their L1. The pattern of results for the German speakers in the violation condition suggested a strong conflict arising due to licit constituents being

Structure of the Second Language Mental Lexicon: How Does It Compare to Native Speakers' Lexical Organization?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zareva, Alla

2007-01-01

One of the questions frequently asked in second language (L2) lexical research is how L2 learners' patterns of lexical organization compare to those of native speakers (NSs). A growing body of research addresses this question by using word association (WA) tests. However, little research has been done on the role of language proficiency in the…

Cortical encoding and neurophysiological tracking of intensity and pitch cues signaling English stress patterns in native and nonnative speakers.

PubMed

Chung, Wei-Lun; Bidelman, Gavin M

2016-01-01

We examined cross-language differences in neural encoding and tracking of intensity and pitch cues signaling English stress patterns. Auditory mismatch negativities (MMNs) were recorded in English and Mandarin listeners in response to contrastive English pseudowords whose primary stress occurred either on the first or second syllable (i.e., "nocTICity" vs. "NOCticity"). The contrastive syllable stress elicited two consecutive MMNs in both language groups, but English speakers demonstrated larger responses to stress patterns than Mandarin speakers. Correlations between the amplitude of ERPs and continuous changes in the running intensity and pitch of speech assessed how well each language group's brain activity tracked these salient acoustic features of lexical stress. We found that English speakers' neural responses tracked intensity changes in speech more closely than Mandarin speakers (higher brain-acoustic correlation). Findings demonstrate more robust and precise processing of English stress (intensity) patterns in early auditory cortical responses of native relative to nonnative speakers. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

When speaker identity is unavoidable: Neural processing of speaker identity cues in natural speech.

PubMed

Tuninetti, Alba; Chládková, Kateřina; Peter, Varghese; Schiller, Niels O; Escudero, Paola

2017-11-01

Speech sound acoustic properties vary largely across speakers and accents. When perceiving speech, adult listeners normally disregard non-linguistic variation caused by speaker or accent differences, in order to comprehend the linguistic message, e.g. to correctly identify a speech sound or a word. Here we tested whether the process of normalizing speaker and accent differences, facilitating the recognition of linguistic information, is found at the level of neural processing, and whether it is modulated by the listeners' native language. In a multi-deviant oddball paradigm, native and nonnative speakers of Dutch were exposed to naturally-produced Dutch vowels varying in speaker, sex, accent, and phoneme identity. Unexpectedly, the analysis of mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitudes elicited by each type of change shows a large degree of early perceptual sensitivity to non-linguistic cues. This finding on perception of naturally-produced stimuli contrasts with previous studies examining the perception of synthetic stimuli wherein adult listeners automatically disregard acoustic cues to speaker identity. The present finding bears relevance to speech normalization theories, suggesting that at an unattended level of processing, listeners are indeed sensitive to changes in fundamental frequency in natural speech tokens. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Use of Academic Words in the Analytical Writing of Secondary English Learners and Native English Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cons, Andrea M.

2013-01-01

This study explores the following research question: How do secondary English learners (ELs) and Re-designated fluent English proficient students (RFEPs) use academic words in analytical writing in comparison to native English speakers (NESs)? It highlights previously overlooked differences in academic word use in the writing of students who are…

Defense Language Institute French Basic Course. Volume II, Lessons 16-25. Volume III, Lessons 26-35.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

The 20 lessons included in these two volumes are intended for the first four weeks of the intermediate phase of a 68-lesson intensive audiolingual basic French course developed recently by the Defense Language Institute to train native speakers of English to a Level 3 second language skill proficiency. Designed primarily to enable students to…

Persian Native Speakers Reading Persian and English Texts: Their Strategic Behavior to Overcome Syntactic and Semantic Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alimorad, Zahra

2015-01-01

This study aimed to discover semantic and syntactic problems Persian native speakers might have while reading English and Persian texts and different strategies they use to overcome those problems. To this end, a convenient sample of 40 intermediate students studying English Literature at Shiraz University was selected. Twenty of them were asked…

Investigating Auditory Processing of Syntactic Gaps with L2 Speakers Using Pupillometry

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fernandez, Leigh; Höhle, Barbara; Brock, Jon; Nickels, Lyndsey

2018-01-01

According to the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH), second language (L2) speakers, unlike native speakers, build shallow syntactic representations during sentence processing. In order to test the SSH, this study investigated the processing of a syntactic movement in both native speakers of English and proficient late L2 speakers of English using…

Overlap and Differences in Brain Networks Underlying the Processing of Complex Sentence Structures in Second Language Users Compared with Native Speakers.

PubMed

Weber, Kirsten; Luther, Lisa; Indefrey, Peter; Hagoort, Peter

2016-05-01

When we learn a second language later in life, do we integrate it with the established neural networks in place for the first language or is at least a partially new network recruited? While there is evidence that simple grammatical structures in a second language share a system with the native language, the story becomes more multifaceted for complex sentence structures. In this study, we investigated the underlying brain networks in native speakers compared with proficient second language users while processing complex sentences. As hypothesized, complex structures were processed by the same large-scale inferior frontal and middle temporal language networks of the brain in the second language, as seen in native speakers. These effects were seen both in activations and task-related connectivity patterns. Furthermore, the second language users showed increased task-related connectivity from inferior frontal to inferior parietal regions of the brain, regions related to attention and cognitive control, suggesting less automatic processing for these structures in a second language.

Non-native English language speakers benefit most from the use of lecture capture in medical school.

PubMed

Shaw, Graham P; Molnar, David

2011-01-01

Medical education in the United States and Canada continues to evolve. However, many of the changes in pedagogy are being made without appropriate evaluation. Here, we attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of lecture capture technology as a learning tool in Podiatric medical education. In this pilot project, student performance in an inaugural lecture capture-supported biochemistry course was compared to that in the previous academic year. To examine the impact of online lecture podcasts on student performance a within-subjects design was implemented, a two way ANCOVA with repeated measures. The use of lecture capture-supported pedagogy resulted in significantly higher student test scores, than achieved historically using traditional pedagogy. The overall course performance using this lecture capture-supported pedagogy was almost 6% higher than in the previous year. Non-native English language speakers benefitted more significantly from the lecture capture-supported pedagogy than native English language speakers, since their performance improved by 10.0 points. Given that underrepresented minority (URM) students, whose native language is not English, makes up a growing proportion of medical school matriculates, these observations support the use of lecture capture technology in other courses. Furthermore, this technology may also be used as part of an academic enrichment plan to improve performance on the American Podiatric Medical Licensing Examination, reduce the attrition of URM students and potentially address the predicted minority physician shortage in 2020. Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Acquisition of the Copula "Be" in Present Simple Tense in English by Native Speakers of Russian

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Unlu, Elena Antonova; Hatipoglu, Ciler

2012-01-01

The current research investigated the acquisition of the copula "be" in Present Simple Tense (PST) in English by native speakers of Russian. The aim of the study was to determine whether or not Russian students with different levels of English proficiency would encounter any problems while using the copula "be" in PST in English. The study also…

Assessing Taiwanese College Students' Intercultural Sensitivity, EFL Interests, Attitudes toward Native English Speakers, Ethnocentrism, and Their Interrelation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Su, Ya-Chen

2018-01-01

The development of travel opportunities and technology in the 21st century has brought people from different cultures and countries more opportunities to closely interact. The purposes of the study are to assess the degree of Taiwanese college students' intercultural sensitivities, ethnocentrism, and attitudes toward native English speakers (NES)…

Long-Distance Wh-Movement and Long-Distance Wh-Movement Avoidance in L2 English: Evidence from French and Bulgarian Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Slavkov, Nikolay

2015-01-01

This article investigates spoken productions of complex questions with long-distance wh-movement in the L2 English of speakers whose first language is (Canadian) French or Bulgarian. Long-distance wh-movement is of interest as it can be argued that it poses difficulty in acquisition due to its syntactic complexity and related high processing load.…

Using Simplified English to Identify Potential Problems for Non-Native Speakers in the Language of Engineering Examination Papers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harrison, Sandra; Morgan, Roger

2012-01-01

There is an increasing sensitivity to the challenges posed by the language of examination papers and of instruction in scientific subjects, especially for non-native speakers of English. It has been observed that in addition to technical subject-specific vocabulary, non-technical words such as instructional verbs have been sources of difficulty,…

The Impact of Non-Native English Teachers' Linguistic Insecurity on Learners' Productive Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Daftari, Giti Ehtesham; Tavil, Zekiye Müge

2017-01-01

The discrimination between native and non-native English speaking teachers is reported in favor of native speakers in literature. The present study examines the linguistic insecurity of non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) and investigates its influence on learners' productive skills by using SPSS software. The eighteen teachers…

Brain Plasticity in Speech Training in Native English Speakers Learning Mandarin Tones

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Heinzen, Christina Carolyn

The current study employed behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures to investigate brain plasticity associated with second-language (L2) phonetic learning based on an adaptive computer training program. The program utilized the acoustic characteristics of Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) to train monolingual American English-speaking listeners to perceive Mandarin lexical tones. Behavioral identification and discrimination tasks were conducted using naturally recorded speech, carefully controlled synthetic speech, and non-speech control stimuli. The ERP experiments were conducted with selected synthetic speech stimuli in a passive listening oddball paradigm. Identical pre- and post- tests were administered on nine adult listeners, who completed two-to-three hours of perceptual training. The perceptual training sessions used pair-wise lexical tone identification, and progressed through seven levels of difficulty for each tone pair. The levels of difficulty included progression in speaker variability from one to four speakers and progression through four levels of acoustic exaggeration of duration, pitch range, and pitch contour. Behavioral results for the natural speech stimuli revealed significant training-induced improvement in identification of Tones 1, 3, and 4. Improvements in identification of Tone 4 generalized to novel stimuli as well. Additionally, comparison between discrimination of across-category and within-category stimulus pairs taken from a synthetic continuum revealed a training-induced shift toward more native-like categorical perception of the Mandarin lexical tones. Analysis of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses in the ERP data revealed increased amplitude and decreased latency for pre-attentive processing of across-category discrimination as a result of training. There were also laterality changes in the MMN responses to the non-speech control stimuli, which could reflect reallocation of brain resources in processing pitch patterns

Fixed-Choice Word-Association Tasks as Second-Language Lexical Tests: What Native-Speaker Performance Reveals about Their Potential Weaknesses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dronjic, Vedran; Helms-Park, Rena

2014-01-01

Qian and Schedl's Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge Test was administered to 31 native-speaker undergraduates under an "unconstrained" condition, in which the number of responses to headwords was unfixed, whereas a corresponding group ("n" = 36) completed the test under the original "constrained" condition. Results…

Components and context: exploring sources of reading difficulties for language minority learners and native English speakers in urban schools.

PubMed

Kieffer, Michael J; Vukovic, Rose K

2012-01-01

Drawing on the cognitive and ecological domains within the componential model of reading, this longitudinal study explores heterogeneity in the sources of reading difficulties for language minority learners and native English speakers in urban schools. Students (N = 150) were followed from first through third grade and assessed annually on standardized English language and reading measures. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the relative contributions of code-related and linguistic comprehension skills in first and second grade to third grade reading comprehension. Linguistic comprehension and the interaction between linguistic comprehension and code-related skills each explained substantial variation in reading comprehension. Among students with low reading comprehension, more than 80% demonstrated weaknesses in linguistic comprehension alone, whereas approximately 15% demonstrated weaknesses in both linguistic comprehension and code-related skills. Results were remarkably similar for the language minority learners and native English speakers, suggesting the importance of their shared socioeconomic backgrounds and schooling contexts.

Acoustic variability within and across German, French, and American English vowels: phonetic context effects.

PubMed

Strange, Winifred; Weber, Andrea; Levy, Erika S; Shafiro, Valeriy; Hisagi, Miwako; Nishi, Kanae

2007-08-01

Cross-language perception studies report influences of speech style and consonantal context on perceived similarity and discrimination of non-native vowels by inexperienced and experienced listeners. Detailed acoustic comparisons of distributions of vowels produced by native speakers of North German (NG), Parisian French (PF) and New York English (AE) in citation (di)syllables and in sentences (surrounded by labial and alveolar stops) are reported here. Results of within- and cross-language discriminant analyses reveal striking dissimilarities across languages in the spectral/temporal variation of coarticulated vowels. As expected, vocalic duration was most important in differentiating NG vowels; it did not contribute to PF vowel classification. Spectrally, NG long vowels showed little coarticulatory change, but back/low short vowels were fronted/raised in alveolar context. PF vowels showed greater coarticulatory effects overall; back and front rounded vowels were fronted, low and mid-low vowels were raised in both sentence contexts. AE mid to high back vowels were extremely fronted in alveolar contexts, with little change in mid-low and low long vowels. Cross-language discriminant analyses revealed varying patterns of spectral (dis)similarity across speech styles and consonantal contexts that could, in part, account for AE listeners' perception of German and French front rounded vowels, and "similar" mid-high to mid-low vowels.

The Structure of Clinical Consultation: A Case of Non-Native Speakers of English as Participants

PubMed Central

Bagheri, H.; Ibrahim, N. A.; Habil, H.

2015-01-01

Background: In many parts of the world, patients may find it difficult to visit doctors who share the same language and culture due to the intermingling of people and international recruitment of doctors among many other reasons. In these multilingual multicultural settings (MMSs), doctor-patient interactions face new communication challenges. This study aims to identify the structure of clinical consultation and its phases in an MMS where both doctors and patients are non-native speakers (NNSs) of English. Method: This study takes on a discourse analytic approach to examine the structure of clinical consultation as an activity type. 25 clinical consultation sessions between non-native speakers of English in a public healthcare centre in Malaysia were audio-recorded. Findings and Discussion: The results show that there are some deviations from the mainstream structure of clinical consultations although, in general, the pattern is compatible with previous studies. Deviations are particularly marked in the opening and closing phases of consultation. Conclusion: In almost all interactions, there is a straightforward manner of beginning medical consultations. The absence of greetings may have naturally reduced the length of talk. Hence, by directly entering medical talks, the doctors voice their concern on the curing aspects of the consultation rather than its caring facets. The preference of curing priority to caring is more goal-oriented and in alignment with the consultation as an activity type. PMID:25560336

The structure of clinical consultation: a case of non-native speakers of English as participants.

PubMed

Bagheri, H; Ibrahim, N A; Habil, H

2014-09-25

In many parts of the world, patients may find it difficult to visit doctors who share the same language and culture due to the intermingling of people and international recruitment of doctors among many other reasons. In these multilingual multicultural settings (MMSs), doctor-patient interactions face new communication challenges. This study aims to identify the structure of clinical consultation and its phases in an MMS where both doctors and patients are non-native speakers (NNSs) of English. This study takes on a discourse analytic approach to examine the structure of clinical consultation as an activity type. 25 clinical consultation sessions between non-native speakers of English in a public healthcare centre in Malaysia were audio-recorded. The results show that there are some deviations from the mainstream structure of clinical consultations although, in general, the pattern is compatible with previous studies. Deviations are particularly marked in the opening and closing phases of consultation. In almost all interactions, there is a straightforward manner of beginning medical consultations. The absence of greetings may have naturally reduced the length of talk. Hence, by directly entering medical talks, the doctors voice their concern on the curing aspects of the consultation rather than its caring facets. The preference of curing priority to caring is more goal-oriented and in alignment with the consultation as an activity type.

Language-specific stress perception by 9-month-old French and Spanish infants.

PubMed

Skoruppa, Katrin; Pons, Ferran; Christophe, Anne; Bosch, Laura; Dupoux, Emmanuel; Sebastián-Gallés, Núria; Limissuri, Rita Alves; Peperkamp, Sharon

2009-11-01

During the first year of life, infants begin to have difficulties perceiving non-native vowel and consonant contrasts, thus adapting their perception to the phonetic categories of the target language. In this paper, we examine the perception of a non-segmental feature, i.e. stress. Previous research with adults has shown that speakers of French (a language with fixed stress) have great difficulties in perceiving stress contrasts (Dupoux, Pallier, Sebastián & Mehler, 1997), whereas speakers of Spanish (a language with lexically contrastive stress) perceive these contrasts as accurately as segmental contrasts. We show that language-specific differences in the perception of stress likewise arise during the first year of life. Specifically, 9-month-old Spanish infants successfully distinguish between stress-initial and stress-final pseudo-words, while French infants of this age show no sign of discrimination. In a second experiment using multiple tokens of a single pseudo-word, French infants of the same age successfully discriminate between the two stress patterns, showing that they are able to perceive the acoustic correlates of stress. Their failure to discriminate stress patterns in the first experiment thus reflects an inability to process stress at an abstract, phonological level.

Early Mathematics Achievement Trajectories: English-Language Learner and Native English-Speaker Estimates, Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey

PubMed Central

Roberts, Greg; Bryant, Diane

2012-01-01

This study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, Kindergarten Class of 1998 –1999, to (a) estimate mathematics achievement trends through 5th grade in the population of students who are English-language proficient by the end of kindergarten, (b) compare trends across primary language groups within this English-language proficient group, (c) evaluate the effect of low socioeconomic status (SES) for English-language proficient students and within different primary language groups, and (d) estimate language-group trends in specific mathematics skill areas. The group of English-language proficient English-language learners (ELLs) was disaggregated into native Spanish speakers and native speakers of Asian languages, the 2 most prevalent groups of ELLs in the United States. Results of multilevel latent variable growth modeling suggest that primary language may be less salient than SES in explaining the mathematics achievement of English-language proficient ELLs. The study also found that mathematics-related school readiness is a key factor in explaining subsequent achievement differences and that the readiness gap is prevalent across the range of mathematics-related skills. PMID:21574702

Components and Context: Exploring Sources of Reading Difficulties for Language Minority Learners and Native English Speakers in Urban Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kieffer, Michael J.; Vukovic, Rose K.

2012-01-01

Drawing on the cognitive and ecological domains within the componential model of reading, this longitudinal study explores heterogeneity in the sources of reading difficulties for language minority learners and native English speakers in urban schools. Students (N = 150) were followed from first through third grade and assessed annually on…

Native and Nonnative English Teachers' Perceptions of Their Professional Identity: Convergent or Divergent?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tajeddin, Zia; Adeh, Aylar

2016-01-01

There is still a preference for native speaker teachers in the language teaching profession, which is supposed to influence the self-perceptions of native and nonnative teachers. However, the status of English as a globalized language is changing the legitimacy of native/nonnative teacher dichotomy. This study sought to investigate native and…

Evaluating the lexico-grammatical differences in the writing of native and non-native speakers of English in peer-reviewed medical journals in the field of pediatric oncology: Creation of the genuine index scoring system.

PubMed

Gayle, Alberto Alexander; Shimaoka, Motomu

2017-01-01

The predominance of English in scientific research has created hurdles for "non-native speakers" of English. Here we present a novel application of native language identification (NLI) for the assessment of medical-scientific writing. For this purpose, we created a novel classification system whereby scoring would be based solely on text features found to be distinctive among native English speakers (NS) within a given context. We dubbed this the "Genuine Index" (GI). This methodology was validated using a small set of journals in the field of pediatric oncology. Our dataset consisted of 5,907 abstracts, representing work from 77 countries. A support vector machine (SVM) was used to generate our model and for scoring. Accuracy, precision, and recall of the classification model were 93.3%, 93.7%, and 99.4%, respectively. Class specific F-scores were 96.5% for NS and 39.8% for our benchmark class, Japan. Overall kappa was calculated to be 37.2%. We found significant differences between countries with respect to the GI score. Significant correlation was found between GI scores and two validated objective measures of writing proficiency and readability. Two sets of key terms and phrases differentiating NS and non-native writing were identified. Our GI model was able to detect, with a high degree of reliability, subtle differences between the terms and phrasing used by native and non-native speakers in peer reviewed journals, in the field of pediatric oncology. In addition, L1 language transfer was found to be very likely to survive revision, especially in non-Western countries such as Japan. These findings show that even when the language used is technically correct, there may still be some phrasing or usage that impact quality.

Evaluation of Arabic Language Learning Program for Non-Native Speakers in Saudi Electronic University According to Total Quality Standards

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alowaydhi, Wafa Hafez

2016-01-01

The current study aimed at standardizing the program of learning Arabic for non-native speakers in Saudi Electronic University according to certain standards of total quality. To achieve its purpose, the study adopted the descriptive analytical method. The author prepared a measurement tool for evaluating the electronic learning programs in light…

Acquired dyslexia in a Turkish-English speaker.

PubMed

Raman, Ilhan; Weekes, Brendan S

2005-06-01

The Turkish script is characterised by completely transparent bidirectional mappings between orthography and phonology. To date, there has been no reported evidence of acquired dyslexia in Turkish speakers leading to the naïve view that reading and writing problems in Turkish are probably rare. We examined the extent to which phonological impairment and orthographic transparency influence reading disorders in a native Turkish speaker. BRB is a bilingual Turkish-English speaker with deep dysphasia accompanied by acquired dyslexia in both languages. The main findings are an effect of imageability on reading in Turkish coincident with surface dyslexia in English and preserved nonword reading. BRB's acquired dyslexia suggests that damage to phonological representations might have a consequence for learning to read in Turkish. We argue that BRB's acquired dyslexia has a common locus in chronic underactivation of phonological representations in Turkish and English. Despite a common locus, reading problems manifest themselves differently according to properties of the script and the type of task.

Comparing Native and Non-Native Raters of US Federal Government Speaking Tests

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brooks, Rachel Lunde

2013-01-01

Previous Language Testing research has largely reported that although many raters' characteristics affect their evaluations of language assessments (Reed & Cohen, 2001), being a native speaker or non-native speaker rater does not significantly affect final ratings (Kim, 2009). In Second Language Acquisition, some researchers conclude that…

Auditory-Motor Rhythms and Speech Processing in French and German Listeners

PubMed Central

Falk, Simone; Volpi-Moncorger, Chloé; Dalla Bella, Simone

2017-01-01

Moving to a speech rhythm can enhance verbal processing in the listener by increasing temporal expectancies (Falk and Dalla Bella, 2016). Here we tested whether this hypothesis holds for prosodically diverse languages such as German (a lexical stress-language) and French (a non-stress language). Moreover, we examined the relation between motor performance and the benefits for verbal processing as a function of language. Sixty-four participants, 32 German and 32 French native speakers detected subtle word changes in accented positions in metrically structured sentences to which they previously tapped with their index finger. Before each sentence, they were cued by a metronome to tap either congruently (i.e., to accented syllables) or incongruently (i.e., to non-accented parts) to the following speech stimulus. Both French and German speakers detected words better when cued to tap congruently compared to incongruent tapping. Detection performance was predicted by participants' motor performance in the non-verbal cueing phase. Moreover, tapping rate while participants tapped to speech predicted detection differently for the two language groups, in particular in the incongruent tapping condition. We discuss our findings in light of the rhythmic differences of both languages and with respect to recent theories of expectancy-driven and multisensory speech processing. PMID:28443036

Attitudes of Jordanian University Students towards Using Online Chat Discourse with Native Speakers of English for Improving Their Language Proficiency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mahfouz, Safi M.; Ihmeideh, Fathi M.

2009-01-01

This study aims to investigate Jordanian university students' attitudes towards using video and text chat discourse with anonymous native speakers of English to improve their English proficiency. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire was designed. The study sample consisted of 320 university students enrolled in two Jordanian universities. Results…

Musical Sophistication and the Effect of Complexity on Auditory Discrimination in Finnish Speakers.

PubMed

Dawson, Caitlin; Aalto, Daniel; Šimko, Juraj; Vainio, Martti; Tervaniemi, Mari

2017-01-01

Musical experiences and native language are both known to affect auditory processing. The present work aims to disentangle the influences of native language phonology and musicality on behavioral and subcortical sound feature processing in a population of musically diverse Finnish speakers as well as to investigate the specificity of enhancement from musical training. Finnish speakers are highly sensitive to duration cues since in Finnish, vowel and consonant duration determine word meaning. Using a correlational approach with a set of behavioral sound feature discrimination tasks, brainstem recordings, and a musical sophistication questionnaire, we find no evidence for an association between musical sophistication and more precise duration processing in Finnish speakers either in the auditory brainstem response or in behavioral tasks, but they do show an enhanced pitch discrimination compared to Finnish speakers with less musical experience and show greater duration modulation in a complex task. These results are consistent with a ceiling effect set for certain sound features which corresponds to the phonology of the native language, leaving an opportunity for music experience-based enhancement of sound features not explicitly encoded in the language (such as pitch, which is not explicitly encoded in Finnish). Finally, the pattern of duration modulation in more musically sophisticated Finnish speakers suggests integrated feature processing for greater efficiency in a real world musical situation. These results have implications for research into the specificity of plasticity in the auditory system as well as to the effects of interaction of specific language features with musical experiences.

Musical Sophistication and the Effect of Complexity on Auditory Discrimination in Finnish Speakers

PubMed Central

Dawson, Caitlin; Aalto, Daniel; Šimko, Juraj; Vainio, Martti; Tervaniemi, Mari

2017-01-01

Musical experiences and native language are both known to affect auditory processing. The present work aims to disentangle the influences of native language phonology and musicality on behavioral and subcortical sound feature processing in a population of musically diverse Finnish speakers as well as to investigate the specificity of enhancement from musical training. Finnish speakers are highly sensitive to duration cues since in Finnish, vowel and consonant duration determine word meaning. Using a correlational approach with a set of behavioral sound feature discrimination tasks, brainstem recordings, and a musical sophistication questionnaire, we find no evidence for an association between musical sophistication and more precise duration processing in Finnish speakers either in the auditory brainstem response or in behavioral tasks, but they do show an enhanced pitch discrimination compared to Finnish speakers with less musical experience and show greater duration modulation in a complex task. These results are consistent with a ceiling effect set for certain sound features which corresponds to the phonology of the native language, leaving an opportunity for music experience-based enhancement of sound features not explicitly encoded in the language (such as pitch, which is not explicitly encoded in Finnish). Finally, the pattern of duration modulation in more musically sophisticated Finnish speakers suggests integrated feature processing for greater efficiency in a real world musical situation. These results have implications for research into the specificity of plasticity in the auditory system as well as to the effects of interaction of specific language features with musical experiences. PMID:28450829

Do grammatical-gender distinctions learned in the second language influence native-language lexical processing?

PubMed Central

Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Smith, Samantha

2015-01-01

How does learning a second language influence native language processing? In the present study, we examined whether knowledge of Spanish – a language that marks grammatical gender on inanimate nouns – influences lexical processing in English – a language that does not mark grammatical gender. We tested three groups of adult English native speakers: monolinguals, emergent bilinguals with high exposure to Spanish, and emergent bilinguals with low exposure to Spanish. Participants engaged in an associative learning task in English where they learned to associate names of inanimate objects with proper names. For half of the pairs, the grammatical gender of the noun’s Spanish translation matched the gender of the proper name (e.g., corn-Patrick). For half of the pairs, the grammatical gender of the noun’s Spanish translation mismatched the gender of the proper noun (e.g., beach-William). High-Spanish-exposure bilinguals (but not monolinguals or low-Spanish-exposure bilinguals) were less accurate at retrieving proper names for gender-incongruent than for gender-congruent pairs. This indicates that second-language morphosyntactic information is activated during native-language processing, even when the second language is acquired later in life. PMID:26977134

Reanalysis and semantic persistence in native and non-native garden-path recovery.

PubMed

Jacob, Gunnar; Felser, Claudia

2016-01-01

We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study investigating how native and non-native speakers of English process temporarily ambiguous sentences such as While the gentleman was eating the burgers were still being reheated in the microwave, in which an initially plausible direct-object analysis is first ruled out by a syntactic disambiguation (were) and also later on by semantic information (being reheated). Both participant groups showed garden-path effects at the syntactic disambiguation, with native speakers showing significantly stronger effects of ambiguity than non-native speakers in later eye-movement measures but equally strong effects in first-pass reading times. Ambiguity effects at the semantic disambiguation and in participants' end-of-trial responses revealed that for both participant groups, the incorrect direct-object analysis was frequently maintained beyond the syntactic disambiguation. The non-native group showed weaker reanalysis effects at the syntactic disambiguation and was more likely to misinterpret the experimental sentences than the native group. Our results suggest that native language (L1) and non-native language (L2) parsing are similar with regard to sensitivity to syntactic and semantic error signals, but different with regard to processes of reanalysis.

[The estimation of premorbid intelligence levels in French speakers].

PubMed

Mackinnon, A; Mulligan, R

2005-01-01

number of words that performed very well in the "at risk" sample showed more moderate discrimination in the current study. Scores on the fNART were correlated with measures of crystallised intelligence, memory and cognitive speed. All correlations were statistically significant. With all tests entered a regression equation the multiple correlation coefficient was 0.63. Mean fNART scores of those suffering from DSM IV dementia and those meeting only Criterion A (multiple cognitive deficits) were lower than those of subjects meeting neither set of criteria. However subjects in the first two groups were older than subjects in the undemented group and had significantly lower educational attainment. When these two factors were controlled in an analysis of covariance, the magnitude of the differences between the groups, while still overall significantly different, was substantially reduced. A similar pattern of results applied when psychometric measures of cognitive state--the MMSE and the PAS Cognitive Impairment Scale--were used instead of diagnostic categories. The partial correlations of the fNART with the MMSE and PAS cognitive impairment scale controlling for age and education were 0.25 (P < 0.01) and -0.33 (P < 0.01) respectively. fNART scores did not differ between the sexes, nor were they significantly correlated with PAS Depression, Stroke or Behaviour Change scales. There was a small but significant correlation between the fNART and informant-assessed Cognitive Decline on the PAS. This study demonstrated the excellent measurement properties of a French adaptation of the National Adult Reading Test in a large probability sample of elderly native speakers and provided the first large-sample evidence to support the validity of the fNART as a test of intellectual functioning relatively robust to dementia status. The negligible values of the pseudo-guessing parameters suggest that the goal of choosing words whose pronunciation is not susceptible to guessing has been

Musical and linguistic expertise influence pre-attentive and attentive processing of non-speech sounds.

PubMed

Marie, Céline; Kujala, Teija; Besson, Mireille

2012-04-01

The aim of this experiment was two-fold. Our first goal was to determine whether linguistic expertise influences the pre-attentive [as reflected by the Mismatch Negativity - (MMN)] and the attentive processing (as reflected by behavioural discrimination accuracy) of non-speech, harmonic sounds. The second was to directly compare the effects of linguistic and musical expertise. To this end, we compared non-musician native speakers of a quantity language, Finnish, in which duration is a phonemically contrastive cue, with French musicians and French non-musicians. Results revealed that pre-attentive and attentive processing of duration deviants was enhanced in Finn non-musicians and French musicians compared to French non-musicians. By contrast, MMN in French musicians was larger than in both Finns and French non-musicians for frequency deviants, whereas no between-group differences were found for intensity deviants. By showing similar effects of linguistic and musical expertise, these results argue in favor of common processing of duration in music and speech. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved.

Developing Sociolinguistic Competence through Intercultural Online Exchange

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ritchie, Mathy

2011-01-01

The main goal of this study was to investigate whether computer-mediated communication (CMC) intercultural exchange offers the conditions necessary for the development of the sociolinguistic competence of second language learners. Non-native speakers (NNS) of French in British Columbia interacted through CMC with native speakers (NS) of French in…

Test of the movement expansion model: Anticipatory vowel lip protrusion and constriction in French and English speakers

PubMed Central

Noiray, Aude; Cathiard, Marie-Agnès; Ménard, Lucie; Abry, Christian

2011-01-01

The modeling of anticipatory coarticulation has been the subject of longstanding debates for more than 40 yr. Empirical investigations in the articulatory domain have converged toward two extreme modeling approaches: a maximal anticipation behavior (Look-ahead model) or a fixed pattern (Time-locked model). However, empirical support for any of these models has been hardly conclusive, both within and across languages. The present study tested the temporal organization of vocalic anticipatory coarticulation of the rounding feature from [i] to [u] transitions for adult speakers of American English and Canadian French. Articulatory data were synchronously recorded using an Optotrak for lip protrusion and a dedicated Lip-Shape-Tracking-System for lip constriction. Results show that (i) protrusion is an inconsistent parameter for tracking anticipatory rounding gestures across individuals, more specifically in English; (ii) labial constriction (between-lip area) is a more reliable correlate, allowing for the description of vocalic rounding in both languages; (iii) when tested on the constriction component, speakers show a lawful anticipatory behavior expanding linearly as the intervocalic consonant interval increases from 0 to 5 consonants. The Movement Expansion Model from Abry and Lallouache [(1995a) Bul. de la Comm. Parlée 3, 85–99; (1995b) Proceedings of ICPHS4, 152–155.] predicted such a regular behavior, i.e., a lawful variabilitywith a speaker-specific expansion rate, which is not language-specific. PMID:21303015

Test of the movement expansion model: anticipatory vowel lip protrusion and constriction in French and English speakers.

PubMed

Noiray, Aude; Cathiard, Marie-Agnès; Ménard, Lucie; Abry, Christian

2011-01-01

The modeling of anticipatory coarticulation has been the subject of longstanding debates for more than 40 yr. Empirical investigations in the articulatory domain have converged toward two extreme modeling approaches: a maximal anticipation behavior (Look-ahead model) or a fixed pattern (Time-locked model). However, empirical support for any of these models has been hardly conclusive, both within and across languages. The present study tested the temporal organization of vocalic anticipatory coarticulation of the rounding feature from [i] to [u] transitions for adult speakers of American English and Canadian French. Articulatory data were synchronously recorded using an Optotrak for lip protrusion and a dedicated Lip-Shape-Tracking-System for lip constriction. Results show that (i) protrusion is an inconsistent parameter for tracking anticipatory rounding gestures across individuals, more specifically in English; (ii) labial constriction (between-lip area) is a more reliable correlate, allowing for the description of vocalic rounding in both languages; (iii) when tested on the constriction component, speakers show a lawful anticipatory behavior expanding linearly as the intervocalic consonant interval increases from 0 to 5 consonants. The Movement Expansion Model from Abry and Lallouache [(1995a) Bul. de la Comm. Parlée 3, 85-99; (1995b) Proceedings of ICPHS 4, 152-155.] predicted such a regular behavior, i.e., a lawful variability with a speaker-specific expansion rate, which is not language-specific.

Is the perception of dysphonia severity language-dependent? A comparison of French and Italian voice assessments.

PubMed

Ghio, Alain; Cantarella, Giovanna; Weisz, Frédérique; Robert, Danièle; Woisard, Virginie; Fussi, Franco; Giovanni, Antoine; Baracca, Giovanna

2015-04-01

In this cross-language study, six Italian and six French voice experts evaluated perceptually the speech of 27 Italian and 40 French patients with dysphonia to determine if there were differences based on native language. French and Italian voice specialists agreed substantially in their evaluations of the overall grade of dysphonia and moderately concerning roughness and breathiness. No statistically significant effects were found related to the language of the speakers with the exception of breathiness, a finding that was interpreted as being due to different voice pathologies in the patient groups. It was concluded that the perception of the overall grade of dysphonia and breathiness is not language-dependent, whereas the significant difference in the perception of roughness may be related to a perception/adaption process.

Native and Non-native Perception of Stress in Mapudungun: Assessing Structural Maintenance in the Phonology of an Endangered Language.

PubMed

Molineaux, Benjamin J

2017-03-01

Today, virtually all speakers of Mapudungun (formerly Araucanian), an endangered language of Chile and Argentina, are bilingual in Spanish. As a result, the firmness of native speaker intuitions-especially regarding perceptually complex issues such as word-stress-has been called into question. Even though native intuitions are unavoidable in the investigation of stress position, efforts can be made in order to clarify what the actual sources of the intuitions are, and how consistent and 'native' they remain given the language's asymmetrical contact conditions. In this article, the use of non-native speaker intuitions is proposed as a valid means for assessing the position of stress in Mapudungun, and evaluating whether it represents the unchanged, 'native' pattern. The alternative, of course, is that the patterns that present variability simply result from overlap of the bilingual speakers' phonological modules, hence displaying a contact-induced innovation. A forced decision perception task is reported on, showing that native and non-native perception of Mapudungun stress converges across speakers of six separate first languages, thus giving greater reliability to native judgements. The relative difference in the perception of Mapudungun stress given by Spanish monolinguals and Mapudungun-Spanish bilinguals is also taken to support the diachronic maintenance of the endangered language's stress system.

Comparing Ease-of-Processing Values of the Same Set of Words for Native English Speakers and Japanese Learners of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Takashima, Hiroomi

2009-01-01

Ease of processing of 3,969 English words for native speakers and Japanese learners was investigated using lexical decision and naming latencies taken from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al. The English Lexicon Project: A web-based repository of descriptive and behavioral measures for 40,481 English words and nonwords, 2002) and accuracy…

An Analysis of the Relationship between the Attitudes of Iranian EFL Learners to Native English Speakers and Their Reported Identity Change

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mokhtarnia, Shabnam; Ghafar-Samar, Reza

2016-01-01

This study aimed at exploring the possible differences between Iranian English and non-English major students in terms of their attitude towards native English speakers and reported self-identity change. It also attempted to investigate the possible significant relationships between these two variables. The results of the independent-sample…

Apprendre l'orthographe avec un correcteur orthographique (Learning Spelling with a Spell-Checker?)?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Desmarais, Lise

1998-01-01

Reports a study with 27 adults, both native French-speakers and native English-speakers, on the effectiveness of using a spell-checker as the core element to teach French spelling. The method used authentic materials, individualized monitoring, screen and hard-copy text reading, and content sequencing based on errors. The approach generated…

Native Reactions to Non-Native Speech: A Review of Empirical Research.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eisenstein, Miriam

1983-01-01

Recent research on native speakers' reactions to nonnative speech that views listeners, speakers, and language from a variety of perspectives using both objective and subjective research paradigms is reviewed. Studies of error gravity, relative intelligibility of language samples, the role of accent, speakers' characteristics, and context in which…

The processing and comprehension of wh-questions among L2 German speakers

PubMed Central

Jackson, Carrie N.; Bobb, Susan C.

2009-01-01

Using the self-paced-reading paradigm, the present study examines whether highly proficient second language (L2) speakers of German (English L1) use case-marking information during the on-line comprehension of unambiguous wh-extractions, even when task demands do not draw explicit attention to this morphosyntactic feature in German. Results support previous findings, in that both the native and the L2 German speakers exhibited an immediate subject-preference in the matrix clause, suggesting they were sensitive to case-marking information. However, only among the native speakers did this subject-preference carry over to reading times in the complement clause. The results from the present study are discussed in light of current debates regarding the ability of L2 speakers to attain native-like processing strategies in their L2. PMID:20161006

Proficiency in English sentence stress production by Cantonese speakers who speak English as a second language (ESL).

PubMed

Ng, Manwa L; Chen, Yang

2011-12-01

The present study examined English sentence stress produced by native Cantonese speakers who were speaking English as a second language (ESL). Cantonese ESL speakers' proficiency in English stress production as perceived by English-speaking listeners was also studied. Acoustical parameters associated with sentence stress including fundamental frequency (F0), vowel duration, and intensity were measured from the English sentences produced by 40 Cantonese ESL speakers. Data were compared with those obtained from 40 native speakers of American English. The speech samples were also judged by eight native listeners who were native speakers of American English for placement, degree, and naturalness of stress. Results showed that Cantonese ESL speakers were able to use F0, vowel duration, and intensity to differentiate sentence stress patterns. Yet, both female and male Cantonese ESL speakers exhibited consistently higher F0 in stressed words than English speakers. Overall, Cantonese ESL speakers were found to be proficient in using duration and intensity to signal sentence stress, in a way comparable with English speakers. In addition, F0 and intensity were found to correlate closely with perceptual judgement and the degree of stress with the naturalness of stress.

L2 vs. L3 Initial State: A Comparative Study of the Acquisition of French DPs by Vietnamese Monolinguals and Cantonese-English Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leung, Yan-Kit Ingrid

2005-01-01

This paper compares the initial state of second language acquisition (L2A) and third language acquisition (L3A) from the generative linguistics perspective. We examine the acquisition of the Determiner Phrase (DP) by two groups of beginning French learners: an L2 group (native speakers of Vietnamese who do not speak any English) and an L3 group…

Do children go for the nice guys? The influence of speaker benevolence and certainty on selective word learning.

PubMed

Bergstra, Myrthe; DE Mulder, Hannah N M; Coopmans, Peter

2018-04-06

This study investigated how speaker certainty (a rational cue) and speaker benevolence (an emotional cue) influence children's willingness to learn words in a selective learning paradigm. In two experiments four- to six-year-olds learnt novel labels from two speakers and, after a week, their memory for these labels was reassessed. Results demonstrated that children retained the label-object pairings for at least a week. Furthermore, children preferred to learn from certain over uncertain speakers, but they had no significant preference for nice over nasty speakers. When the cues were combined, children followed certain speakers, even if they were nasty. However, children did prefer to learn from nice and certain speakers over nasty and certain speakers. These results suggest that rational cues regarding a speaker's linguistic competence trump emotional cues regarding a speaker's affective status in word learning. However, emotional cues were found to have a subtle influence on this process.

A Cross-Cultural Study of Offering Advice Speech Acts by Iranian EFL Learners and English Native Speakers: Pragmatic Transfer in Focus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Babaie, Sherveh; Shahrokhi, Mohsen

2015-01-01

The purpose of the present study was to compare the speech act of offering advice as realized by Iranian EFL learners and English native speakers. The study, more specifically, attempted to find out whether there was any pragmatic transfer from Persian (L1) among Iranian EFL learners while offering advice in English. It also examined whether…

The Interactive Modes of Non-Native Speakers in International Chinese Language Distance Class Discussions: An Analysis of Smiling as a Facial Cue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sunaoka, Kazuko

2018-01-01

The focus of this research is on an international distance discussion class carried out in Chinese between university students in Japan, China and Taiwan using videoconferencing. Smiling was used as an interactional index in an analysis of the archival footage of the recordings of the discussion between native speakers (NS) of Chinese and…

The relationship between brain reaction and English reading tests for non-native English speakers.

PubMed

Cheng, Pei-Wen; Tian, Yu-Jie; Kuo, Ting-Hua; Sun, Koun-Tem

2016-07-01

This research analyzed the brain activity of non-native English speakers while engaged in English reading tests. The brain wave event-related potentials (ERPs) of participants were used to analyze the difference between making correct and incorrect choices on English reading test items. Three English reading tests of differing levels were designed and 20 participants, 10 males and 10 females whose ages ranged from 20 to 24, voluntarily participated in the experiment. Experimental results were analyzed by performing independent t-tests on the ERPs of participants for gender, difficulty level, and correct versus wrong options. Participants who chose incorrect options elicited a larger N600, verifying results found in the literature. Another interesting result was found: For incorrectly answered items, different areas of brain showing a significant difference in ERPs between the chosen and non-chosen options corresponded to gender differences; for males, this area was located in the right hemisphere whereas for females, it was located in the left. Experimental results imply that non-native English speaking males and females employ different areas of the brain to comprehend the meaning of difficult items. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

An Email Exchange Project between Non-Native Speakers of English.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fedderholdt, Karen

2001-01-01

Describes a recent email writing project between nonnative speakers of English. The project was carried out by a group of Japanese university students, and a group of Danish students preparing for university entrance examinations. Explains the reasons for choosing to use email in writing classes and why nonnative speakers were chosen. (Author/VWL)

Acquisition of speech rhythm in a second language by learners with rhythmically different native languages.

PubMed

Ordin, Mikhail; Polyanskaya, Leona

2015-08-01

The development of speech rhythm in second language (L2) acquisition was investigated. Speech rhythm was defined as durational variability that can be captured by the interval-based rhythm metrics. These metrics were used to examine the differences in durational variability between proficiency levels in L2 English spoken by French and German learners. The results reveal that durational variability increased as L2 acquisition progressed in both groups of learners. This indicates that speech rhythm in L2 English develops from more syllable-timed toward more stress-timed patterns irrespective of whether the native language of the learner is rhythmically similar to or different from the target language. Although both groups showed similar development of speech rhythm in L2 acquisition, there were also differences: German learners achieved a degree of durational variability typical of the target language, while French learners exhibited lower variability than native British speakers, even at an advanced proficiency level.

Cross-Linguistic Influence in L3 Phonological Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gut, Ulrike

2010-01-01

This study investigates possible sources and directions of cross-linguistic influence on vowel reduction and speech rhythm produced by four trilingual speakers with different L1s in their L2 (German or English) and L3 (English or German). It was shown that, compared to native speakers, the speakers produced distinct differences in these…

Narrative Comprehension Processes: A Study of Native and Non-Native Readers of Japanese.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Horiba, Yukie

1990-01-01

Comparison of the reading strategies and resulting reading comprehension and recall of native and advanced non-native adult speakers of Japanese found that reading strategy significantly affected comprehension and recall, with non-native readers with limited language command paying more attention to vocabulary and grammar than native readers, who…

Linguistic Proficiency Assessment in Second Language Acquisition Research: The Elicited Imitation Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gaillard, Stéphanie; Tremblay, Annie

2016-01-01

This study investigated the elicited imitation task (EIT) as a tool for measuring linguistic proficiency in a second/foreign (L2) language, focusing on French. Nonnative French speakers (n = 94) and native French speakers (n = 6) completed an EIT that included 50 sentences varying in length and complexity. Three raters evaluated productions on…

Evaluating the lexico-grammatical differences in the writing of native and non-native speakers of English in peer-reviewed medical journals in the field of pediatric oncology: Creation of the genuine index scoring system

PubMed Central

Gayle, Alberto Alexander; Shimaoka, Motomu

2017-01-01

Introduction The predominance of English in scientific research has created hurdles for “non-native speakers” of English. Here we present a novel application of native language identification (NLI) for the assessment of medical-scientific writing. For this purpose, we created a novel classification system whereby scoring would be based solely on text features found to be distinctive among native English speakers (NS) within a given context. We dubbed this the “Genuine Index” (GI). Methodology This methodology was validated using a small set of journals in the field of pediatric oncology. Our dataset consisted of 5,907 abstracts, representing work from 77 countries. A support vector machine (SVM) was used to generate our model and for scoring. Results Accuracy, precision, and recall of the classification model were 93.3%, 93.7%, and 99.4%, respectively. Class specific F-scores were 96.5% for NS and 39.8% for our benchmark class, Japan. Overall kappa was calculated to be 37.2%. We found significant differences between countries with respect to the GI score. Significant correlation was found between GI scores and two validated objective measures of writing proficiency and readability. Two sets of key terms and phrases differentiating NS and non-native writing were identified. Conclusions Our GI model was able to detect, with a high degree of reliability, subtle differences between the terms and phrasing used by native and non-native speakers in peer reviewed journals, in the field of pediatric oncology. In addition, L1 language transfer was found to be very likely to survive revision, especially in non-Western countries such as Japan. These findings show that even when the language used is technically correct, there may still be some phrasing or usage that impact quality. PMID:28212419

The influence of ambient speech on adult speech productions through unintentional imitation.

PubMed

Delvaux, Véronique; Soquet, Alain

2007-01-01

This paper deals with the influence of ambient speech on individual speech productions. A methodological framework is defined to gather the experimental data necessary to feed computer models simulating self-organisation in phonological systems. Two experiments were carried out. Experiment 1 was run on French native speakers from two regiolects of Belgium: two from Liège and two from Brussels. When exposed to the way of speaking of the other regiolect via loudspeakers, the speakers of one regiolect produced vowels that were significantly different from their typical realisations, and significantly closer to the way of speaking specific of the other regiolect. Experiment 2 achieved a replication of the results for 8 Mons speakers hearing a Liège speaker. A significant part of the imitative effect remained up to 10 min after the end of the exposure to the other regiolect productions. As a whole, the results suggest that: (i) imitation occurs automatically and unintentionally, (ii) the modified realisations leave a memory trace, in which case the mechanism may be better defined as 'mimesis' than as 'imitation'. The potential effects of multiple imitative speech interactions on sound change are discussed in this paper, as well as the implications for a general theory of phonetic implementation and phonetic representation.

Some linguistic and pragmatic considerations affecting science reporting in English by non-native speakers of the language

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Approximately 50% of publications in English peer reviewed journals are contributed by non-native speakers (NNS) of the language. Basic thought processes are considered to be universal yet there are differences in thought patterns and particularly in discourse management of writers with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The study highlights some areas of potential incompatibility in native and NNS processing of English scientific papers. Principles and conventions in generating academic discourse are considered in terms of frequently occurring failures of NNS to meet expectations of editors, reviewers, and readers. Major problem areas concern organization and flow of information, principles of cohesion and clarity, cultural constraints, especially those of politeness and negotiability of ideas, and the complicated area of English modality pragmatics. The aim of the paper is to sensitize NN authors of English academic reports to problem areas of discourse processing which are stumbling blocks, often affecting acceptance of manuscripts. The problems discussed are essential for acquiring pragmalinguistic and sociocultural competence in producing effective communication. PMID:23118596

Is the superior verbal memory span of Mandarin speakers due to faster rehearsal?

PubMed

Mattys, Sven L; Baddeley, Alan; Trenkic, Danijela

2018-04-01

It is well established that digit span in native Chinese speakers is atypically high. This is commonly attributed to a capacity for more rapid subvocal rehearsal for that group. We explored this hypothesis by testing a group of English-speaking native Mandarin speakers on digit span and word span in both Mandarin and English, together with a measure of speed of articulation for each. When compared to the performance of native English speakers, the Mandarin group proved to be superior on both digit and word spans while predictably having lower spans in English. This suggests that the Mandarin advantage is not limited to digits. Speed of rehearsal correlated with span performance across materials. However, this correlation was more pronounced for English speakers than for any of the Chinese measures. Further analysis suggested that speed of rehearsal did not provide an adequate account of differences between Mandarin and English spans or for the advantage of digits over words. Possible alternative explanations are discussed.

Co-Construction of Nonnative Speaker Identity in Cross-Cultural Interaction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Park, Jae-Eun

2007-01-01

Informed by Conversation Analysis, this paper examines discursive practices through which nonnative speaker (NNS) identity is constituted in relation to native speaker (NS) identity in naturally occurring English conversations. Drawing on studies of social interaction that view identity as intrinsically a social, dialogic, negotiable entity, I…

Determinants of Success in Native and Non-Native Listening Comprehension: An Individual Differences Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andringa, Sible; Olsthoorn, Nomi; van Beuningen, Catherine; Schoonen, Rob; Hulstijn, Jan

2012-01-01

The goal of this study was to explain individual differences in both native and non-native listening comprehension; 121 native and 113 non-native speakers of Dutch were tested on various linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive skills thought to underlie listening comprehension. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the predictors of…

The Sound of German: Descriptions of Accent by Native and Non-Native Listeners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilkerson, Miranda E.

2013-01-01

This paper presents a study of factors affecting judgments of native and non-native accent in German. The data suggest that listener status (native or non-native speakers) and degree of experience with German play a role in the aspects of speech which raters cite as salient. Interestingly, the same descriptive terms used by raters were shown to…

Chinese College Students' Views on Native English and Non-Native English in EFL Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Qian, Yang; Jingxia, Liu

2016-01-01

With the development of globalization, English is clearly spoken by many more non-native than native speakers, which raises the discussion of English varieties and the debate regarding the conformity to Standard English. Although a large number of studies have shown scholars' attitudes towards native English and non-native English, little research…

Does the speaker matter? Online processing of semantic and pragmatic information in L2 speech comprehension.

PubMed

Foucart, Alice; Garcia, Xavier; Ayguasanosa, Meritxell; Thierry, Guillaume; Martin, Clara; Costa, Albert

2015-08-01

The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence comprehension. We put forward that the differences often observed between L1 and L2 sentence processing may reflect differences on how various types of information are used to process a sentence, and not necessarily differences between native and non-native linguistic systems. Based on the idea that when a cue is missing or distorted, one relies more on other cues available, we hypothesised that late bilinguals favour the cues that they master during sentence processing. To verify this hypothesis we investigated whether late bilinguals take the speaker's identity (inferred by the voice) into account when incrementally processing speech and whether this affects their online interpretation of the sentence. To do so, we adapted Van Berkum, J.J.A., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C.M.J.Y., Kos, M., Hagoort, P., 2008. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 20(4), 580-591, study in which sentences with either semantic violations or pragmatic inconsistencies were presented. While both the native and the non-native groups showed a similar response to semantic violations (N400), their response to speakers' inconsistencies slightly diverged; late bilinguals showed a positivity much earlier than native speakers (LPP). These results suggest that, like native speakers, late bilinguals process semantic and pragmatic information incrementally; however, what seems to differ between L1 and L2 processing is the time-course of the different processes. We propose that this difference may originate from late bilinguals' sensitivity to pragmatic information and/or their ability to efficiently make use of the information provided by the sentence context to generate expectations in relation to pragmatic information during L2 sentence comprehension. In other words, late bilinguals may rely more on speaker identity than native speakers when they face semantic integration difficulties. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights

Shhh… I Need Quiet! Children's Understanding of American, British, and Japanese-accented English Speakers.

PubMed

Bent, Tessa; Holt, Rachael Frush

2018-02-01

Children's ability to understand speakers with a wide range of dialects and accents is essential for efficient language development and communication in a global society. Here, the impact of regional dialect and foreign-accent variability on children's speech understanding was evaluated in both quiet and noisy conditions. Five- to seven-year-old children ( n = 90) and adults ( n = 96) repeated sentences produced by three speakers with different accents-American English, British English, and Japanese-accented English-in quiet or noisy conditions. Adults had no difficulty understanding any speaker in quiet conditions. Their performance declined for the nonnative speaker with a moderate amount of noise; their performance only substantially declined for the British English speaker (i.e., below 93% correct) when their understanding of the American English speaker was also impeded. In contrast, although children showed accurate word recognition for the American and British English speakers in quiet conditions, they had difficulty understanding the nonnative speaker even under ideal listening conditions. With a moderate amount of noise, their perception of British English speech declined substantially and their ability to understand the nonnative speaker was particularly poor. These results suggest that although school-aged children can understand unfamiliar native dialects under ideal listening conditions, their ability to recognize words in these dialects may be highly susceptible to the influence of environmental degradation. Fully adult-like word identification for speakers with unfamiliar accents and dialects may exhibit a protracted developmental trajectory.

Native Speakers in Linguistic Imperialism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Phillipson, Robert

2016-01-01

An investigation of Native English Speaking Teachers' performance in schemes in six Asian contexts, commissioned by the British Council, and undertaken by three British academics, is subjected to critical evaluation. Key issues for exploration are the issue of a monolingual approach to English learning and teaching, and the inappropriate…

Do Persian Native Speakers Prosodically Mark Wh-in-situ Questions?

PubMed

Shiamizadeh, Zohreh; Caspers, Johanneke; Schiller, Niels O

2018-02-01

It has been shown that prosody contributes to the contrast between declarativity and interrogativity, notably in interrogative utterances lacking lexico-syntactic features of interrogativity. Accordingly, it may be proposed that prosody plays a role in marking wh-in-situ questions in which the interrogativity feature (the wh-phrase) does not move to sentence-initial position, as, for example, in Persian. This paper examines whether prosody distinguishes Persian wh-in-situ questions from declaratives in the absence of the interrogativity feature in the sentence-initial position. To answer this question, a production experiment was designed in which wh-questions and declaratives were elicited from Persian native speakers. On the basis of the results of previous studies, we hypothesize that prosodic features mark wh-in-situ questions as opposed to declaratives at both the local (pre- and post-wh part) and global level (complete sentence). The results of the current study confirm our hypothesis that prosodic correlates mark the pre-wh part as well as the complete sentence in wh-in-situ questions. The results support theoretical concepts such as the frequency code, the universal dichotomous association between relaxation and declarativity on the one hand and tension and interrogativity on the other, the relation between prosody and pragmatics, and the relation between prosody and encoding and decoding of sentence type.

Impacts of land use and invasive species on native avifauna of Mo’orea, French Polynesia

PubMed Central

Furnas, Brett J.

2017-01-01

Oceanic islands are among the most endemically biodiverse ecosystems in the world. They have been adversely impacted by human expansion, which affects regional biodiversity by altering the natural habitats of vulnerable, indigenous species. Birds represent a valuable indicator species of environmental change due to their ability to adapt quickly. Investigating the relationship between environmental change, abundance, and behaviors of birds can help us better anticipate potential impacts to island ecosystems. In addition, we can understand the population trends and restricted ranges of native avifauna, identify the regions needing protection, and assess habitat vulnerability linked to anthropogenic activities. In Mo’orea, French Polynesia, we studied nine passerine bird species using automated acoustic recording devices placed in agricultural, forested, and mixed habitats. Based on call counts per unit time and occupancy modeling, we found evidence that three non-native species preferred agricultural areas and low-canopy cover over dense forested areas. Furthermore, native bird detectability and possibly abundance was significantly lower than non-native birds. Using hierarchical cluster analysis to support inferences regarding behavioral differences, we found that native bird calling activity was negatively associated with non-native bird calling activity. Altogether, these results suggest native bird populations are at risk in all of the habitats studied, but forests serve as a potential refuge. PMID:28929014

Training the perception of Hindi dental and retroflex stops by native speakers of American English and Japanese.

PubMed

Pruitt, John S; Jenkins, James J; Strange, Winifred

2006-03-01

Perception of second language speech sounds is influenced by one's first language. For example, speakers of American English have difficulty perceiving dental versus retroflex stop consonants in Hindi although English has both dental and retroflex allophones of alveolar stops. Japanese, unlike English, has a contrast similar to Hindi, specifically, the Japanese /d/ versus the flapped /r/ which is sometimes produced as a retroflex. This study compared American and Japanese speakers' identification of the Hindi contrast in CV syllable contexts where C varied in voicing and aspiration. The study then evaluated the participants' increase in identifying the distinction after training with a computer-interactive program. Training sessions progressively increased in difficulty by decreasing the extent of vowel truncation in stimuli and by adding new speakers. Although all participants improved significantly, Japanese participants were more accurate than Americans in distinguishing the contrast on pretest, during training, and on posttest. Transfer was observed to three new consonantal contexts, a new vowel context, and a new speaker's productions. Some abstract aspect of the contrast was apparently learned during training. It is suggested that allophonic experience with dental and retroflex stops may be detrimental to perception of the new contrast.

Early Language Experience Facilitates the Processing of Gender Agreement in Spanish Heritage Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Montrul, Silvina; Davidson, Justin; De La Fuente, Israel; Foote, Rebecca

2014-01-01

We examined how age of acquisition in Spanish heritage speakers and L2 learners interacts with implicitness vs. explicitness of tasks in gender processing of canonical and non-canonical ending nouns. Twenty-three Spanish native speakers, 29 heritage speakers, and 33 proficiency-matched L2 learners completed three on-line spoken word recognition…

Real-time processing of gender-marked articles by native and non-native Spanish speakers

PubMed Central

Lew-Williams, Casey; Fernald, Anne

2010-01-01

Three experiments using online processing measures explored whether native and non-native Spanish-speaking adults use gender-marked articles to identify referents of target nouns more rapidly, as shown previously with 3-year-old children learning Spanish as L1 (Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007). In Experiment 1, participants viewed familiar objects with names of either the same or different grammatical gender while listening to Spanish sentences referring to one object. L1 adults, like L1 children, oriented to the target more rapidly on different-gender trials, when the article was informative about noun identity; however, L2 adults did not. Experiments 2 and 3 controlled for frequency of exposure to article-noun pairs by using novel nouns. L2 adults could not exploit gender information when different article-noun pairs were used in teaching and testing. Experience-related factors may influence how L1 adults and children and L2 adults—who learned Spanish at different ages and in different settings—use grammatical gender in realtime processing. PMID:21076648

How Cognitive Load Influences Speakers' Choice of Referring Expressions.

PubMed

Vogels, Jorrig; Krahmer, Emiel; Maes, Alfons

2015-08-01

We report on two experiments investigating the effect of an increased cognitive load for speakers on the choice of referring expressions. Speakers produced story continuations to addressees, in which they referred to characters that were either salient or non-salient in the discourse. In Experiment 1, referents that were salient for the speaker were non-salient for the addressee, and vice versa. In Experiment 2, all discourse information was shared between speaker and addressee. Cognitive load was manipulated by the presence or absence of a secondary task for the speaker. The results show that speakers under load are more likely to produce pronouns, at least when referring to less salient referents. We take this finding as evidence that speakers under load have more difficulties taking discourse salience into account, resulting in the use of expressions that are more economical for themselves. © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Prosodic Marking of Information Structure by Malaysian Speakers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gut, Ulrike; Pillai, Stefanie

2014-01-01

Various researchers have shown that second language (L2) speakers have difficulties with marking information structure in English prosodically: They deviate from native speakers not only in terms of pitch accent placement (Grosser, 1997; Gut, 2009; Ramírez Verdugo, 2002) and the type of pitch accent they produce (Wennerstrom, 1994, 1998) but also…

A fundamental residue pitch perception bias for tone language speakers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Petitti, Elizabeth

A complex tone composed of only higher-order harmonics typically elicits a pitch percept equivalent to the tone's missing fundamental frequency (f0). When judging the direction of residue pitch change between two such tones, however, listeners may have completely opposite perceptual experiences depending on whether they are biased to perceive changes based on the overall spectrum or the missing f0 (harmonic spacing). Individual differences in residue pitch change judgments are reliable and have been associated with musical experience and functional neuroanatomy. Tone languages put greater pitch processing demands on their speakers than non-tone languages, and we investigated whether these lifelong differences in linguistic pitch processing affect listeners' bias for residue pitch. We asked native tone language speakers and native English speakers to perform a pitch judgment task for two tones with missing fundamental frequencies. Given tone pairs with ambiguous pitch changes, listeners were asked to judge the direction of pitch change, where the direction of their response indicated whether they attended to the overall spectrum (exhibiting a spectral bias) or the missing f0 (exhibiting a fundamental bias). We found that tone language speakers are significantly more likely to perceive pitch changes based on the missing f0 than English speakers. These results suggest that tone-language speakers' privileged experience with linguistic pitch fundamentally tunes their basic auditory processing.

Collocational Links in the L2 Mental Lexicon and the Influence of L1 Intralexical Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wolter, Brent; Gyllstad, Henrik

2011-01-01

This article assesses the influence of L1 intralexical knowledge on the formation of L2 intralexical collocations. Two tests, a primed lexical decision task (LDT) and a test of receptive collocational knowledge, were administered to a group of non-native speakers (NNSs) (L1 Swedish), with native speakers (NSs) of English serving as controls on the…

All giraffes have female-specific properties: influence of grammatical gender on deductive reasoning about sex-specific properties in German speakers.

PubMed

Imai, Mutsumi; Schalk, Lennart; Saalbach, Henrik; Okada, Hiroyuki

2014-04-01

Grammatical gender is independent of biological sex for the majority of animal names (e.g., any giraffe, be it male or female, is grammatically treated as feminine). However, there is apparent semantic motivation for grammatical gender classes, especially in mapping human terms to gender. This research investigated whether this motivation affects deductive inference in native German speakers. We compared German with Japanese speakers (a language without grammatical gender) when making inferences about sex-specific biological properties. We found that German speakers tended to erroneously draw inferences when the sex in the premise and grammatical gender of the target animal agreed. An over-generalization of the grammar-semantics mapping was found even when the sex of the target was explicitly indicated. However, these effects occurred only when gender-marking articles accompanied the nouns. These results suggest that German speakers project sex-specific biological properties onto gender-marking articles but not onto conceptual representations of animals per se. Copyright © 2013 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

When Alphabets Collide: Alphabetic First-Language Speakers' Approach to Speech Production in an Alphabetic Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vokic, Gabriela

2011-01-01

This study analysed the extent to which literate native speakers of a language with a phonemic alphabetic orthography rely on their first language (L1) orthography during second language (L2) speech production of a language that has a morphophonemic alphabetic orthography. The production of the English flapping rule by 15 adult native speakers of…

Differences in the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies among Native and Non-Native Readers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sheorey, R.; Mokhtari, K.

2001-01-01

Examines the differences in the reported use of reading strategies of native and non-native English speakers when reading academic materials. Participants were native English speaking and English-as-a-Second-Language college students who completed a survey of reading strategies aimed at discerning the strategies readers report using when coping…

The role of the phonological loop in English word learning: a comparison of Chinese ESL learners and native speakers.

PubMed

Hamada, Megumi; Koda, Keiko

2011-04-01

Although the role of the phonological loop in word-retention is well documented, research in Chinese character retention suggests the involvement of non-phonological encoding. This study investigated whether the extent to which the phonological loop contributes to learning and remembering visually introduced words varies between college-level Chinese ESL learners (N = 20) and native speakers of English (N = 20). The groups performed a paired associative learning task under two conditions (control versus articulatory suppression) with two word types (regularly spelled versus irregularly spelled words) differing in degree of phonological accessibility. The results demonstrated that both groups' recall declined when the phonological loop was made less available (with irregularly spelled words and in the articulatory suppression condition), but the decline was greater for the native group. These results suggest that word learning entails phonological encoding uniformly across learners, but the contribution of phonology varies among learners with diverse linguistic backgrounds.

Nativization Processes in L1 Esperanto.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bergen, Benjamin K.

2001-01-01

Describes characteristics of the Native Esperanto of eight speakers, ranging from age 6 to 14 years. Found bilingualism and nativization effects, differentiating native from non-native Esperanto speech. Among these effects are loss or modification of the accusative case, phonological reduction, attrition of tense/aspect system, and pronominal…

Mother-Tongue Diversity in the Foreign Language Classroom: Perspectives on the Experiences of Non-Native Speakers of English Studying Foreign Languages in an English-Medium University

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bruen, Jennifer; Kelly, Niamh

2017-01-01

This paper considers the position of university language students whose mother tongue is other than the medium of instruction. Specifically, it investigates the attitudes and experiences of non-native English speakers studying either German or Japanese as foreign languages at an English-medium university. The findings indicate that the non-native…

Syntactic Constraints and Individual Differences in Native and Non-Native Processing of Wh-Movement

PubMed Central

Johnson, Adrienne; Fiorentino, Robert; Gabriele, Alison

2016-01-01

There is a debate as to whether second language (L2) learners show qualitatively similar processing profiles as native speakers or whether L2 learners are restricted in their ability to use syntactic information during online processing. In the realm of wh-dependency resolution, research has examined whether learners, similar to native speakers, attempt to resolve wh-dependencies in grammatically licensed contexts but avoid positing gaps in illicit contexts such as islands. Also at issue is whether the avoidance of gap filling in islands is due to adherence to syntactic constraints or whether islands simply present processing bottlenecks. One approach has been to examine the relationship between processing abilities and the establishment of wh-dependencies in islands. Grammatical accounts of islands do not predict such a relationship as the parser should simply not predict gaps in illicit contexts. In contrast, a pattern of results showing that individuals with more processing resources are better able to establish wh-dependencies in islands could conceivably be compatible with certain processing accounts. In a self-paced reading experiment which examines the processing of wh-dependencies, we address both questions, examining whether native English speakers and Korean learners of English show qualitatively similar patterns and whether there is a relationship between working memory, as measured by counting span and reading span, and processing in both island and non-island contexts. The results of the self-paced reading experiment suggest that learners can use syntactic information on the same timecourse as native speakers, showing qualitative similarity between the two groups. Results of regression analyses did not reveal a significant relationship between working memory and the establishment of wh-dependencies in islands but we did observe significant relationships between working memory and the processing of licit wh-dependencies. As the contexts in which these

Syntactic Constraints and Individual Differences in Native and Non-Native Processing of Wh-Movement.

PubMed

Johnson, Adrienne; Fiorentino, Robert; Gabriele, Alison

2016-01-01

There is a debate as to whether second language (L2) learners show qualitatively similar processing profiles as native speakers or whether L2 learners are restricted in their ability to use syntactic information during online processing. In the realm of wh-dependency resolution, research has examined whether learners, similar to native speakers, attempt to resolve wh-dependencies in grammatically licensed contexts but avoid positing gaps in illicit contexts such as islands. Also at issue is whether the avoidance of gap filling in islands is due to adherence to syntactic constraints or whether islands simply present processing bottlenecks. One approach has been to examine the relationship between processing abilities and the establishment of wh-dependencies in islands. Grammatical accounts of islands do not predict such a relationship as the parser should simply not predict gaps in illicit contexts. In contrast, a pattern of results showing that individuals with more processing resources are better able to establish wh-dependencies in islands could conceivably be compatible with certain processing accounts. In a self-paced reading experiment which examines the processing of wh-dependencies, we address both questions, examining whether native English speakers and Korean learners of English show qualitatively similar patterns and whether there is a relationship between working memory, as measured by counting span and reading span, and processing in both island and non-island contexts. The results of the self-paced reading experiment suggest that learners can use syntactic information on the same timecourse as native speakers, showing qualitative similarity between the two groups. Results of regression analyses did not reveal a significant relationship between working memory and the establishment of wh-dependencies in islands but we did observe significant relationships between working memory and the processing of licit wh-dependencies. As the contexts in which these

Nonnative Speakers' Perceptions of English "Nonlexical" Intonation Signals.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Luthy, Melvin J.

1983-01-01

Native English speakers' and foreign students' perceptions of 14 English intonation signals, recorded free of verbal context, show foreign students may be misinterpreting or missing much information communicated with nonlexical signals. (Author/MSE)

Learning for Life, a Structured and Motivational Process of Knowledge Construction in the Acquisition/Learning of English as a Foreign Language in Native Spanish Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mino-Garces, Fernando

2009-01-01

As language learning theory has shifted from a highly guided to a more open learning process, this paper presents the teaching/learning philosophy called Learning for Life (L for L) as a great way to motivate native Spanish speaker students learning English as a foreign language, and to help them be the constructors of their own knowledge. The…

Native Language Experience Shapes Neural Basis of Addressed and Assembled Phonologies

PubMed Central

Mei, Leilei; Xue, Gui; Lu, Zhong-Lin; He, Qinghua; Wei, Miao; Zhang, Mingxia; Dong, Qi; Chen, Chuansheng

2015-01-01

Previous studies have suggested differential engagement of addressed and assembled phonologies in reading Chinese and alphabetic languages (e.g., English) and the modulatory role of native language in learning to read a second language. However, it is not clear whether native language experience shapes the neural mechanisms of addressed and assembled phonologies. To address this question, we trained native Chinese and native English speakers to read the same artificial language (based on Korean Hangul) either through addressed (i.e., whole-word mapping) or assembled (i.e., grapheme-to-phoneme mapping) phonology. We found that, for both native Chinese and native English speakers, addressed phonology relied on the regions in the ventral pathway, whereas assembled phonology depended on the regions in the dorsal pathway. More importantly, we found that the neural mechanisms of addressed and assembled phonologies were shaped by native language experience. Specifically, two key regions for addressed phonology (i.e., the left middle temporal gyrus and right inferior temporal gyrus) showed greater activation for addressed phonology in native Chinese speakers, while one key region for assembled phonology (i.e., the left supramarginal gyrus) showed more activation for assembled phonology in native English speakers. These results provide direct neuroimaging evidence for the effect of native language experience on the neural mechanisms of phonological access in a new language and support the assimilation-accommodation hypothesis. PMID:25858447

Congenital Amusia in Speakers of a Tone Language: Association with Lexical Tone Agnosia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nan, Yun; Sun, Yanan; Peretz, Isabelle

2010-01-01

Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder that affects the processing of musical pitch in speakers of non-tonal languages like English and French. We assessed whether this musical disorder exists among speakers of Mandarin Chinese who use pitch to alter the meaning of words. Using the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia, we tested 117…

Are Cantonese-speakers really descriptivists? Revisiting cross-cultural semantics.

PubMed

Lam, Barry

2010-05-01

In an article in Cognition [Machery, E., Mallon, R., Nichols, S., & Stich, S. (2004). Semantics cross-cultural style. Cognition, 92, B1-B12] present data which purports to show that East Asian Cantonese-speakers tend to have descriptivist intuitions about the referents of proper names, while Western English-speakers tend to have causal-historical intuitions about proper names. Machery et al. take this finding to support the view that some intuitions, the universality of which they claim is central to philosophical theories, vary according to cultural background. Machery et al. conclude from their findings that the philosophical methodology of consulting intuitions about hypothetical cases is flawed vis a vis the goal of determining truths about some philosophical domains like philosophical semantics. In the following study, three new vignettes in English were given to Western native English-speakers, and Cantonese translations were given to native Cantonese-speaking immigrants from a Cantonese community in Southern California. For all three vignettes, questions were given to elicit intuitions about the referent of a proper name and the truth-value of an uttered sentence containing a proper name. The results from this study reveal that East Asian Cantonese-speakers do not differ from Western English-speakers in ways that support Machery et al.'s conclusions. This new data concerning the intuitions of Cantonese-speakers raises questions about whether cross-cultural variation in answers to questions on certain vignettes reveal genuine differences in intuitions, or whether such differences stem from non-intuitional differences, such as differences in linguistic competence. Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mechanisms of Verbal Morphology Processing in Heritage Speakers of Russian

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Romanova, Natalia

2008-01-01

The goal of the study is to analyze the morphological processing of real and novel verb forms by heritage speakers of Russian in order to determine whether it differs from that of native (L1) speakers and second language (L2) learners; if so, how it is different; and which factors may guide the acquisition process. The experiment involved three…

Grammatical versus Pragmatic Error: Employer Perceptions of Nonnative and Native English Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wolfe, Joanna; Shanmugaraj, Nisha; Sipe, Jaclyn

2016-01-01

Many communication instructors make allowances for grammatical error in nonnative English speakers' writing, but do businesspeople do the same? We asked 169 businesspeople to comment on three versions of an email with different types of errors. We found that businesspeople do make allowances for errors made by nonnative English speakers,…

Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time.

PubMed

Boroditsky, L

2001-08-01

Does the language you speak affect how you think about the world? This question is taken up in three experiments. English and Mandarin talk about time differently--English predominantly talks about time as if it were horizontal, while Mandarin also commonly describes time as vertical. This difference between the two languages is reflected in the way their speakers think about time. In one study, Mandarin speakers tended to think about time vertically even when they were thinking for English (Mandarin speakers were faster to confirm that March comes earlier than April if they had just seen a vertical array of objects than if they had just seen a horizontal array, and the reverse was true for English speakers). Another study showed that the extent to which Mandarin-English bilinguals think about time vertically is related to how old they were when they first began to learn English. In another experiment native English speakers were taught to talk about time using vertical spatial terms in a way similar to Mandarin. On a subsequent test, this group of English speakers showed the same bias to think about time vertically as was observed with Mandarin speakers. It is concluded that (1) language is a powerful tool in shaping thought about abstract domains and (2) one's native language plays an important role in shaping habitual thought (e.g., how one tends to think about time) but does not entirely determine one's thinking in the strong Whorfian sense. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.

Adult Learners of English Interacting with Native Speaker Teachers and Non-Native Speaker Teachers: Exploring Differences in Students' Language Use

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nadeau, Melody Hallenbeck

2014-01-01

This mixed-methods study examined the lived experience of adult English Language Learners (ELLs) in classrooms led by native speaking teachers, compared with their experience in classrooms led by non-native teachers. The socio-cognitive approach to language and emergent common ground framed the development of the English classroom as a Community…

The Acquisition of Clitic Pronouns in the Spanish Interlanguage of Peruvian Quechua Speakers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klee, Carol A.

1989-01-01

Analysis of four adult Quechua speakers' acquisition of clitic pronouns in Spanish revealed that educational attainment and amount of contact with monolingual Spanish speakers were positively related to native-like norms of competence in the use of object pronouns in Spanish. (CB)

The Wildcat Corpus of Native- and Foreign-Accented English: Communicative Efficiency across Conversational Dyads with Varying Language Alignment Profiles

PubMed Central

Van Engen, Kristin J.; Baese-Berk, Melissa; Baker, Rachel E.; Choi, Arim; Kim, Midam; Bradlow, Ann R.

2012-01-01

This paper describes the development of the Wildcat Corpus of native- and foreign-accented English, a corpus containing scripted and spontaneous speech recordings from 24 native speakers of American English and 52 non-native speakers of English. The core element of this corpus is a set of spontaneous speech recordings, for which a new method of eliciting dialogue-based, laboratory-quality speech recordings was developed (the Diapix task). Dialogues between two native speakers of English, between two non-native speakers of English (with either shared or different L1s), and between one native and one non-native speaker of English are included and analyzed in terms of general measures of communicative efficiency. The overall finding was that pairs of native talkers were most efficient, followed by mixed native/non-native pairs and non-native pairs with shared L1. Non-native pairs with different L1s were least efficient. These results support the hypothesis that successful speech communication depends both on the alignment of talkers to the target language and on the alignment of talkers to one another in terms of native language background. PMID:21313992

Factors Influencing Oral Corrective Feedback Provision in the Spanish Foreign Language Classroom: Investigating Instructor Native/Nonnative Speaker Status, SLA Education, & Teaching Experience

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gurzynski-Weiss, Laura

2010-01-01

The role of interactional feedback has been a critical area of second language acquisition (SLA) research for decades and while findings suggest interactional feedback can facilitate SLA, the extent of its influence can vary depending on a number of factors, including the native language of those involved in communication. Although studies have…

Word Inventory and Frequency Analysis of French Conversations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Malecot, Andre

This word frequency list was extracted from a corpus of fifty half-hour conversations recorded in Paris during the academic year 1967-68. The speakers, who did not know that they were being recorded, were all well-educated professionals and all speakers of the most standard dialect of French. The list is made up of all phonetically discrete words…

The Native Speaker, Identity, and the Authenticity Hierarchy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Myhill, John E.

2003-01-01

Discusses an ideology of native language and identity, which holds that native language is seen as a central element of individual identity. Argues that although this ideology can be very valuable in certain circumstances, it can also create an atmosphere of suspicion toward members of certain ethnicities who choose not to use their ancestral…

Assessing public speaking fear with the short form of the Personal Report of Confidence as a Speaker scale: confirmatory factor analyses among a French-speaking community sample.

PubMed

Heeren, Alexandre; Ceschi, Grazia; Valentiner, David P; Dethier, Vincent; Philippot, Pierre

2013-01-01

The main aim of this study was to assess the reliability and structural validity of the French version of the 12-item version of the Personal Report of Confidence as Speaker (PRCS), one of the most promising measurements of public speaking fear. A total of 611 French-speaking volunteers were administered the French versions of the short PRCS, the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, the Fear of Negative Evaluation scale, as well as the Trait version of the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory-II, which assess the level of anxious and depressive symptoms, respectively. Regarding its structural validity, confirmatory factor analyses indicated a single-factor solution, as implied by the original version. Good scale reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.86) was observed. The item discrimination analysis suggested that all the items contribute to the overall scale score reliability. The French version of the short PRCS showed significant correlations with the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (r = 0.522), the Fear of Negative Evaluation scale (r = 0.414), the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (r = 0.516), and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (r = 0.361). The French version of the short PRCS is a reliable and valid measure for the evaluation of the fear of public speaking among a French-speaking sample. These findings have critical consequences for the measurement of psychological and pharmacological treatment effectiveness in public speaking fear among a French-speaking sample.

Assessing public speaking fear with the short form of the Personal Report of Confidence as a Speaker scale: confirmatory factor analyses among a French-speaking community sample

PubMed Central

Heeren, Alexandre; Ceschi, Grazia; Valentiner, David P; Dethier, Vincent; Philippot, Pierre

2013-01-01

Background: The main aim of this study was to assess the reliability and structural validity of the French version of the 12-item version of the Personal Report of Confidence as Speaker (PRCS), one of the most promising measurements of public speaking fear. Methods: A total of 611 French-speaking volunteers were administered the French versions of the short PRCS, the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, the Fear of Negative Evaluation scale, as well as the Trait version of the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory-II, which assess the level of anxious and depressive symptoms, respectively. Results: Regarding its structural validity, confirmatory factor analyses indicated a single-factor solution, as implied by the original version. Good scale reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.86) was observed. The item discrimination analysis suggested that all the items contribute to the overall scale score reliability. The French version of the short PRCS showed significant correlations with the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (r = 0.522), the Fear of Negative Evaluation scale (r = 0.414), the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (r = 0.516), and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (r = 0.361). Conclusion: The French version of the short PRCS is a reliable and valid measure for the evaluation of the fear of public speaking among a French-speaking sample. These findings have critical consequences for the measurement of psychological and pharmacological treatment effectiveness in public speaking fear among a French-speaking sample. PMID:23662060

The influence of language deprivation in early childhood on L2 processing: An ERP comparison of deaf native signers and deaf signers with a delayed language acquisition.

PubMed

Skotara, Nils; Salden, Uta; Kügow, Monique; Hänel-Faulhaber, Barbara; Röder, Brigitte

2012-05-03

To examine which language function depends on early experience, the present study compared deaf native signers, deaf non-native signers and hearing German native speakers while processing German sentences. The participants watched simple written sentences while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. At the end of each sentence they were asked to judge whether the sentence was correct or not. Two types of violations were introduced in the middle of the sentence: a semantically implausible noun or a violation of subject-verb number agreement. The results showed a similar ERP pattern after semantic violations (an N400 followed by a positivity) in all three groups. After syntactic violations, native German speakers and native signers of German sign language (DGS) with German as second language (L2) showed a left anterior negativity (LAN) followed by a P600, whereas no LAN but a negativity over the right hemisphere instead was found in deaf participants with a delayed onset of first language (L1) acquisition. The P600 of this group had a smaller amplitude and a different scalp distribution as compared to German native speakers. The results of the present study suggest that language deprivation in early childhood alters the cerebral organization of syntactic language processing mechanisms for L2. Semantic language processing instead was unaffected.

Listen to the Natives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Prensky, Marc

2006-01-01

"Digital natives" refer to today's students because they are native speakers of technology, fluent in the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet. Those who were not born into the digital world are referred to as digital immigrants. Educators, considered digital immigrants, have slid into the 21st century--and into the digital…

Word order processing in the bilingual brain.

PubMed

Saur, Dorothee; Baumgaertner, Annette; Moehring, Anja; Büchel, Christian; Bonnesen, Matthias; Rose, Michael; Musso, Mariachristina; Meisel, Jürgen M

2009-01-01

One of the issues debated in the field of bilingualism is the question of a "critical period" for second language acquisition. Recent studies suggest an influence of age of onset of acquisition (AOA) particularly on syntactic processing; however, the processing of word order in a sentence context has not yet been examined specifically. We used functional MRI to examine word order processing in two groups of highly proficient German-French bilinguals who had either acquired French or German after the age of 10, and a third group which had acquired both languages before the age of three. Subjects listened to French and German sentences in which the order of subject and verb was systematically varied. In both groups of late bilinguals, processing of L2 compared to L1 resulted in higher levels of activation mainly of the left inferior frontal cortex while early bilinguals showed no activation difference in any of these areas. A selective increase in activation for late bilinguals only suggests that AOA contributes to modulating overall syntactic processing in L2. In addition, native speakers of French showed significantly higher activation for verb-subject-order than native German speakers. These data suggest that AOA effects may in particular affect those grammatical structures which are marked in the first language.

Processing ser and estar to locate objects and events: An ERP study with L2 speakers of Spanish.

PubMed

Dussias, Paola E; Contemori, Carla; Román, Patricia

2014-01-01

In Spanish locative constructions, a different form of the copula is selected in relation to the semantic properties of the grammatical subject: sentences that locate objects require estar while those that locate events require ser (both translated in English as 'to be'). In an ERP study, we examined whether second language (L2) speakers of Spanish are sensitive to the selectional restrictions that the different types of subjects impose on the choice of the two copulas. Twenty-four native speakers of Spanish and two groups of L2 Spanish speakers (24 beginners and 18 advanced speakers) were recruited to investigate the processing of 'object/event + estar/ser ' permutations. Participants provided grammaticality judgments on correct (object + estar ; event + ser ) and incorrect (object + ser ; event + estar ) sentences while their brain activity was recorded. In line with previous studies (Leone-Fernández, Molinaro, Carreiras, & Barber, 2012; Sera, Gathje, & Pintado, 1999), the results of the grammaticality judgment for the native speakers showed that participants correctly accepted object + estar and event + ser constructions. In addition, while 'object + ser ' constructions were considered grossly ungrammatical, 'event + estar ' combinations were perceived as unacceptable to a lesser degree. For these same participants, ERP recording time-locked to the onset of the critical word ' en ' showed a larger P600 for the ser predicates when the subject was an object than when it was an event (*La silla es en la cocina vs. La fiesta es en la cocina). This P600 effect is consistent with syntactic repair of the defining predicate when it does not fit with the adequate semantic properties of the subject. For estar predicates (La silla está en la cocina vs. *La fiesta está en la cocina), the findings showed a central-frontal negativity between 500-700 ms. Grammaticality judgment data for the L2 speakers of Spanish showed that beginners were significantly less accurate than

Learner Variables Important for Success in L2 Listening Comprehension in French Immersion Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vandergrift, Larry; Baker, Susan C.

2018-01-01

Listening comprehension, which is relatively straightforward for native language (L1) speakers, is often frustrating for second language (L2) learners. Listening comprehension is important to L2 acquisition, but little is known about the variables that influence the development of L2 listening skills. The goal of this study was to determine which…

Memory for non-native language: the role of lexical processing in the retention of surface form.

PubMed

Sampaio, Cristina; Konopka, Agnieszka E

2013-01-01

Research on memory for native language (L1) has consistently shown that retention of surface form is inferior to that of gist (e.g., Sachs, 1967). This paper investigates whether the same pattern is found in memory for non-native language (L2). We apply a model of bilingual word processing to more complex linguistic structures and predict that memory for L2 sentences ought to contain more surface information than L1 sentences. Native and non-native speakers of English were tested on a set of sentence pairs with different surface forms but the same meaning (e.g., "The bullet hit/struck the bull's eye"). Memory for these sentences was assessed with a cued recall procedure. Responses showed that native and non-native speakers did not differ in the accuracy of gist-based recall but that non-native speakers outperformed native speakers in the retention of surface form. The results suggest that L2 processing involves more intensive encoding of lexical level information than L1 processing.

The relationship between vocabulary and short-term memory measures in monolingual and bilingual speakers

PubMed Central

Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Blumenfeld, Henrike K.; Marian, Viorica

2012-01-01

Previous studies have indicated that bilingualism may influence the efficiency of lexical access in adults. The goals of this research were (1) to compare bilingual and monolingual adults on their native-language vocabulary performance, and (2) to examine the relationship between short-term memory skills and vocabulary performance in monolinguals and bilinguals. In Experiment 1, English-speaking monolingual adults and simultaneous English–Spanish bilingual adults were administered measures of receptive English vocabulary and of phonological short-term memory. In Experiment 2, monolingual adults were compared to sequential English–Spanish bilinguals, and were administered the same measures as in Experiment 1, as well as a measure of expressive English vocabulary. Analyses revealed comparable levels of performance on the vocabulary and the short-term memory measures in the monolingual and the bilingual groups across both experiments. There was a stronger effect of digit-span in the bilingual group than in the monolingual group, with high-span bilinguals outperforming low-span bilinguals on vocabulary measures. Findings indicate that bilingual speakers may rely on short-term memory resources to support word retrieval in their native language more than monolingual speakers. PMID:22518091

The effect of L1 orthography on non-native vowel perception.

PubMed

Escudero, Paola; Wanrooij, Karin

2010-01-01

Previous research has shown that orthography influences the learning and processing of spoken non-native words. In this paper, we examine the effect of L1 orthography on non-native sound perception. In Experiment 1, 204 Spanish learners of Dutch and a control group of 20 native speakers of Dutch were asked to classify Dutch vowel tokens by choosing from auditorily presented options, in one task, and from the orthographic representations of Dutch vowels, in a second task. The results show that vowel categorization varied across tasks: the most difficult vowels in the purely auditory task were the easiest in the orthographic task and, conversely, vowels with a relatively high success rate in the purely auditory task were poorly classified in the orthographic task. The results of Experiment 2 with 22 monolingual Peruvian Spanish listeners replicated the main results of Experiment 1 and confirmed the existence of orthographic effects. Together, the two experiments show that when listening to auditory stimuli only, native speakers of Spanish have great difficulty classifying certain Dutch vowels, regardless of the amount of experience they may have with the Dutch language. Importantly, the pairing of auditory stimuli with orthographic labels can help or hinder Spanish listeners' sound categorization, depending on the specific sound contrast.

Toddlers learn words in a foreign language: The role of native vocabulary knowledge

PubMed Central

Koenig, Melissa A.; Woodward, Amanda L.

2013-01-01

The current study examined monolingual English-speaking toddlers’ (N=50) ability to learn word-referent links from native speakers of Dutch versus English and secondly, whether children generalized or sequestered their extensions when terms were tested by a subsequent speaker of English. Overall, children performed better in the English than in the Dutch condition; however, children with high native vocabularies successfully selected the target object for terms trained in fluent Dutch. Furthermore, children with higher vocabularies did not indicate their comprehension of Dutch terms when subsequently tested by an English speaker whereas children with low vocabulary scores responded at chance levels to both the original Dutch speaker and the second English speaker. These findings demonstrate that monolingual toddlers with proficiency in their native language are capable of learning words outside of their conventional system and may be sensitive to the boundaries that exist between language systems. PMID:22310327

Music-to-language transfer effect: may melodic ability improve learning of tonal languages by native nontonal speakers?

PubMed

Delogu, Franco; Lampis, Giulia; Olivetti Belardinelli, Marta

2006-09-01

In tonal languages, as Mandarin Chinese and Thai, word meaning is partially determined by lexical tones. Previous studies suggest that lexical tones are processed by native listeners as linguistic information and not as pure tonal information. This study aims at verifying if, in nontonal languages speakers, the discrimination of lexical Mandarin tones varies in function of the melodic ability. Forty-six students with no previous experience of Mandarin or any other tonal language were presented with two short lists of spoken monosyllabic Mandarin words and invited to perform a same-different task trying to identify whether the variation were phonological or tonal. Main results show that subjects perform significantly better in identifying phonological variations rather than tonal ones and interestingly, the group with a high melodic ability (assessed by Wing subtest 3) shows a better performance exclusively in detecting tonal variations.

Acoustic Cues to Perception of Word Stress by English, Mandarin, and Russian Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chrabaszcz, Anna; Winn, Matthew; Lin, Candise Y.; Idsardi, William J.

2014-01-01

Purpose: This study investigated how listeners' native language affects their weighting of acoustic cues (such as vowel quality, pitch, duration, and intensity) in the perception of contrastive word stress. Method: Native speakers (N = 45) of typologically diverse languages (English, Russian, and Mandarin) performed a stress identification…

Speaker-independent factors affecting the perception of foreign accent in a second languagea)

PubMed Central

Levi, Susannah V.; Winters, Stephen J.; Pisoni, David B.

2012-01-01

Previous research on foreign accent perception has largely focused on speaker-dependent factors such as age of learning and length of residence. Factors that are independent of a speaker’s language learning history have also been shown to affect perception of second language speech. The present study examined the effects of two such factors—listening context and lexical frequency—on the perception of foreign-accented speech. Listeners rated foreign accent in two listening contexts: auditory-only, where listeners only heard the target stimuli, and auditory+orthography, where listeners were presented with both an auditory signal and an orthographic display of the target word. Results revealed that higher frequency words were consistently rated as less accented than lower frequency words. The effect of the listening context emerged in two interactions: the auditory +orthography context reduced the effects of lexical frequency, but increased the perceived differences between native and non-native speakers. Acoustic measurements revealed some production differences for words of different levels of lexical frequency, though these differences could not account for all of the observed interactions from the perceptual experiment. These results suggest that factors independent of the speakers’ actual speech articulations can influence the perception of degree of foreign accent. PMID:17471745

Ordered short-term memory differs in signers and speakers: Implications for models of short-term memory

PubMed Central

Bavelier, Daphne; Newport, Elissa L.; Hall, Matt; Supalla, Ted; Boutla, Mrim

2008-01-01

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers (Boutla, Supalla, Newport, & Bavelier, 2004). Here, we test the hypothesis that this population difference reflects differences in the way speakers and signers maintain temporal order information in short-term memory. We show that native signers differ from speakers on measures of short-term memory that require maintenance of temporal order of the tested materials, but not on those in which temporal order is not required. In addition, we show that, in a recall task with free order, bilingual subjects are more likely to recall in temporal order when using English than ASL. We conclude that speakers and signers do share common short-term memory processes. However, whereas short-term memory for spoken English is predominantly organized in terms of temporal order, we argue that this dimension does not play as great a role in signers’ short-term memory. Other factors that may affect STM processes in signers are discussed. PMID:18083155

Encoding, rehearsal, and recall in signers and speakers: shared network but differential engagement.

PubMed

Bavelier, D; Newman, A J; Mukherjee, M; Hauser, P; Kemeny, S; Braun, A; Boutla, M

2008-10-01

Short-term memory (STM), or the ability to hold verbal information in mind for a few seconds, is known to rely on the integrity of a frontoparietal network of areas. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to ask whether a similar network is engaged when verbal information is conveyed through a visuospatial language, American Sign Language, rather than speech. Deaf native signers and hearing native English speakers performed a verbal recall task, where they had to first encode a list of letters in memory, maintain it for a few seconds, and finally recall it in the order presented. The frontoparietal network described to mediate STM in speakers was also observed in signers, with its recruitment appearing independent of the modality of the language. This finding supports the view that signed and spoken STM rely on similar mechanisms. However, deaf signers and hearing speakers differentially engaged key structures of the frontoparietal network as the stages of STM unfold. In particular, deaf signers relied to a greater extent than hearing speakers on passive memory storage areas during encoding and maintenance, but on executive process areas during recall. This work opens new avenues for understanding similarities and differences in STM performance in signers and speakers.

Encoding, Rehearsal, and Recall in Signers and Speakers: Shared Network but Differential Engagement

PubMed Central

Newman, A. J.; Mukherjee, M.; Hauser, P.; Kemeny, S.; Braun, A.; Boutla, M.

2008-01-01

Short-term memory (STM), or the ability to hold verbal information in mind for a few seconds, is known to rely on the integrity of a frontoparietal network of areas. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to ask whether a similar network is engaged when verbal information is conveyed through a visuospatial language, American Sign Language, rather than speech. Deaf native signers and hearing native English speakers performed a verbal recall task, where they had to first encode a list of letters in memory, maintain it for a few seconds, and finally recall it in the order presented. The frontoparietal network described to mediate STM in speakers was also observed in signers, with its recruitment appearing independent of the modality of the language. This finding supports the view that signed and spoken STM rely on similar mechanisms. However, deaf signers and hearing speakers differentially engaged key structures of the frontoparietal network as the stages of STM unfold. In particular, deaf signers relied to a greater extent than hearing speakers on passive memory storage areas during encoding and maintenance, but on executive process areas during recall. This work opens new avenues for understanding similarities and differences in STM performance in signers and speakers. PMID:18245041

Can you hear my age? Influences of speech rate and speech spontaneity on estimation of speaker age

PubMed Central

Skoog Waller, Sara; Eriksson, Mårten; Sörqvist, Patrik

2015-01-01

Cognitive hearing science is mainly about the study of how cognitive factors contribute to speech comprehension, but cognitive factors also partake in speech processing to infer non-linguistic information from speech signals, such as the intentions of the talker and the speaker’s age. Here, we report two experiments on age estimation by “naïve” listeners. The aim was to study how speech rate influences estimation of speaker age by comparing the speakers’ natural speech rate with increased or decreased speech rate. In Experiment 1, listeners were presented with audio samples of read speech from three different speaker age groups (young, middle aged, and old adults). They estimated the speakers as younger when speech rate was faster than normal and as older when speech rate was slower than normal. This speech rate effect was slightly greater in magnitude for older (60–65 years) speakers in comparison with younger (20–25 years) speakers, suggesting that speech rate may gain greater importance as a perceptual age cue with increased speaker age. This pattern was more pronounced in Experiment 2, in which listeners estimated age from spontaneous speech. Faster speech rate was associated with lower age estimates, but only for older and middle aged (40–45 years) speakers. Taken together, speakers of all age groups were estimated as older when speech rate decreased, except for the youngest speakers in Experiment 2. The absence of a linear speech rate effect in estimates of younger speakers, for spontaneous speech, implies that listeners use different age estimation strategies or cues (possibly vocabulary) depending on the age of the speaker and the spontaneity of the speech. Potential implications for forensic investigations and other applied domains are discussed. PMID:26236259

Developing Communication in the Workplace for Non-Native English Speakers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nichols, Pat; Watkins, Lisa

This curriculum module contains materials for conducting a course designed to build oral and written English skills for nonnative speakers. The course focuses on increasing vocabulary, improving listening/speaking skills, extracting information from various written texts (such as memos, notes, business forms, manuals, letters), and developing…

Normative Study of the Functional Assessment of Verbal Reasoning and Executive Strategies (FAVRES) Test in the French-Canadian Population.

PubMed

Marcotte, Karine; McSween, Marie-Pier; Pouliot, Monica; Martineau, Sarah; Pauzé, Anne-Marie; Wiseman-Hakes, Catherine; MacDonald, Sheila

2017-08-16

The Functional Assessment of Verbal Reasoning and Executive Strategies (FAVRES; MacDonald, 2005) test was designed for use by speech-language pathologists to assess verbal reasoning, complex comprehension, discourse, and executive skills during performance on a set of challenging and ecologically valid functional tasks. A recent French version of this test was translated from English; however, it had not undergone standardization. The development of normative data that are linguistically and culturally sensitive to the target population is of importance. The present study aimed to establish normative data for the French version of the FAVRES, a commonly used test with native French-speaking patients with traumatic brain injury in Québec, Canada. The normative sample consisted of 181 healthy French-speaking adults from various regions across the province of Québec. Age and years of education were factored into the normative model. Results indicate that age was significantly associated with performance on time, accuracy, reasoning subskills, and rationale criteria, whereas the level of education was significantly associated with accuracy and rationale. Overall, mean scores on each criterion were relatively lower than in the original English version, which reinforces the importance of using the present normative data when interpreting performance of French speakers who have sustained a traumatic brain injury.

A Statistical Method of Evaluating the Pronunciation Proficiency/Intelligibility of English Presentations by Japanese Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kibishi, Hiroshi; Hirabayashi, Kuniaki; Nakagawa, Seiichi

2015-01-01

In this paper, we propose a statistical evaluation method of pronunciation proficiency and intelligibility for presentations made in English by native Japanese speakers. We statistically analyzed the actual utterances of speakers to find combinations of acoustic and linguistic features with high correlation between the scores estimated by the…

"Cool" English: Stylized Native-Speaker English in Japanese Television Shows

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Furukawa, Gavin

2015-01-01

This article analyzes stylized pronunciations of English by Japanese speakers on televised variety shows in Japan. Research on style and mocking has done much to reveal how linguistic forms are utilized in interaction as resources of identity construction that can oftentimes subvert hegemonic discourse (Chun 2004). Within this research area,…

Lexical Encoding of L2 Tones: The Role of L1 Stress, Pitch Accent and Intonation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Braun, Bettina; Galts, Tobias; Kabak, Baris

2014-01-01

Native language prosodic structure is known to modulate the processing of non-native suprasegmental information. It has been shown that native speakers of French, a language without lexical stress, have difficulties storing non-native stress contrasts. We investigated whether the ability to store lexical tone (as in Mandarin Chinese) also depends…

When the Native Is Also a Non-Native: "Retrodicting" the Complexity of Language Teacher Cognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aslan, Erhan

2015-01-01

The impact of native (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) identities on second or foreign language teachers' cognition and practices in the classroom has mainly been investigated in ESL/EFL contexts. Using complexity theory as a framework, this case study attempts to fill the gap in the literature by presenting a foreign language teacher in the…

The Non-Native English Speaker Teachers in TESOL Movement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kamhi-Stein, Lía D.

2016-01-01

It has been almost 20 years since what is known as the non-native English-speaking (NNES) professionals' movement--designed to increase the status of NNES professionals--started within the US-based TESOL International Association. However, still missing from the literature is an understanding of what a movement is, and why non-native English…

Real-Time Processing of Gender-Marked Articles by Native and Non-Native Spanish Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lew-Williams, Casey; Fernald, Anne

2010-01-01

Three experiments using online-processing measures explored whether native and non-native Spanish-speaking adults use gender-marked articles to identify referents of target nouns more rapidly, as shown previously with 3-year-old children learning Spanish as L1 (Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007). In Experiment 1, participants viewed familiar objects…

Real-Time Processing of Gender-Marked Articles by Native and Non-Native Spanish-Speaking Children and Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lew-Williams, Casey

2009-01-01

Six experiments explored how native and non-native Spanish speakers process article-noun sequences in real time, using eye movements as a response measure. Can listeners use gender-marked articles ("la" and "el", the feminine and masculine forms of "the") to rapidly identify familiar and novel nouns? In Experiment 1, adults who learned Spanish as…

Perception of speaker size and sex of vowel sounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, David R. R.; Patterson, Roy D.

2005-04-01

Glottal-pulse rate (GPR) and vocal-tract length (VTL) are both related to speaker size and sex-however, it is unclear how they interact to determine our perception of speaker size and sex. Experiments were designed to measure the relative contribution of GPR and VTL to judgements of speaker size and sex. Vowels were scaled to represent people with different GPRs and VTLs, including many well beyond the normal population values. In a single interval, two response rating paradigm, listeners judged the size (using a 7-point scale) and sex/age of the speaker (man, woman, boy, or girl) of these scaled vowels. Results from the size-rating experiments show that VTL has a much greater influence upon judgements of speaker size than GPR. Results from the sex-categorization experiments show that judgements of speaker sex are influenced about equally by GPR and VTL for vowels with normal GPR and VTL values. For abnormal combinations of GPR and VTL, where low GPRs are combined with short VTLs, VTL has more influence than GPR in sex judgements. [Work supported by the UK MRC (G9901257) and the German Volkswagen Foundation (VWF 1/79 783).

Espanol para el hispanolhablante (Spanish for the Spanish Speaker).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blanco, George M.

This guide provides Texas teachers and administrators with guidelines, goals, instructional strategies, and activities for teaching Spanish to secondary level native speakers. It is based on the principle that the Spanish speaking student is the strongest linguistic and cultural resource to Texas teachers of languages other than English, and one…

Priming of Non-Speech Vocalizations in Male Adults: The Influence of the Speaker's Gender

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fecteau, Shirley; Armony, Jorge L.; Joanette, Yves; Belin, Pascal

2004-01-01

Previous research reported a priming effect for voices. However, the type of information primed is still largely unknown. In this study, we examined the influence of speaker's gender and emotional category of the stimulus on priming of non-speech vocalizations in 10 male participants, who performed a gender identification task. We found a…

A Race to Rescue Native Tongues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ashburn, Elyse

2007-01-01

Of the 300 or so native languages once spoken in North America, only about 150 are still spoken--and the majority of those have just a handful of mostly elderly speakers. For most Native American languages, colleges and universities are their last great hope, if not their final resting place. People at a number of institutions across the country…

Comparison of native versus nonnative English-speaking nurses on critical thinking assessments at entry and exit.

PubMed

Whitehead, Tanya D

2006-01-01

Diversity of language among healthcare employees and nursing students is growing as diversity increases among the general population. Institutions have begun to develop systems to accommodate diversity and to assimilate workers. One barrier to nonnative English-speaking nurse hires may be posed by readiness for the licensure exam and the critical thinking assessments that are now an expected outcome of nursing programs, and act as a gatekeeper to graduation and to employment. To assist in preparing for high-stakes testing, the Assessment Technologies Institute Critical Thinking Assessment was developed in compliance with credentialing bodies' educational outcomes criteria. This pilot study of 209 nursing students was designed to reveal any possible language bias that might act as a barrier to nonnative English speakers. Nursing students were entered as whole classes to the study to control for selection bias. A sample representative of national nursing enrollment was obtained from 21 universities, with 192 (92%) native English-speaking students and 17 (8%) nonnative English speakers participating in the study. All students were given the Assessment Technologies Institute Critical Thinking Assessment at entry and exit to their nursing program. Average scores on entry were 66% for nonnative speakers and 72% for native speakers. At exit, the nonnative speakers had closed the gap in academic outcomes. They had an average score of 72% compared to 73% for native speakers. The study found that the slight differences between the native and nonnative speakers on 2 exit outcome measures-National Council licensure examination (NCLEX-RN) pass rates and Critical Thinking Assessment-were not statistically significant, demonstrating that nonnative English speakers achieved parity with native English-speaking peers on the Critical Thinking Assessment tool, which is often believed to be related to employment readiness.

Potential population and assemblage influences of non-native trout on native nongame fish in Nebraska headwater streams

USGS Publications Warehouse

Turek, Kelly C.; Pegg, Mark A.; Pope, Kevin L.; Schainost, Steve

2014-01-01

Non-native trout are currently stocked to support recreational fisheries in headwater streams throughout Nebraska. The influence of non-native trout introductions on native fish populations and their role in structuring fish assemblages in these systems is unknown. The objectives of this study were to determine (i) if the size structure or relative abundance of native fish differs in the presence and absence of non-native trout, (ii) if native fish-assemblage structure differs in the presence and absence of non-native trout and (iii) if native fish-assemblage structure differs across a gradient in abundances of non-native trout. Longnose dace Rhinichthys cataractae were larger in the presence of brown trout Salmo trutta and smaller in the presence of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss compared to sites without trout. There was also a greater proportion of larger white suckers Catostomus commersonii in the presence of brown trout. Creek chub Semotilus atromaculatus and fathead minnow Pimephales promelas size structures were similar in the presence and absence of trout. Relative abundances of longnose dace, white sucker, creek chub and fathead minnow were similar in the presence and absence of trout, but there was greater distinction in native fish-assemblage structure between sites with trout compared to sites without trout as trout abundances increased. These results suggest increased risk to native fish assemblages in sites with high abundances of trout. However, more research is needed to determine the role of non-native trout in structuring native fish assemblages in streams, and the mechanisms through which introduced trout may influence native fish populations.

Transcultural validation of the Oxford Shoulder Score for the French-speaking population.

PubMed

Tuton, D; Barbe, C; Salmon, J-H; Dramé, M; Nérot, C; Ohl, X

2016-09-01

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have been gaining in popularity over the last decade. The Oxford Shoulder Score (OSS) is a well-established self-administered questionnaire for shoulder evaluation adapted for the English-speaking population. The aim of the present study was to develop a translation and a transcultural adaptation of the OSS and to assess its validity in native French-speaker patients with shoulder pain. The translation process was carried out following a translation/back-translation methodology by two translators. All patients completed the French OSS, the Subjective Shoulder Value (SSV), and the Constant score. Internal consistency was tested using Cronbach's α coefficient. Validity was assessed by calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient between the OSS and the Constant score and the SSV. One hundred forty-four patients suffering from degenerative or inflammatory diseases of the shoulder were included in this study. The average time required to complete the French OSS was 2min and 45s. Seventy patients were asked to complete the questionnaire twice (test/retest reliability). Internal consistency was high with Cronbach's α coefficient=0.93. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.91 (95% CI: 0.88-0.94) for test/retest reliability. The French OSS score was significantly correlated with the Constant-Murley score (r=0.73 and P<0.0001) and with the SSV (r=0.68 and P<0.0001). The present study shows that the French version of the OSS is reliable, valid, and reproducible. The sensitivity to change now needs to be evaluated. This score was adapted to the French-speaking population for the self-assessment of patients with degenerative or inflammatory disorders of the shoulder. Level 1, Test of previously developed criteria, diagnostic test study. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Subjective Word Frequency Estimates in L1 and L2.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arnaud, Pierre J. L.

A study investigated the usefulness of non-native speakers' subjective, relative word frequency estimates as a measure of second language proficiency. In the experiment, two subjective frequency estimate (SFE) tasks, one on French and one on English, were presented to French learners of English (n=126) and American learners of French (n=87).…

Does the speaker's voice quality influence children's performance on a language comprehension test?

PubMed

Lyberg-Åhlander, Viveka; Haake, Magnus; Brännström, Jonas; Schötz, Susanne; Sahlén, Birgitta

2015-02-01

A small number of studies have explored children's perception of speakers' voice quality and its possible influence on language comprehension. The aim of this explorative study was to investigate the relationship between the examiner's voice quality, the child's performance on a digital version of a language comprehension test, the Test for Reception of Grammar (TROG-2), and two measures of cognitive functioning. The participants were (n = 86) mainstreamed 8-year old children with typical language development. Two groups of children (n = 41/45) were presented with the TROG-2 through recordings of one female speaker: one group was presented with a typical voice and the other with a simulated dysphonic voice. Significant associations were found between executive functioning and language comprehension. The results also showed that children listening to the dysphonic voice achieved significantly lower scores for more difficult sentences ("the man but not the horse jumps") and used more self-corrections on simpler sentences ("the girl is sitting"). Findings suggest that a dysphonic speaker's voice may force the child to allocate capacity to the processing of the voice signal at the expense of comprehension. The findings have implications for clinical and research settings where standardized language tests are used.

The Wildcat Corpus of Native- and Foreign-Accented English: Communicative Efficiency across Conversational Dyads with Varying Language Alignment Profiles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Engen, Kristin J.; Baese-Berk, Melissa; Baker, Rachel E.; Choi, Arim; Kim, Midam; Bradlow, Ann R.

2010-01-01

This paper describes the development of the Wildcat Corpus of native- and foreign-accented English, a corpus containing scripted and spontaneous speech recordings from 24 native speakers of American English and 52 non-native speakers of English. The core element of this corpus is a set of spontaneous speech recordings, for which a new method of…

Multimodal indices to Japanese and French prosodically expressed social affects.

PubMed

Rilliard, Albert; Shochi, Takaaki; Martin, Jean-Claude; Erickson, Donna; Aubergé, Véronique

2009-01-01

Whereas several studies have explored the expression of emotions, little is known on how the visual and audio channels are combined during production of what we call the more controlled social affects, for example, "attitudinal" expressions. This article presents a perception study of the audovisual expression of 12 Japanese and 6 French attitudes in order to understand the contribution of audio and visual modalities for affective communication. The relative importance of each modality in the perceptual decoding of the expressions of four speakers is analyzed as a first step towards a deeper comprehension of their influence on the expression of social affects. Then, the audovisual productions of two speakers (one for each language) are acoustically (F0, duration and intensity) and visually (in terms of Action Units) analyzed, in order to match the relation between objective parameters and listeners' perception of these social affects. The most pertinent objective features, either acoustic or visual, are then discussed, in a bilingual perspective: for example, the relative influence of fundamental frequency for attitudinal expression in both languages is discussed, and the importance of a certain aspect of the voice quality dimension in Japanese is underlined.

Evidential Uses in the Spanish of Quechua Speakers in Peru.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Escobar, Anna Maria

1994-01-01

Analysis of recordings of spontaneous speech of native speakers of Quechua speaking Spanish as a second language reveals that, using verbal morphological resources of Spanish, they have grammaticalized an epistemic marking system resembling that of Quechua. Sources of this process in both Quechua and Spanish are analyzed. (MSE)

Effect of tonal native language on voice fundamental frequency responses to pitch feedback perturbations during sustained vocalizations

PubMed Central

Liu, Hanjun; Wang, Emily Q.; Chen, Zhaocong; Liu, Peng; Larson, Charles R.; Huang, Dongfeng

2010-01-01

The purpose of this cross-language study was to examine whether the online control of voice fundamental frequency (F0) during vowel phonation is influenced by language experience. Native speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin, both tonal languages spoken in China, participated in the experiments. Subjects were asked to vocalize a vowel sound ∕u∕ at their comfortable habitual F0, during which their voice pitch was unexpectedly shifted (±50, ±100, ±200, or ±500 cents, 200 ms duration) and fed back instantaneously to them over headphones. The results showed that Cantonese speakers produced significantly smaller responses than Mandarin speakers when the stimulus magnitude varied from 200 to 500 cents. Further, response magnitudes decreased along with the increase in stimulus magnitude in Cantonese speakers, which was not observed in Mandarin speakers. These findings suggest that online control of voice F0 during vocalization is sensitive to language experience. Further, systematic modulations of vocal responses across stimulus magnitude were observed in Cantonese speakers but not in Mandarin speakers, which indicates that this highly automatic feedback mechanism is sensitive to the specific tonal system of each language. PMID:21218905

French Influence on Portuguese Architects in the Age of Enlightenment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sampayo, Mafalda

2017-10-01

This investigation shows the European influence on the work of Portuguese architects of the Enlightenment period. Based on previous studies we focus our attention on the design of “Praça do Comércio” square and on a hypothesis, that it was based on the French Royal Square. We demonstrate that the design of Lisbon from the second half of the eighteenth-century was influenced by the theories and best practices of the time. We also confirm that the architect Eugénio dos Santos e Carvalho, a member of the reconstruction team for the Baixa, had in his personal library several reference books of French architectural practice that certainly influenced his architecture. The plans for the main square of Lisbon’s lower city, “Praça do Comércio”, can be compared to the “Place de Nos Conquêtes”, predecessor of the “Place Vêndome”, in its design, architecture and dimensions. This research analysed the cartography and iconography of Lisbon’s reconstruction. In particular, the drawings of “Praça do Comércio” and “Place de nos Conquêtes” were exhaustively studied. The comparative study of the elements for both squares lead to the conclusion that the Portuguese square presents many aspects of the French Age of Enlightenment, and in particular those featured in the “Place de nos Conquêtes”. This paper concludes that the Portuguese urban design and architectural projects of the 18th century are the result of previous knowledge where it was always possible to articulate the vernacular with academic design, and where many different influences left their mark on the culture of the period. The plans for the lower part of Lisbon display a mixture of references that relate to architectural and urban planning traditions of the Portuguese military engineering and contemporary French urban planning.

Phoneme Error Pattern by Heritage Speakers of Spanish on an English Word Recognition Test.

PubMed

Shi, Lu-Feng

2017-04-01

Heritage speakers acquire their native language from home use in their early childhood. As the native language is typically a minority language in the society, these individuals receive their formal education in the majority language and eventually develop greater competency with the majority than their native language. To date, there have not been specific research attempts to understand word recognition by heritage speakers. It is not clear if and to what degree we may infer from evidence based on bilingual listeners in general. This preliminary study investigated how heritage speakers of Spanish perform on an English word recognition test and analyzed their phoneme errors. A prospective, cross-sectional, observational design was employed. Twelve normal-hearing adult Spanish heritage speakers (four men, eight women, 20-38 yr old) participated in the study. Their language background was obtained through the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire. Nine English monolingual listeners (three men, six women, 20-41 yr old) were also included for comparison purposes. Listeners were presented with 200 Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 words in quiet. They repeated each word orally and in writing. Their responses were scored by word, word-initial consonant, vowel, and word-final consonant. Performance was compared between groups with Student's t test or analysis of variance. Group-specific error patterns were primarily descriptive, but intergroup comparisons were made using 95% or 99% confidence intervals for proportional data. The two groups of listeners yielded comparable scores when their responses were examined by word, vowel, and final consonant. However, heritage speakers of Spanish misidentified significantly more word-initial consonants and had significantly more difficulty with initial /p, b, h/ than their monolingual peers. The two groups yielded similar patterns for vowel and word-final consonants, but heritage speakers made significantly

Quality of "Glottal" Stops in Tracheoesophageal Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Rossum, M. A.; van As-Brooks, C. J.; Hilgers, F. J. M.; Roozen, M.

2009-01-01

Glottal stops are conveyed by an abrupt constriction at the level of the glottis. Tracheoesophageal (TE) speakers are known to have poor control over the new voice source (neoglottis), and this might influence the production of "glottal" stops. This study investigated how TE speakers realized "glottal" stops in abutting words…

Modeling Speaker Proficiency, Comprehensibility, and Perceived Competence in a Language Use Domain

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schmidgall, Jonathan Edgar

2013-01-01

Research suggests that listener perceptions of a speaker's oral language use, or a speaker's "comprehensibility," may be influenced by a variety of speaker-, listener-, and context-related factors. Primary speaker factors include aspects of the speaker's proficiency in the target language such as pronunciation and…

Listeners' processing of a given reduced word pronunciation variant directly reflects their exposure to this variant: Evidence from native listeners and learners of French.

PubMed

Brand, Sophie; Ernestus, Mirjam

2018-05-01

In casual conversations, words often lack segments. This study investigates whether listeners rely on their experience with reduced word pronunciation variants during the processing of single segment reduction. We tested three groups of listeners in a lexical decision experiment with French words produced either with or without word-medial schwa (e.g., /ʀvy/ and /ʀvy/ for revue). Participants also rated the relative frequencies of the two pronunciation variants of the words. If the recognition accuracy and reaction times (RTs) for a given listener group correlate best with the frequencies of occurrence holding for that given listener group, recognition is influenced by listeners' exposure to these variants. Native listeners' relative frequency ratings correlated well with their accuracy scores and RTs. Dutch advanced learners' accuracy scores and RTs were best predicted by their own ratings. In contrast, the accuracy and RTs from Dutch beginner learners of French could not be predicted by any relative frequency rating; the rating task was probably too difficult for them. The participant groups showed behaviour reflecting their difference in experience with the pronunciation variants. Our results strongly suggest that listeners store the frequencies of occurrence of pronunciation variants, and consequently the variants themselves.

Haunting Native Speakerism? Students' Perceptions toward Native Speaking English Teachers in Taiwan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Kun-huei; Ke, Chung

2009-01-01

This paper intends to explore how Taiwanese university students perceive their native-speaking English teachers (NESTs). Mutual expectations between the NESTs and students are also investigated. Collected data include questionnaires from 107 students and interviews with three NESTs and 19 students who have filled out the questionnaire. The result…

Perception and Production of English Lexical Stress by Thai Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jangjamras, Jirapat

2011-01-01

This study investigated the effects of first language prosodic transfer on the perception and production of English lexical stress and the relation between stress perception and production by second language learners. To test the effect of Thai tonal distribution rules and stress patterns on native Thai speakers' perception and production of…

Bibliographie pour enseigner le francais des affaires (Bibliography for Business French Instruction).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dewey, S. Pascale

This bibliography contains a list of various publications (books, journals, dictionaries, newspapers, magazines) as well as videos, CD-ROMs, Web sites, and the addresses of several French chambers of commerce that would be useful for any English speakers needing to live, do business, or otherwise spend time in France. References are in French or…

The CAM-ICU has now a French "official" version. The translation process of the 2014 updated Complete Training Manual of the Confusion Assessment Method for the Intensive Care Unit in French (CAM-ICU.fr).

PubMed

Chanques, Gérald; Garnier, Océane; Carr, Julie; Conseil, Matthieu; de Jong, Audrey; Rowan, Christine M; Ely, E Wesley; Jaber, Samir

2017-10-01

Delirium is common in Intensive-Care-Unit (ICU) patients but under-recognized by bed-side clinicians when not using validated delirium-screening tools. The Confusion-Assessment-Method for the ICU (CAM-ICU) has demonstrated very good psychometric properties, and has been translated into many different languages though not into French. We undertook this opportunity to describe the translation process. The translation was performed following recommended guidelines. The updated method published in 2014 including introduction letters, worksheet and flowsheet for bed-side use, the method itself, case-scenarios for training and Frequently-Asked-Questions (32 pages) was translated into French language by a neuropsychological researcher who was not familiar with the original method. Then, the whole method was back-translated by a native English-French bilingual speaker. The new English version was compared to the original one by the Vanderbilt University ICU-delirium-team. Discrepancies were discussed between the two teams before final approval of the French version. The entire process took one year. Among the 3692 words of the back-translated version of the method itself, 18 discrepancies occurred. Eight (44%) lead to changes in the final version. Details of the translation process are provided. The French version of CAM-ICU is now available for French-speaking ICUs. The CAM-ICU is provided with its complete training-manual that was challenging to translate following recommended process. While many such translations have been done for other clinical tools, few have published the details of the process itself. We hope that the availability of such teaching material will now facilitate a large implementation of delirium-screening in French-speaking ICUs. Copyright © 2017 Société française d'anesthésie et de réanimation (Sfar). All rights reserved.

Effects of blindness on production-perception relationships: Compensation strategies for a lip-tube perturbation of the French [u].

PubMed

Ménard, Lucie; Turgeon, Christine; Trudeau-Fisette, Paméla; Bellavance-Courtemanche, Marie

2016-01-01

The impact of congenital visual deprivation on speech production in adults was examined in an ultrasound study of compensation strategies for lip-tube perturbation. Acoustic and articulatory analyses of the rounded vowel /u/ produced by 12 congenitally blind adult French speakers and 11 sighted adult French speakers were conducted under two conditions: normal and perturbed (with a 25-mm diameter tube inserted between the lips). Vowels were produced with auditory feedback and without auditory feedback (masked noise) to evaluate the extent to which both groups relied on this type of feedback to control speech movements. The acoustic analyses revealed that all participants mainly altered F2 and F0 and, to a lesser extent, F1 in the perturbed condition - only when auditory feedback was available. There were group differences in the articulatory strategies recruited to compensate; while all speakers moved their tongues more backward in the perturbed condition, blind speakers modified tongue-shape parameters to a greater extent than sighted speakers.

The stop voicing contrast in French: From citation speech to sentencial speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abdelli-Beruh, Nassima; Demaio, Eileen; Hisagi, Miwako

2004-05-01

This study explores the influence of speaking style on the salience of the acoustic correlates to the stop voicing distinction in French. Monolingual French speakers produced twenty-one C_vC_ syllables in citation speech, in minimal pairs and in sentence-length utterances (/pa/-/a/ context: /il a di pa C_vC_ a lui/; /pas/-/s/ context: /il a di pas C_vC_ sa~ lui/). Prominent stress was on the C_vC_. Voicing-related differences in percentages of closure voicing, durations of aspiration, closure, and vowel were analyzed as a function of these three speaking styles. Results show that the salience of the acoustic-phonetic segments present when the syllables are uttered in isolation or in minimal pairs is different than when the syllables are spoken in a sentence. These results are in agreement with findings in English.

Musical experience facilitates lexical tone processing among Mandarin speakers: Behavioral and neural evidence.

PubMed

Tang, Wei; Xiong, Wen; Zhang, Yu-Xuan; Dong, Qi; Nan, Yun

2016-10-01

Music and speech share many sound attributes. Pitch, as the percept of fundamental frequency, often occupies the center of researchers' attention in studies on the relationship between music and speech. One widely held assumption is that music experience may confer an advantage in speech tone processing. The cross-domain effects of musical training on non-tonal language speakers' linguistic pitch processing have been relatively well established. However, it remains unclear whether musical experience improves the processing of lexical tone for native tone language speakers who actually use lexical tones in their daily communication. Using a passive oddball paradigm, the present study revealed that among Mandarin speakers, musicians demonstrated enlarged electrical responses to lexical tone changes as reflected by the increased mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitudes, as well as faster behavioral discrimination performance compared with age- and IQ-matched nonmusicians. The current results suggest that in spite of the preexisting long-term experience with lexical tones in both musicians and nonmusicians, musical experience can still modulate the cortical plasticity of linguistic tone processing and is associated with enhanced neural processing of speech tones. Our current results thus provide the first electrophysiological evidence supporting the notion that pitch expertise in the music domain may indeed be transferable to the speech domain even for native tone language speakers. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cross-Linguistic Influence in French-English Bilingual Children's Possessive Constructions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nicoladis, Elena

2012-01-01

The purpose of this article was to test the predictions of a speech production model of cross-linguistic influence in French-English bilingual children. A speech production model predicts bidirectional influence (i.e., bilinguals' greater use of periphrastic constructions like the hat of the dog relative to monolinguals in English and reversed…

Congenital amusia in speakers of a tone language: association with lexical tone agnosia.

PubMed

Nan, Yun; Sun, Yanan; Peretz, Isabelle

2010-09-01

Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder that affects the processing of musical pitch in speakers of non-tonal languages like English and French. We assessed whether this musical disorder exists among speakers of Mandarin Chinese who use pitch to alter the meaning of words. Using the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia, we tested 117 healthy young Mandarin speakers with no self-declared musical problems and 22 individuals who reported musical difficulties and scored two standard deviations below the mean obtained by the Mandarin speakers without amusia. These 22 amusic individuals showed a similar pattern of musical impairment as did amusic speakers of non-tonal languages, by exhibiting a more pronounced deficit in melody than in rhythm processing. Furthermore, nearly half the tested amusics had impairments in the discrimination and identification of Mandarin lexical tones. Six showed marked impairments, displaying what could be called lexical tone agnosia, but had normal tone production. Our results show that speakers of tone languages such as Mandarin may experience musical pitch disorder despite early exposure to speech-relevant pitch contrasts. The observed association between the musical disorder and lexical tone difficulty indicates that the pitch disorder as defining congenital amusia is not specific to music or culture but is rather general in nature.

Similar frequency of the McGurk effect in large samples of native Mandarin Chinese and American English speakers.

PubMed

Magnotti, John F; Basu Mallick, Debshila; Feng, Guo; Zhou, Bin; Zhou, Wen; Beauchamp, Michael S

2015-09-01

Humans combine visual information from mouth movements with auditory information from the voice to recognize speech. A common method for assessing multisensory speech perception is the McGurk effect: When presented with particular pairings of incongruent auditory and visual speech syllables (e.g., the auditory speech sounds for "ba" dubbed onto the visual mouth movements for "ga"), individuals perceive a third syllable, distinct from the auditory and visual components. Chinese and American cultures differ in the prevalence of direct facial gaze and in the auditory structure of their languages, raising the possibility of cultural- and language-related group differences in the McGurk effect. There is no consensus in the literature about the existence of these group differences, with some studies reporting less McGurk effect in native Mandarin Chinese speakers than in English speakers and others reporting no difference. However, these studies sampled small numbers of participants tested with a small number of stimuli. Therefore, we collected data on the McGurk effect from large samples of Mandarin-speaking individuals from China and English-speaking individuals from the USA (total n = 307) viewing nine different stimuli. Averaged across participants and stimuli, we found similar frequencies of the McGurk effect between Chinese and American participants (48 vs. 44 %). In both groups, we observed a large range of frequencies both across participants (range from 0 to 100 %) and stimuli (15 to 83 %) with the main effect of culture and language accounting for only 0.3 % of the variance in the data. High individual variability in perception of the McGurk effect necessitates the use of large sample sizes to accurately estimate group differences.

The Immediate and Chronic Influence of Spatio-Temporal Metaphors on the Mental Representations of Time in English, Mandarin, and Mandarin-English Speakers

PubMed Central

Lai, Vicky Tzuyin; Boroditsky, Lera

2013-01-01

In this paper we examine whether experience with spatial metaphors for time has an influence on people’s representation of time. In particular we ask whether spatio-temporal metaphors can have both chronic and immediate effects on temporal thinking. In Study 1, we examine the prevalence of ego-moving representations for time in Mandarin speakers, English speakers, and Mandarin-English (ME) bilinguals. As predicted by observations in linguistic analyses, we find that Mandarin speakers are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English speakers. Further, we find that ME bilinguals tested in English are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English monolinguals (an effect of L1 on meaning-making in L2), and also that ME bilinguals tested in Mandarin are more likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are Mandarin monolinguals (an effect of L2 on meaning-making in L1). These findings demonstrate that habits of metaphor use in one language can influence temporal reasoning in another language, suggesting the metaphors can have a chronic effect on patterns in thought. In Study 2 we test Mandarin speakers using either horizontal or vertical metaphors in the immediate context of the task. We find that Mandarin speakers are more likely to construct front-back representations of time when understanding front-back metaphors, and more likely to construct up-down representations of time when understanding up-down metaphors. These findings demonstrate that spatio-temporal metaphors can also have an immediate influence on temporal reasoning. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the metaphors we use to talk about time have both immediate and long-term consequences for how we conceptualize and reason about this fundamental domain of experience. PMID:23630505

Elaborer un exercice de grammaire (Working Out a Grammar Exercise)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Principaud, Jeanne-Marie

1977-01-01

An elaboration of the official instruction on teaching French to native speakers in elementary school. The topics covered are: Methodological development of exercises; the linguistic ability and milieu of the students; operative criteria; and the question of a logical progression or spontaneous use of grammar exercises. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Ordered Short-Term Memory Differs in Signers and Speakers: Implications for Models of Short-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bavelier, Daphne; Newport, Elissa L.; Hall, Matt; Supalla, Ted; Boutla, Mrim

2008-01-01

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers ([Boutla, M., Supalla, T., Newport, E. L., & Bavelier, D.…

Spelling Development among Triangle versus Native Bedouin Arabic Pupils

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fragman, Alon

2014-01-01

This study compared spelling development of consonants (guttural: /?/, uvular-velar: /q/ and /g/, emphatic: /??/, /??/, and /ð?, and dental: /?/) in the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic speakers from north and southern Israel (N = 666), versus native Arabic pupils from the triangle (N = 153), learning in second, fourth, and sixth…

Identifying Core Vocabulary for Urdu Language Speakers Using Augmentative Alternative Communication

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mukati, Abdul Samad

2013-01-01

The purpose of this research is to identify a core set of vocabulary used by native Urdu language (UL) speakers during dyadic conversation for social interaction and relationship building. This study was conducted in Karachi, Pakistan at an institution of higher education. This research seeks to distinguish between general (nonspecific…

The Preservation of Schwa in the Converging Phonological System of Frenchville (PA) French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bullock, Barbara E.; Gerfen, Chip

2005-01-01

The phonological system of the French of Frenchville, Pennsylvania (USA) demonstrates a dramatic case of transfer in the latest (and last) generation of bilingual French-English speakers: the mid front round vowels, [ligature of o and e] and [slashed o], have often been replaced by the English rhoticized schwa as found in the word "sir."…

(Non)native Speakered: Rethinking (Non)nativeness and Teacher Identity in TESOL Teacher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aneja, Geeta A.

2016-01-01

Despite its imprecision, the native-nonnative dichotomy has become the dominant paradigm for examining language teacher identity development. The nonnative English speaking teacher (NNEST) movement in particular has considered the impact of deficit framings of nonnativeness on "NNEST" preservice teachers. Although these efforts have…

Computer-Assisted Bilingual/Bicultural Multiskills Project, 1987-1988. OREA Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berney, Tomi D.; Carey, Cecilia

The Computer-Assisted Bilingual/Bicultural Multiskills Project completed its first year of an extension grant. The program used computerized and non-computerized instruction to help 109 native speakers of Haitian Creole/French and Spanish, most of whom were recent immigrants, develop English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) native language, and content…

Perception of English palatal codas by Korean speakers of English

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yeon, Sang-Hee

2003-04-01

This study aimed at looking at perception of English palatal codas by Korean speakers of English to determine if perception problems are the source of production problems. In particular, first, this study looked at the possible first language effect on the perception of English palatal codas. Second, a possible perceptual source of vowel epenthesis after English palatal codas was investigated. In addition, individual factors, such as length of residence, TOEFL score, gender and academic status, were compared to determine if those affected the varying degree of the perception accuracy. Eleven adult Korean speakers of English as well as three native speakers of English participated in the study. Three sets of a perception test including identification of minimally different English pseudo- or real words were carried out. The results showed that, first, the Korean speakers perceived the English codas significantly worse than the Americans. Second, the study supported the idea that Koreans perceived an extra /i/ after the final affricates due to final release. Finally, none of the individual factors explained the varying degree of the perceptional accuracy. In particular, TOEFL scores and the perception test scores did not have any statistically significant association.

Spanish Native Language Arts Staff Development Turnkey Training Program, Spring 1989. OREA Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berney, Tomi D.

The Spanish Native Language Arts Development Turnkey Training Program attempted to create a network of secondary school administrators and teachers of Spanish acquainted with current research and methodology and able to provide staff development in native language arts for teachers of native Spanish speakers of limited English proficiency. Nine…

Effect of Training Japanese L1 Speakers in the Production of American English /r/ Using Spectrographic Visual Feedback

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Patten, Iomi; Edmonds, Lisa A.

2015-01-01

The present study examines the effects of training native Japanese speakers in the production of American /r/ using spectrographic visual feedback. Within a modified single-subject design, two native Japanese participants produced single words containing /r/ in a variety of positions while viewing live spectrographic feedback with the aim of…

Intonation and talker variability in the discrimination of Spanish lexical stress contrasts by Spanish, German and French listeners.

PubMed

Schwab, Sandra; Dellwo, Volker

2017-10-01

The perception of stress is highly influenced by listeners' native language. In this research, the authors examined the effect of intonation and talker variability (here: phonetic variability) in the discrimination of Spanish lexical stress contrasts by native Spanish (N = 17), German (N = 21), and French (N = 27) listeners. Participants listened to 216 trials containing three Spanish disyllabic words, where one word carried a different lexical stress to the others. The listeners' task was to identify the deviant word in each trial (Odd-One-Out task). The words in the trials were produced by either the same talker or by two different talkers, and carried the same or varying intonation patterns. The German listeners' performance was lower compared to the Spanish listeners but higher than that of the French listeners. French listeners performed above chance level with and without talker variability, and performed at chance level when intonation variability was introduced. Results are discussed in the context of the stress "deafness" hypothesis.

Exchange of Disfluency with Age from Function to Content Words in Brazilian Portuguese Speakers Who Do and Do Not Stutter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Juste, Fabiola Staroble; Sassi, Fernanda Chiarion; de Andrade, Claudia Regina Furquim

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the exchange of disfluencies from function words to content words with age in Brazilian Portuguese speakers who do and do not stutter. Ninety stuttering individuals and 90 controls, native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, were divided into three age groups (children, adolescents and adults). The study…

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Electronic Discussion and Foreign Language Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hanna, Barbara; de Nooy, Juliana

2003-01-01

Examines participation of language students in on-line discussion groups with native speakers of the target language. Examines the threads started by four anglophone students of French when they post messages to a forum on the Web site of the French newspaper "Le Monde." Investigation of these examples points to the ways in which electronic…

An Investigation into the Tense/Aspect Preferences of Turkish Speakers of English and Native English Speakers in Their Oral Narration

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bada, Erdogan; Genc, Bilal

2007-01-01

The study of SLA began around the beginning of the 70s with the emergence of both theoretical and empirical studies. Undoubtedly, the acquisition of tense/aspect, besides other topics, has attracted much interest from researchers. This study investigated the use of telic and atelic verb forms in the oral production of Turkish speakers of English…

Experiences of French Speaking Immigrants and Non-immigrants Accessing Health Care Services in a Large Canadian City

PubMed Central

Ngwakongnwi, Emmanuel; Hemmelgarn, Brenda R.; Musto, Richard; Quan, Hude; King-Shier, Kathryn M.

2012-01-01

French speakers residing in predominantly English-speaking communities have been linked to difficulties accessing health care. This study examined health care access experiences of immigrants and non-immigrants who self-identify as Francophone or French speakers in a mainly English speaking province of Canada. We used semi-structured interviews to gather opinions of recent users of physician and hospital services (N = 26). Language barriers and difficulties finding family doctors were experienced by both French speaking immigrants and non-immigrants alike. This was exacerbated by a general preference for health services in French and less interest in using language interpreters during a medical consultation. Some participants experienced emotional distress, were discontent with care received, often delayed seeking care due to language barriers. Recent immigrants identified lack of insurance coverage for drugs, transportation difficulties and limited knowledge of the healthcare system as major detractors to achieving health. This study provided the groundwork for future research on health issues of official language minorities in Canada. PMID:23202772

The Sound of Voice: Voice-Based Categorization of Speakers' Sexual Orientation within and across Languages.

PubMed

Sulpizio, Simone; Fasoli, Fabio; Maass, Anne; Paladino, Maria Paola; Vespignani, Francesco; Eyssel, Friederike; Bentler, Dominik

2015-01-01

Empirical research had initially shown that English listeners are able to identify the speakers' sexual orientation based on voice cues alone. However, the accuracy of this voice-based categorization, as well as its generalizability to other languages (language-dependency) and to non-native speakers (language-specificity), has been questioned recently. Consequently, we address these open issues in 5 experiments: First, we tested whether Italian and German listeners are able to correctly identify sexual orientation of same-language male speakers. Then, participants of both nationalities listened to voice samples and rated the sexual orientation of both Italian and German male speakers. We found that listeners were unable to identify the speakers' sexual orientation correctly. However, speakers were consistently categorized as either heterosexual or gay on the basis of how they sounded. Moreover, a similar pattern of results emerged when listeners judged the sexual orientation of speakers of their own and of the foreign language. Overall, this research suggests that voice-based categorization of sexual orientation reflects the listeners' expectations of how gay voices sound rather than being an accurate detector of the speakers' actual sexual identity. Results are discussed with regard to accuracy, acoustic features of voices, language dependency and language specificity.

Making Teaching Lexis and Structures to Adult EFL Learners More Effective through Creating a Learning Community and Fostering Some Specific Learning Skills: A Curriculum for a Short-Term Development Course for Non-Native Speaker EFL Teachers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Klyevanov, Oleksandr

This paper is an attempt to design a curriculum for a short-term development course for a non-native speaker English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers. The purpose is to share experiences in the effective teaching of lexis and structures; to make its participants aware of the importance of such necessities and creating a learning community and…

The Development of Composition Skills via Directed Writing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rahilly, Leonard J.

To alleviate problems associated with free composition as a method of foreign language writing instruction, the directed writing method was adapted for use in a college French composition course. High-quality French texts, often of only a page or two and written by native speakers, are used as a basis for grammatical analysis and discussion and a…

Intonation and gender perception: applications for transgender speakers.

PubMed

Hancock, Adrienne; Colton, Lindsey; Douglas, Fiacre

2014-03-01

Intonation is commonly addressed in voice and communication feminization therapy, yet empirical evidence of gender differences for intonation is scarce and rarely do studies examine how it relates to gender perception of transgender speakers. This study examined intonation of 12 males, 12 females, six female-to-male, and 14 male-to-female transgender speakers describing a Norman Rockwell image. Several intonation measures were compared between biological gender groups, between perceived gender groups, and between male-to-female (MTF) speakers who were perceived as male, female, or ambiguous gender. Speakers with a larger percentage of utterances with upward intonation and a larger utterance semitone range were perceived as female by listeners, despite no significant differences between the actual intonation of the four gender groups. MTF speakers who do not pass as female appear to use less upward and more downward intonations than female and passing MTF speakers. Intonation has potential for use in transgender communication therapy because it can influence perception to some degree. Copyright © 2014 The Voice Foundation. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Evaluating causes of foreign accent in English sentences spoken by native speakers of Italian differing in age of arrival (AOA) in Canada

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Flege, James; Mackay, Ian; Imai, Satomi

2003-04-01

This study evaluated potential causes of foreign accent (FA) by including native Italian (NI) speakers with a later age of arrival (AOA) in Canada than in previous studies. Three NI groups (n=18 each) differing in AOA (means=10, 18, and 26 years) participated. Listeners used a 9-point scale to rate sentences produced by the three NI groups and native English controls. The ratings obtained for all four groups differed significantly. The stronger foreign accents of the AOA-18 than AOA-10 group might be attributed to the passing of a critical period, or to stronger cross-language interference by more robust Italian phonetic categories. The difference might also be attributed to differences in language use. This is because the AOA-10 and AOA-18 groups (but not the AOA-18 and AOA-26 groups) differed significantly in percentage of English and Italian use, length of residence in Canada, and years of education in Canada. None of these explanations will apparently explain the stronger FAs of the AOA-26 than AOA-18 group. The difference between these groups might be attributed to cognitive aging [Hakuta et al., Appl. Psycholinguistics (in press)], which results in gradually less successful second-language acquisition across the adult life span. [Work supported by NIH.

Inter- and Intralingual Lexical Influences in Advanced Learners' French L3 Oral Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lindqvist, Christina

2010-01-01

The present study investigates lexical inter- and intralingual influences in the oral production of 14 very advanced learners of French L3. Lexical deviances are divided into two main categories: formal influence and meaning-based influence. The results show that, as predicted with respect to advanced learners, meaning-based influence is the most…

The neural correlates of highly iconic structures and topographic discourse in French Sign Language as observed in six hearing native signers.

PubMed

Courtin, C; Hervé, P-Y; Petit, L; Zago, L; Vigneau, M; Beaucousin, V; Jobard, G; Mazoyer, B; Mellet, E; Tzourio-Mazoyer, N

2010-09-01

"Highly iconic" structures in Sign Language enable a narrator to act, switch characters, describe objects, or report actions in four-dimensions. This group of linguistic structures has no real spoken-language equivalent. Topographical descriptions are also achieved in a sign-language specific manner via the use of signing-space and spatial-classifier signs. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the neural correlates of topographic discourse and highly iconic structures in French Sign Language (LSF) in six hearing native signers, children of deaf adults (CODAs), and six LSF-naïve monolinguals. LSF materials consisted of videos of a lecture excerpt signed without spatially organized discourse or highly iconic structures (Lect LSF), a tale signed using highly iconic structures (Tale LSF), and a topographical description using a diagrammatic format and spatial-classifier signs (Topo LSF). We also presented texts in spoken French (Lect French, Tale French, Topo French) to all participants. With both languages, the Topo texts activated several different regions that are involved in mental navigation and spatial working memory. No specific correlate of LSF spatial discourse was evidenced. The same regions were more activated during Tale LSF than Lect LSF in CODAs, but not in monolinguals, in line with the presence of signing-space structure in both conditions. Motion processing areas and parts of the fusiform gyrus and precuneus were more active during Tale LSF in CODAs; no such effect was observed with French or in LSF-naïve monolinguals. These effects may be associated with perspective-taking and acting during personal transfers. 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Acquiring Nothing?: The Use of Zero Pronouns by Nonnative Speakers of Chinese and the Implications for the Acquisition of Nominal Reference.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polio, Charlene

1995-01-01

Examined how speakers of languages with zero pronouns (Japanese) and without them (English) use zero pronouns when acquiring a second language (L2) that has them (Mandarin Chinese). The findings show that L2 learners do not use zero pronouns as often as native speakers and that their use increases with proficiency. (51 references) (MDM)

Do We All Apologize the Same?--An Empirical Study on the Act of Apologizing by Spanish Speakers Learning English.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mir, Montserrat

1992-01-01

A study examined the production of English apology strategies by Spanish speakers learning English, by analyzing the remedial move in native and non-native social interactions. To restore harmony when an offensive act has been committed, remedial exchanges are performed according to the rules of speaking and the social norms of the speech…

Are lexical tones musical? Native language's influence on neural response to pitch in different domains.

PubMed

Chen, Ao; Peter, Varghese; Wijnen, Frank; Schnack, Hugo; Burnham, Denis

2018-04-21

Language experience shapes musical and speech pitch processing. We investigated whether speaking a lexical tone language natively modulates neural processing of pitch in language and music as well as their correlation. We tested tone language (Mandarin Chinese), and non-tone language (Dutch) listeners in a passive oddball paradigm measuring mismatch negativity (MMN) for (i) Chinese lexical tones and (ii) three-note musical melodies with similar pitch contours. For lexical tones, Chinese listeners showed a later MMN peak than the non-tone language listeners, whereas for MMN amplitude there were no significant differences between groups. Dutch participants also showed a late discriminative negativity (LDN). In the music condition two MMNs, corresponding to the two notes that differed between the standard and the deviant were found for both groups, and an LDN were found for both the Dutch and the Chinese listeners. The music MMNs were significantly right lateralized. Importantly, significant correlations were found between the lexical tone and the music MMNs for the Dutch but not the Chinese participants. The results suggest that speaking a tone language natively does not necessarily enhance neural responses to pitch either in language or in music, but that it does change the nature of neural pitch processing: non-tone language speakers appear to perceive lexical tones as musical, whereas for tone language speakers, lexical tones and music may activate different neural networks. Neural resources seem to be assigned differently for the lexical tones and for musical melodies, presumably depending on the presence or absence of long-term phonological memory traces. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Second Language Acquisition of Variable Structures in Spanish by Portuguese Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Geeslin, Kimberly L.; Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro

2006-01-01

This study provides a model for examining the second language (L2) acquisition of structures where the first language (L1) and (L2) are similar, and where native speaker (NS) use varies. Research on the copula contrast in Spanish ("ser" and "estar" mean "to be") has shown that an assessment of learner choice cannot rely on an error analysis…

Generic Language and Speaker Confidence Guide Preschoolers' Inferences about Novel Animate Kinds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stock, Hayli R.; Graham, Susan A.; Chambers, Craig G.

2009-01-01

We investigated the influence of speaker certainty on 156 four-year-old children's sensitivity to generic and nongeneric statements. An inductive inference task was implemented, in which a speaker described a nonobvious property of a novel creature using either a generic or a nongeneric statement. The speaker appeared to be confident, neutral, or…

Nativization processes in L1 Esperanto.

PubMed

Bergen, B K

2001-10-01

The artificial language Esperanto is spoken not only as a second language, by its proponents, but also as a native language by children of some of those proponents. The present study is a preliminary description of some characteristics of the Native Esperanto (NE) of eight speakers, ranging in age from six to fourteen years. As such, it is the first of its kind--previous works on NE are either theoretical treatises or individual case studies. We find, at least for the eight subjects studied, both bilingualism and nativization effects, differentiating native from non-native Esperanto speech. Among these effects are loss or modification of the accusative case, phonological reduction, attrition of the tense/aspect system, and pronominal cliticization. The theoretical ramifications are discussed, particularly with regard to universals of language acquisition and the effects of expressive requirements of language.

Toddlers Learn Words in a Foreign Language: The Role of Native Vocabulary Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koening, Melissa; Woodward, Amanda

2012-01-01

The current study examined monolingual English-speaking toddlers' (N=50) ability to learn word-referent links from native speakers of Dutch versus English, and second, whether children generalized or sequestered their extensions when terms were tested by a subsequent speaker of English. Overall, children performed better in the English than in the…

A Longitudinal Study of the Use of the First Language (L1) in French Foreign Language (FL) Classes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

White, Erin; Storch, Neomy

2012-01-01

This longitudinal study investigated teachers' use of the first language (L1) in two French foreign language (FL) intermediate level classes at two Australian universities. A native French-speaking teacher (NS) and a non-native French-speaking teacher (NNS) were observed and audio-recorded approximately every two weeks over a 12- week semester.…

L2 Word Recognition: Influence of L1 Orthography on Multi-syllabic Word Recognition.

PubMed

Hamada, Megumi

2017-10-01

L2 reading research suggests that L1 orthographic experience influences L2 word recognition. Nevertheless, the findings on multi-syllabic words in English are still limited despite the fact that a vast majority of words are multi-syllabic. The study investigated whether L1 orthography influences the recognition of multi-syllabic words, focusing on the position of an embedded word. The participants were Arabic ESL learners, Chinese ESL learners, and native speakers of English. The task was a word search task, in which the participants identified a target word embedded in a pseudoword at the initial, middle, or final position. The search accuracy and speed indicated that all groups showed a strong preference for the initial position. The accuracy data further indicated group differences. The Arabic group showed higher accuracy in the final than middle, while the Chinese group showed the opposite and the native speakers showed no difference between the two positions. The findings suggest that L2 multi-syllabic word recognition involves unique processes.

L2 and L3 Ultimate Attainment: An Investigation of Two Parameters

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hermas, Abdelkader

2014-01-01

This study considers the upper limit of ultimate attainment in the L2 French and L3 English of trilingual learners. The learners are native speakers of Moroccan Arabic who started learning L2 French at eight and L3 English at 16. They are advanced in both languages. Four constructions representing the verb movement and null subject parameter were…

A geophysical investigation: Locating the native american settlement at fort shirley

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Spittler, Ryan S.

During the French and Indian War, between the summer of 1754 and the fall of 1756, a unique engagement between Native Americans and colonists occurred. Situated in Aughwick Old Town, present day Shirleysburg, Pennsylvania, approximately 200 Native Americans were settled in wooden cabins near Fort Shirley. Today, no visible trace of the Native American settlement of Aughwick Old Town exists. The little that is known about these circumstances comes from various historical documents. This thesis research is focused on determining the location of Aughwick Old Town, assessing whether using geophysics can locate the settlement, and determining how artifacts recovered from excavations can add to the knowledge about the French and Indian War. Extensive historical research, geophysical surveys, archaeological excavations, and artifact analyses have provided new insights into this part of the French and Indian War.

Cross-Language Modulation of Visual Attention Span: An Arabic-French-Spanish Comparison in Skilled Adult Readers.

PubMed

Awadh, Faris H R; Phénix, Thierry; Antzaka, Alexia; Lallier, Marie; Carreiras, Manuel; Valdois, Sylviane

2016-01-01

In delineating the amount of orthographic information that can be processed in parallel during a single fixation, the visual attention (VA) span acts as a key component of the reading system. Previous studies focused on the contribution of VA span to normal and pathological reading in monolingual and bilingual children from different European languages, without direct cross-language comparison. In the current paper, we explored modulations of VA span abilities in three languages -French, Spanish, and Arabic- that differ in transparency, reading direction and writing systems. The participants were skilled adult readers who were native speakers of French, Spanish or Arabic. They were administered tasks of global and partial letter report, single letter identification and text reading. Their VA span abilities were assessed using tasks that require the processing of briefly presented five consonant strings (e.g., R S H F T). All five consonants had to be reported in global report but a single cued letter in partial report. Results showed that VA span was reduced in Arabic readers as compared to French or Spanish readers who otherwise show a similar high performance in the two report tasks. The analysis of VA span response patterns in global report showed a left-right asymmetry in all three languages. A leftward letter advantage was found in French and Spanish but a rightward advantage in Arabic. The response patterns were symmetric in partial report, regardless of the language. Last, a significant relationship was found between VA span abilities and reading speed but only for French. The overall findings suggest that the size of VA span, the shape of VA span response patterns and the VA Span-reading relationship are modulated by language-specific features.

Cross-Language Modulation of Visual Attention Span: An Arabic-French-Spanish Comparison in Skilled Adult Readers

PubMed Central

Awadh, Faris H. R.; Phénix, Thierry; Antzaka, Alexia; Lallier, Marie; Carreiras, Manuel; Valdois, Sylviane

2016-01-01

In delineating the amount of orthographic information that can be processed in parallel during a single fixation, the visual attention (VA) span acts as a key component of the reading system. Previous studies focused on the contribution of VA span to normal and pathological reading in monolingual and bilingual children from different European languages, without direct cross-language comparison. In the current paper, we explored modulations of VA span abilities in three languages –French, Spanish, and Arabic– that differ in transparency, reading direction and writing systems. The participants were skilled adult readers who were native speakers of French, Spanish or Arabic. They were administered tasks of global and partial letter report, single letter identification and text reading. Their VA span abilities were assessed using tasks that require the processing of briefly presented five consonant strings (e.g., R S H F T). All five consonants had to be reported in global report but a single cued letter in partial report. Results showed that VA span was reduced in Arabic readers as compared to French or Spanish readers who otherwise show a similar high performance in the two report tasks. The analysis of VA span response patterns in global report showed a left-right asymmetry in all three languages. A leftward letter advantage was found in French and Spanish but a rightward advantage in Arabic. The response patterns were symmetric in partial report, regardless of the language. Last, a significant relationship was found between VA span abilities and reading speed but only for French. The overall findings suggest that the size of VA span, the shape of VA span response patterns and the VA Span-reading relationship are modulated by language-specific features. PMID:27014125

Examining Test Speededness by Native Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Talento-Miller, Eileen; Guo, Fanmin; Han, Kyung T.

2013-01-01

When power tests include a time limit, it is important to assess the possibility of speededness for examinees. Past research on differential speededness has examined gender and ethnic subgroups in the United States on paper and pencil tests. When considering the needs of a global audience, research regarding different native language speakers is…

Partially supervised speaker clustering.

PubMed

Tang, Hao; Chu, Stephen Mingyu; Hasegawa-Johnson, Mark; Huang, Thomas S

2012-05-01

Content-based multimedia indexing, retrieval, and processing as well as multimedia databases demand the structuring of the media content (image, audio, video, text, etc.), one significant goal being to associate the identity of the content to the individual segments of the signals. In this paper, we specifically address the problem of speaker clustering, the task of assigning every speech utterance in an audio stream to its speaker. We offer a complete treatment to the idea of partially supervised speaker clustering, which refers to the use of our prior knowledge of speakers in general to assist the unsupervised speaker clustering process. By means of an independent training data set, we encode the prior knowledge at the various stages of the speaker clustering pipeline via 1) learning a speaker-discriminative acoustic feature transformation, 2) learning a universal speaker prior model, and 3) learning a discriminative speaker subspace, or equivalently, a speaker-discriminative distance metric. We study the directional scattering property of the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) mean supervector representation of utterances in the high-dimensional space, and advocate exploiting this property by using the cosine distance metric instead of the euclidean distance metric for speaker clustering in the GMM mean supervector space. We propose to perform discriminant analysis based on the cosine distance metric, which leads to a novel distance metric learning algorithm—linear spherical discriminant analysis (LSDA). We show that the proposed LSDA formulation can be systematically solved within the elegant graph embedding general dimensionality reduction framework. Our speaker clustering experiments on the GALE database clearly indicate that 1) our speaker clustering methods based on the GMM mean supervector representation and vector-based distance metrics outperform traditional speaker clustering methods based on the “bag of acoustic features” representation and statistical

Why Not Non-Native Varieties of English as Listening Comprehension Test Input?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abeywickrama, Priyanvada

2013-01-01

The existence of different varieties of English in target language use (TLU) domains calls into question the usefulness of listening comprehension tests whose input is limited only to a native speaker variety. This study investigated the impact of non-native varieties or accented English speech on test takers from three different English use…

A Canadian Experiment in Bilingual Education: The Peel Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barik, Henri C.; Swain, Merrill

1976-01-01

An evaluation of a bilingual program for native English speakers in Ontario that involves the use of French as the medium of instruction for 70 percent of the curriculum in grade 8 and 40 percent in grade 9. (Author/KM)

Gender Signalling in Russian: A Contrastive Analysis of Native Speakers and Artificial Neural Networks.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andrews, Edna; And Others

1993-01-01

Two surveys conducted in the Soviet Union are reported that demonstrate the complicated interrelationship between linguistic form and meaning. They support Jakobson and Gorbacevic on gender signalling, particularly when the speaker is not certain of the noun in question. (Contains 44 references.) (LB)

Use of the BAT with a Cantonese-Putonghua speaker with aphasia.

PubMed

Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin; Weekes, Brendan Stuart

2011-06-01

The aim of this article is to illustrate the use of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) with a Cantonese-Putonghua speaker. We describe G, who is a relatively young Chinese bilingual speaker with aphasia. G's communication abilities in his L2, Putonghua, were impaired following brain damage. This impairment caused specific difficulties in communication with his wife, a native Putonghua speaker, and was thus a priority for investigation. Given a paucity of standardised tests of aphasia in Putonghua, our goal was to use the BAT to assess G's impairments in his L2. Results showed that G's performance on the BAT subtests measuring word and sentence comprehension and production was impaired. His pattern of performance on the BAT allowed us to generate hypotheses about his higher-level language impairments in Putonghua, which were subsequently found to be impaired. We argue that the BAT is able to capture the primary language impairments in Chinese-speaking patients with aphasia when Putonghua is the second language. We also suggest some modifications to the BAT for testing Chinese-speaking patients with bilingual aphasia.

Perceptual Confusions of American-English Vowels and Consonants by Native Arabic Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shafiro, Valeriy; Levy, Erika S.; Khamis-Dakwar, Reem; Kharkhurin, Anatoliy

2013-01-01

This study investigated the perception of American-English (AE) vowels and consonants by young adults who were either (a) early Arabic-English bilinguals whose native language was Arabic or (b) native speakers of the English dialects spoken in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where both groups were studying. In a closed-set format, participants…

The Stroop Effect in Kana and Kanji Scripts in Native Japanese Speakers: An fMRI Study

PubMed Central

Coderre, Emily L.; Filippi, Christopher G.; Newhouse, Paul A.; Dumas, Julie A.

2008-01-01

Prior research has shown that the two writing systems of the Japanese orthography are processed differently: kana (syllabic symbols) are processed like other phonetic languages such as English, while kanji (a logographic writing system) are processed like other logographic languages like Chinese. Previous work done with the Stroop task in Japanese has shown that these differences in processing strategies create differences in Stroop effects. This study investigated the Stroop effect in kanji and kana using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the similarities and differences in brain processing between logographic and phonetic languages. Nine native Japanese speakers performed the Stroop task both in kana and kanji scripts during fMRI. Both scripts individually produced significant Stroop effects as measured by the behavioral reaction time data. The imaging data for both scripts showed brain activation in the anterior cingulate gyrus, an area involved in inhibiting automatic processing. Though behavioral data showed no significant differences between the Stroop effects in kana and kanji, there were differential areas of activation in fMRI found for each writing system. In fMRI, the Stroop task activated an area in the left inferior parietal lobule during the kana task and the left inferior frontal gyrus during the kanji task. The results of the present study suggest that the Stroop task in Japanese kana and kanji elicits differential activation in brain regions involved in conflict detection and resolution for syllabic and logographic writing systems. PMID:18325582

"My Major Is English, Believe It or Not:)" -- Participant Orientations in Nonnative/Native Text Chat

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vandergriff, Ilona

2013-01-01

In their interactions with native speakers (NS), nonnative speakers (NNS) often position themselves as relative novices. For example, they may orient to the language expertise differential by apologizing for their linguistic ineptness or by making self-disparaging remarks about their second language (L2). This is true even for advanced learners in…

"I Just Need More Time": A Study of Native and Non-Native Students' Requests to Faculty for an Extension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Woodfield, Helen; Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria

2010-01-01

This paper examines the status-unequal requests of 89 advanced mixed-L1 learners and 87 British English native speakers elicited by a written discourse completion task. Significant differences were observed in all three dimensions analysed: internal and external modification, and perspective. The data demonstrate learners' overuse of zero marking…

Normative data for a computer-assisted version of the auditory three-consonant Brown-Peterson paradigm in the elderly French-Quebec population.

PubMed

Callahan, Brandy L; Belleville, Sylvie; Ferland, Guylaine; Potvin, Olivier; Tremblay, Marie-Pier; Hudon, Carol; Macoir, Joël

2014-01-01

The Brown-Peterson task is used to assess verbal short-term memory as well as divided attention. In its auditory three-consonant version, trigrams are presented to participants who must recall the items in correct order after variable delays, during which an interference task is performed. The present study aimed to establish normative data for this test in the elderly French-Quebec population based on cross-sectional data from a retrospective, multi-center convenience sample. A total of 595 elderly native French-speakers from the province of Quebec performed the Memoria version of the auditory three-consonant Brown-Peterson test. For both series and item-by-item scoring methods, age, education, and, in most cases, recall after a 0-second interval were found to be significantly associated with recall performance after 10-second, 20-second, and 30-second interference intervals. Based on regression model results, equations to calculate Z scores are presented for the 10-second, 20-second and 30-second intervals and for each scoring method to allow estimation of expected performance based on participants' individual characteristics. As an important ceiling effect was observed at the 0-second interval, norms for this interference interval are presented in percentiles.

The Influence of Bilectalism and Non-standardization on the Perception of Native Grammatical Variants

PubMed Central

Leivada, Evelina; Papadopoulou, Elena; Kambanaros, Maria; Grohmann, Kleanthes K.

2017-01-01

Research in speakers of closely related varieties has shown that bilectalism and non-standardization affect speakers’ perception of the variants that exist in their native languages in a way that is absent from the performance of their monolingual peers. One possible explanation for this difference is that non-standardization blurs the boundaries of grammatical variants and increases grammatical fluidity. Affected by such factors, bilectals become less accurate in identifying the variety to which a grammatical variant pertains. Another explanation is that their differential performance derives from the fact that they are competent in two varieties. Under this scenario, the difference is due to the existence of two linguistic systems in the course of development, and not to how close or standardized these systems are. This study employs a novel variety-judgment task in order to elucidate which of the two explanations holds. Having administered the task to monolinguals, bilectals, and bilinguals, including heritage language learners and L1 attriters, we obtained a dataset of 16,245 sentences. The analysis shows differential performance between bilectal and bilingual speakers, granting support for the first explanation. We discuss the role of factors such as non-standardization and linguistic proximity in language development and flesh out the implications of the results in relation to different developmental trajectories. PMID:28265248

Non-Native Japanese Listeners' Perception of Vowel Length Contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsukada, Kimiko

2012-01-01

This study aimed to compare the perception of short vs. long vowel contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) by four groups of listeners differing in their linguistic backgrounds: native Arabic (NA), native Japanese (NJ), non-native Japanese (NNJ) and Australian English (OZ) speakers. The NNJ and OZ groups shared the first language…

Optimization of multilayer neural network parameters for speaker recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tovarek, Jaromir; Partila, Pavol; Rozhon, Jan; Voznak, Miroslav; Skapa, Jan; Uhrin, Dominik; Chmelikova, Zdenka

2016-05-01

This article discusses the impact of multilayer neural network parameters for speaker identification. The main task of speaker identification is to find a specific person in the known set of speakers. It means that the voice of an unknown speaker (wanted person) belongs to a group of reference speakers from the voice database. One of the requests was to develop the text-independent system, which means to classify wanted person regardless of content and language. Multilayer neural network has been used for speaker identification in this research. Artificial neural network (ANN) needs to set parameters like activation function of neurons, steepness of activation functions, learning rate, the maximum number of iterations and a number of neurons in the hidden and output layers. ANN accuracy and validation time are directly influenced by the parameter settings. Different roles require different settings. Identification accuracy and ANN validation time were evaluated with the same input data but different parameter settings. The goal was to find parameters for the neural network with the highest precision and shortest validation time. Input data of neural networks are a Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC). These parameters describe the properties of the vocal tract. Audio samples were recorded for all speakers in a laboratory environment. Training, testing and validation data set were split into 70, 15 and 15 %. The result of the research described in this article is different parameter setting for the multilayer neural network for four speakers.

Which English? Whose English? An Investigation of "Non-Native" Teachers' Beliefs about Target Varieties

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Young, Tony Johnstone; Walsh, Steve

2010-01-01

This study explored the beliefs of "non-native English speaking" teachers about the usefulness and appropriacy of varieties such as English as an International Language (EIL) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), compared with native speaker varieties. The study therefore addresses the current theoretical debate concerning "appropriate" target…

A Computer Text Analysis of Four Cohesion Devices in English Discourse by Native and Nonnative Writers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reid, Joy

1992-01-01

In a contrastive rhetoric study of nonnative English speakers, 768 essays written in English by native speakers of Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and English were examined using the Writer's Workbench program to determine whether distinctive, quantifiable differences in the use of 4 cohesion devices existed among the 4 language backgrounds. (Author/LB)

Speaking out or Keeping Silent: International Students' Identity as Legitimate Speakers and Teachers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xuan, Pham Thi Thanh

2014-01-01

Few studies have focused on the identity formation of non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) as legitimate speakers and teachers of English. Drawing on Norton's (2000) poststructuralist theory of identity as a process of struggling and changing, this study examined whether and how Asian international students studying for a Masters in…

Proceedings of the Conference on the Role of Canadian Universities in the Teaching of English and French as Second Languages.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whalen, Robert, Ed.; Tatlow, Fred, Ed.

A compilation of conference proceedings and addresses, in English and in French, of an August, 1967 meeting in Quebec, Canada is presented. Nelson Brooks offers the keynote speech on bilingualism today. Other speakers and topics include Guy Plastre on the conference theme, Ronald Sutherland on French and English-Canadian literature, Jean-Paul…

The Effect of Experience on the Acquisition of a Non-Native Vowel Contrast

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simon, Ellen; D'Hulster, Tijs

2012-01-01

This study examines the effect of second language experience on the acquisition of the English vowel contrast /epsilon/-/ae/ by native speakers of Dutch. It reports on the results of production and perception tasks performed by three groups of native Dutch learners of English in Belgium, differing in experience with English, as measured through…

Acquisition of Complement Clitics and Tense Morphology in Internationally Adopted Children Acquiring French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gauthier, K.; Genesee, F.; Kasparian, K.

2012-01-01

The present study examined the language development of children adopted from China to examine possible early age effects with respect to their use of complement clitics, lexical diversity and verb morphology. We focused on these aspects of French because they distinguish second language learners of French and native French-speaking children with…

The Acquisition of Korean Plural Marking by Native English Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hwang, Sun Hee

2013-01-01

This study investigated the L2 acquisition of Korean plural marking by English-speaking learners within a feature-reassembly approach--a formal feature-based approach suggesting that native-like attainment of L2 morphosyntactic knowledge is determined by whether learners can reconfigure the formal features assembled in functional categories and…

Setting the Tone: An ERP Investigation of the Influences of Phonological Similarity on Spoken Word Recognition in Mandarin Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Malins, Jeffrey G.; Joanisse, Marc F.

2012-01-01

We investigated the influences of phonological similarity on the time course of spoken word processing in Mandarin Chinese. Event related potentials were recorded while adult native speakers of Mandarin ("N" = 19) judged whether auditory words matched or mismatched visually presented pictures. Mismatching words were of the following…

Consistency between verbal and non-verbal affective cues: a clue to speaker credibility.

PubMed

Gillis, Randall L; Nilsen, Elizabeth S

2017-06-01

Listeners are exposed to inconsistencies in communication; for example, when speakers' words (i.e. verbal) are discrepant with their demonstrated emotions (i.e. non-verbal). Such inconsistencies introduce ambiguity, which may render a speaker to be a less credible source of information. Two experiments examined whether children make credibility discriminations based on the consistency of speakers' affect cues. In Experiment 1, school-age children (7- to 8-year-olds) preferred to solicit information from consistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with negative affect), over novel speakers, to a greater extent than they preferred to solicit information from inconsistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with positive affect) over novel speakers. Preschoolers (4- to 5-year-olds) did not demonstrate this preference. Experiment 2 showed that school-age children's ratings of speakers were influenced by speakers' affect consistency when the attribute being judged was related to information acquisition (speakers' believability, "weird" speech), but not general characteristics (speakers' friendliness, likeability). Together, findings suggest that school-age children are sensitive to, and use, the congruency of affect cues to determine whether individuals are credible sources of information.

The interaction of glottal-pulse rate and vocal-tract length in judgements of speaker size, sex, and age

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, David R. R.; Patterson, Roy D.

2005-11-01

Glottal-pulse rate (GPR) and vocal-tract length (VTL) are related to the size, sex, and age of the speaker but it is not clear how the two factors combine to influence our perception of speaker size, sex, and age. This paper describes experiments designed to measure the effect of the interaction of GPR and VTL upon judgements of speaker size, sex, and age. Vowels were scaled to represent people with a wide range of GPRs and VTLs, including many well beyond the normal range of the population, and listeners were asked to judge the size and sex/age of the speaker. The judgements of speaker size show that VTL has a strong influence upon perceived speaker size. The results for the sex and age categorization (man, woman, boy, or girl) show that, for vowels with GPR and VTL values in the normal range, judgements of speaker sex and age are influenced about equally by GPR and VTL. For vowels with abnormal combinations of low GPRs and short VTLs, the VTL information appears to decide the sex/age judgement.

[Understanding the symbolic values of Japanese onomatopoeia: comparison of Japanese and Chinese speakers].

PubMed

Haryu, Etsuko; Zhao, Lihua

2007-10-01

Do non-native speakers of the Japanese language understand the symbolic values of Japanese onomatopoeia matching a voiced/unvoiced consonant with a big/small sound made by a big/small object? In three experiments, participants who were native speakers of Japanese, Japanese-learning Chinese, or Chinese without knowledge of the Japanese language were shown two pictures. One picture was of a small object making a small sound, such as a small vase being broken, and the other was of a big object making a big sound, such as a big vase being broken. Participants were presented with two novel onomatopoetic words with voicing contrasts, e.g.,/dachan/vs./tachan/, and were told that each word corresponded to one of the two pictures. They were then asked to match the words to the corresponding pictures. Chinese without knowledge of Japanese performed only at chance level, whereas Japanese and Japanese-learning Chinese successfully matched a voiced/unvoiced consonant with a big/small object respectively. The results suggest that the key to understanding the symbolic values of voicing contrasts in Japanese onomatopoeia is some basic knowledge that is intrinsic to the Japanese language.

And then I saw her race: Race-based expectations affect infants' word processing.

PubMed

Weatherhead, Drew; White, Katherine S

2018-08-01

How do our expectations about speakers shape speech perception? Adults' speech perception is influenced by social properties of the speaker (e.g., race). When in development do these influences begin? In the current study, 16-month-olds heard familiar words produced in their native accent (e.g., "dog") and in an unfamiliar accent involving a vowel shift (e.g., "dag"), in the context of an image of either a same-race speaker or an other-race speaker. Infants' interpretation of the words depended on the speaker's race. For the same-race speaker, infants only recognized words produced in the familiar accent; for the other-race speaker, infants recognized both versions of the words. Two additional experiments showed that infants only recognized an other-race speaker's atypical pronunciations when they differed systematically from the native accent. These results provide the first evidence that expectations driven by unspoken properties of speakers, such as race, influence infants' speech processing. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

SyllabO+: A new tool to study sublexical phenomena in spoken Quebec French.

PubMed

Bédard, Pascale; Audet, Anne-Marie; Drouin, Patrick; Roy, Johanna-Pascale; Rivard, Julie; Tremblay, Pascale

2017-10-01

Sublexical phonotactic regularities in language have a major impact on language development, as well as on speech processing and production throughout the entire lifespan. To understand the impact of phonotactic regularities on speech and language functions at the behavioral and neural levels, it is essential to have access to oral language corpora to study these complex phenomena in different languages. Yet, probably because of their complexity, oral language corpora remain less common than written language corpora. This article presents the first corpus and database of spoken Quebec French syllables and phones: SyllabO+. This corpus contains phonetic transcriptions of over 300,000 syllables (over 690,000 phones) extracted from recordings of 184 healthy adult native Quebec French speakers, ranging in age from 20 to 97 years. To ensure the representativeness of the corpus, these recordings were made in both formal and familiar communication contexts. Phonotactic distributional statistics (e.g., syllable and co-occurrence frequencies, percentages, percentile ranks, transition probabilities, and pointwise mutual information) were computed from the corpus. An open-access online application to search the database was developed, and is available at www.speechneurolab.ca/syllabo . In this article, we present a brief overview of the corpus, as well as the syllable and phone databases, and we discuss their practical applications in various fields of research, including cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, experimental psychology, phonetics, and phonology. Nonacademic practical applications are also discussed, including uses in speech-language pathology.

Integration of moral values during L2 sentence processing.

PubMed

Foucart, Alice; Moreno, Eva; Martin, Clara D; Costa, Albert

2015-11-01

This study reports an event-related potential (ERP) experiment examining whether valuation (i.e., one's own values) is integrated incrementally and whether it affects L2 speakers' online interpretation of the sentence. We presented Spanish native speakers and French-Spanish mid-proficiency late L2 speakers with visual sentences containing value-consistent and value-inconsistent statements (e.g., 'Nowadays, paedophilia should be prohibited/tolerated across the world.'). Participants' brain activity was recorded as they were reading the sentences and indicating whether they agreed with the statements or not. Behaviourally, the two groups revealed identical valuation. The ERP analyses showed both a semantic (N400) and an affect-related response (LPP) to value-inconsistent statements in the native group, but only an LPP in the non-native group. These results suggest that valuation is integrated online (presence of LPP) during L2 sentence comprehension but that it does not interfere with semantic processing (absence of N400).

Co-verbal gestures among speakers with aphasia: Influence of aphasia severity, linguistic and semantic skills, and hemiplegia on gesture employment in oral discourse

PubMed Central

Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin; Law, Sam-Po; Wat, Watson Ka-Chun; Lai, Christy

2015-01-01

The use of co-verbal gestures is common in human communication and has been reported to assist word retrieval and to facilitate verbal interactions. This study systematically investigated the impact of aphasia severity, integrity of semantic processing, and hemiplegia on the use of co-verbal gestures, with reference to gesture forms and functions, by 131 normal speakers, 48 individuals with aphasia and their controls. All participants were native Cantonese speakers. It was found that the severity of aphasia and verbal-semantic impairment was associated with significantly more co-verbal gestures. However, there was no relationship between right-sided hemiplegia and gesture employment. Moreover, significantly more gestures were employed by the speakers with aphasia, but about 10% of them did not gesture. Among those who used gestures, content-carrying gestures, including iconic, metaphoric, deictic gestures, and emblems, served the function of enhancing language content and providing information additional to the language content. As for the non-content carrying gestures, beats were used primarily for reinforcing speech prosody or guiding speech flow, while non-identifiable gestures were associated with assisting lexical retrieval or with no specific functions. The above findings would enhance our understanding of the use of various forms of co-verbal gestures in aphasic discourse production and their functions. Speech-language pathologists may also refer to the current annotation system and the results to guide clinical evaluation and remediation of gestures in aphasia. PMID:26186256

Exploring Associations among Writing Self-Perceptions, Writing Abilities, and Native Language of English-Spanish Two-Way Immersion Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neugebauer, Sabina R.; Howard, Elizabeth R.

2015-01-01

The current study, with 409 fourth graders in two-way immersion programs, explored the writing self-perceptions of native English and native Spanish speakers and the relationship between self-perceptions and writing performance. An adapted version of the Writer Self-Perception Scale (WSPS) was administered along with a writing task. Native English…

Entre Nous: A Tutorial Approach to the Teaching of Business French.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chaisson, Arthur P.

Suffolk University (Massachusetts) has developed a degree program in international marketing in French and Spanish that links curricula in the economics department and the department of humanities and modern languages. Language tutorials are mandatory for students in the international economics major. The tutorials are taught by native French- and…

Reconstructing Native American population history.

PubMed

Reich, David; Patterson, Nick; Campbell, Desmond; Tandon, Arti; Mazieres, Stéphane; Ray, Nicolas; Parra, Maria V; Rojas, Winston; Duque, Constanza; Mesa, Natalia; García, Luis F; Triana, Omar; Blair, Silvia; Maestre, Amanda; Dib, Juan C; Bravi, Claudio M; Bailliet, Graciela; Corach, Daniel; Hünemeier, Tábita; Bortolini, Maria Cátira; Salzano, Francisco M; Petzl-Erler, María Luiza; Acuña-Alonzo, Victor; Aguilar-Salinas, Carlos; Canizales-Quinteros, Samuel; Tusié-Luna, Teresa; Riba, Laura; Rodríguez-Cruz, Maricela; Lopez-Alarcón, Mardia; Coral-Vazquez, Ramón; Canto-Cetina, Thelma; Silva-Zolezzi, Irma; Fernandez-Lopez, Juan Carlos; Contreras, Alejandra V; Jimenez-Sanchez, Gerardo; Gómez-Vázquez, Maria José; Molina, Julio; Carracedo, Angel; Salas, Antonio; Gallo, Carla; Poletti, Giovanni; Witonsky, David B; Alkorta-Aranburu, Gorka; Sukernik, Rem I; Osipova, Ludmila; Fedorova, Sardana A; Vasquez, René; Villena, Mercedes; Moreau, Claudia; Barrantes, Ramiro; Pauls, David; Excoffier, Laurent; Bedoya, Gabriel; Rothhammer, Francisco; Dugoujon, Jean-Michel; Larrouy, Georges; Klitz, William; Labuda, Damian; Kidd, Judith; Kidd, Kenneth; Di Rienzo, Anna; Freimer, Nelson B; Price, Alkes L; Ruiz-Linares, Andrés

2012-08-16

The peopling of the Americas has been the subject of extensive genetic, archaeological and linguistic research; however, central questions remain unresolved. One contentious issue is whether the settlement occurred by means of a single migration or multiple streams of migration from Siberia. The pattern of dispersals within the Americas is also poorly understood. To address these questions at a higher resolution than was previously possible, we assembled data from 52 Native American and 17 Siberian groups genotyped at 364,470 single nucleotide polymorphisms. Here we show that Native Americans descend from at least three streams of Asian gene flow. Most descend entirely from a single ancestral population that we call 'First American'. However, speakers of Eskimo-Aleut languages from the Arctic inherit almost half their ancestry from a second stream of Asian gene flow, and the Na-Dene-speaking Chipewyan from Canada inherit roughly one-tenth of their ancestry from a third stream. We show that the initial peopling followed a southward expansion facilitated by the coast, with sequential population splits and little gene flow after divergence, especially in South America. A major exception is in Chibchan speakers on both sides of the Panama isthmus, who have ancestry from both North and South America.

Reconstructing Native American Population History

PubMed Central

Reich, David; Patterson, Nick; Campbell, Desmond; Tandon, Arti; Mazieres, Stéphane; Ray, Nicolas; Parra, Maria V.; Rojas, Winston; Duque, Constanza; Mesa, Natalia; García, Luis F.; Triana, Omar; Blair, Silvia; Maestre, Amanda; Dib, Juan C.; Bravi, Claudio M.; Bailliet, Graciela; Corach, Daniel; Hünemeier, Tábita; Bortolini, Maria-Cátira; Salzano, Francisco M.; Petzl-Erler, María Luiza; Acuña-Alonzo, Victor; Aguilar-Salinas, Carlos; Canizales-Quinteros, Samuel; Tusié-Luna, Teresa; Riba, Laura; Rodríguez-Cruz, Maricela; Lopez-Alarcón, Mardia; Coral-Vazquez, Ramón; Canto-Cetina, Thelma; Silva-Zolezzi, Irma; Fernandez-Lopez, Juan Carlos; Contreras, Alejandra V.; Jimenez-Sanchez, Gerardo; Gómez-Vázquez, María José; Molina, Julio; Carracedo, Ángel; Salas, Antonio; Gallo, Carla; Poletti, Giovanni; Witonsky, David B.; Alkorta-Aranburu, Gorka; Sukernik, Rem I.; Osipova, Ludmila; Fedorova, Sardana; Vasquez, René; Villena, Mercedes; Moreau, Claudia; Barrantes, Ramiro; Pauls, David; Excoffier, Laurent; Bedoya, Gabriel; Rothhammer, Francisco; Dugoujon, Jean Michel; Larrouy, Georges; Klitz, William; Labuda, Damian; Kidd, Judith; Kidd, Kenneth; Rienzo, Anna Di; Freimer, Nelson B.; Price, Alkes L.; Ruiz-Linares, Andrés

2013-01-01

The peopling of the Americas has been the subject of extensive genetic, archaeological and linguistic research; however, central questions remain unresolved1–5. One contentious issue is whether the settlement occurred via a single6–8 or multiple streams of migration from Siberia9–15. The pattern of dispersals within the Americas is also poorly understood. To address these questions at higher resolution than was previously possible, we assembled data from 52 Native American and 17 Siberian groups genotyped at 364,470 single nucleotide polymorphisms. We show that Native Americans descend from at least three streams of Asian gene flow. Most descend entirely from a single ancestral population that we call “First American”. However, speakers of Eskimo-Aleut languages from the Arctic inherit almost half their ancestry from a second stream of Asian gene flow, and the Na-Dene-speaking Chipewyan from Canada inherit roughly one-tenth of their ancestry from a third stream. We show that the initial peopling followed a southward expansion facilitated by the coast, with sequential population splits and little gene flow after divergence, especially in South America. A major exception is in Chibchan-speakers on both sides of the Panama Isthmus, who have ancestry from both North and South America. PMID:22801491

Does Grammatical Aspect Affect Motion Event Cognition? A Cross-Linguistic Comparison of English and Swedish Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Athanasopoulos, Panos; Bylund, Emanuel

2013-01-01

In this article, we explore whether cross-linguistic differences in grammatical aspect encoding may give rise to differences in memory and cognition. We compared native speakers of two languages that encode aspect differently (English and Swedish) in four tasks that examined verbal descriptions of stimuli, online triads matching, and memory-based…

Two French-Speaking Cases of Foreign Accent Syndrome: An Acoustic-Phonetic Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roy, Johanna-Pascale; Macoir, Joel; Martel-Sauvageau, Vincent; Boudreault, Carol-Ann

2012-01-01

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is an acquired neurologic disorder in which an individual suddenly and unintentionally speaks with an accent which is perceived as being different from his/her usual accent. This study presents an acoustic-phonetic description of two Quebec French-speaking cases. The first speaker presents a perceived accent shift to…

Learning to Read in English and French: Emergent Readers in French Immersion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chung, Sheila Cira; Koh, Poh Wee; Deacon, S. Hélène; Chen, Xi

2017-01-01

This longitudinal study investigated the predictors of word reading in English and French for 69 children in early total French immersion from first through third grade. The influence of phonological awareness, orthographic processing, and vocabulary in English and French on the achievement and growth of word reading in the 2 languages were…

The formulaic schema in the minds of two generations of native speakers

PubMed Central

Van Lancker Sidtis, Diana; Cameron, Krista; Bridges, Kelly; Sidtis, John J.

2015-01-01

Schemata are expressions that are fixed except for slots available for novel words (I’m not a ______ person). Our goals were to quantify speakers’ knowledge, examine semantic flexibility in open slots, and compare performance data in two generations of speakers using cloze procedures in formulaic expressions, schemata open slots, fixed portions of schemata, and novel sentences. Fewer unique words appeared for the schemata-fixed and formulaic exemplars, reflecting speakers’ knowledge of these utterances; the most semantic categories appeared for schemata-open responses. Age groups did not differ. Schemata exemplify creative interplay between novel lexical retrieval and fixed formulaic expression. PMID:26392923

L'evaluation du francais des jeunes Anglo-montrealais par leurs pairs francophones (Evaluation of the French of Young Montreal Anglophones by Their Francophone Peers).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thibault, Pierrette; Sankoff, Gillian

1999-01-01

Analyzes the reactions of francophone Montrealers (n=116) to the recorded speech of English speakers using French. Particular focus is on finding out which linguistic traits of speech triggered the judgments on the speakers' competence and to what extent they met the judges expectations with regard to their job suitability. (Author/VWL)

Language experience and consonantal context effects on perceptual assimilation of French vowels by American-English learners of French1

PubMed Central

Levy, Erika S.

2009-01-01

Recent research has called for an examination of perceptual assimilation patterns in second-language speech learning. This study examined the effects of language learning and consonantal context on perceptual assimilation of Parisian French (PF) front rounded vowels ∕y∕ and ∕œ∕ by American English (AE) learners of French. AE listeners differing in their French language experience (no experience, formal instruction, formal-plus-immersion experience) performed an assimilation task involving PF ∕y, œ, u, o, i, ε, a∕ in bilabial ∕rabVp∕ and alveolar ∕radVt∕ contexts, presented in phrases. PF front rounded vowels were assimilated overwhelmingly to back AE vowels. For PF ∕œ∕, assimilation patterns differed as a function of language experience and consonantal context. However, PF ∕y∕ revealed no experience effect in alveolar context. In bilabial context, listeners with extensive experience assimilated PF ∕y∕ to ∕ju∕ less often than listeners with no or only formal experience, a pattern predicting the poorest ∕u-y∕ discrimination for the most experienced group. An “internal consistency” analysis indicated that responses were most consistent with extensive language experience and in bilabial context. Acoustical analysis revealed that acoustical similarities among PF vowels alone cannot explain context-specific assimilation patterns. Instead it is suggested that native-language allophonic variation influences context-specific perceptual patterns in second-language learning. PMID:19206888

The Main Concept Analysis: Validation and sensitivity in differentiating discourse produced by unimpaired English speakers from individuals with aphasia and dementia of Alzheimer type.

PubMed

Kong, Anthony Pak-Hin; Whiteside, Janet; Bargmann, Peggy

2016-10-01

Discourse from speakers with dementia and aphasia is associated with comparable but not identical deficits, necessitating appropriate methods to differentiate them. The current study aims to validate the Main Concept Analysis (MCA) to be used for eliciting and quantifying discourse among native typical English speakers and to establish its norm, and investigate the validity and sensitivity of the MCA to compare discourse produced by individuals with fluent aphasia, non-fluent aphasia, or dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT), and unimpaired elderly. Discourse elicited through a sequential picture description task was collected from 60 unimpaired participants to determine the MCA scoring criteria; 12 speakers with fluent aphasia, 12 with non-fluent aphasia, 13 with DAT, and 20 elderly participants from the healthy group were compared on the finalized MCA. Results of MANOVA revealed significant univariate omnibus effects of speaker group as an independent variable on each main concept index. MCA profiles differed significantly between all participant groups except dementia versus fluent aphasia. Correlations between the MCA performances and the Western Aphasia Battery and Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test were found to be statistically significant among the clinical groups. The MCA was appropriate to be used among native speakers of English. The results also provided further empirical evidence of discourse deficits in aphasia and dementia. Practitioners can use the MCA to evaluate discourse production systemically and objectively.

Translation priming between the native language and a second language: new evidence from Dutch-French bilinguals.

PubMed

Duyck, Wouter; Warlop, Nele

2009-01-01

During the last two decades, bilingual research has adopted the masked translation priming paradigm as a tool to investigate the architecture of the bilingual language system. Although there is now a consensus about the existence of forward translation priming (from native language primes (L1) to second language (L2) translation equivalent targets), the backward translation priming effect (from L2 to L1) has only been reported in studies with bilinguals living in an L2 dominant environment. In a lexical decision experiment, we obtained significant translation priming in both directions, with unbalanced Dutch-French bilinguals living in an L1 dominant environment. Also, we demonstrated that these priming effects do not interact with a low-level visual prime feature such as font size. The obtained backward translation priming effect is consistent with the model of bilingual lexicosemantic organization of Duyck and Brysbaert (2004), which assumes strong mappings between L2 word forms and underlying semantic representations.

Working with Speakers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pestel, Ann

1989-01-01

The author discusses working with speakers from business and industry to present career information at the secondary level. Advice for speakers is presented, as well as tips for program coordinators. (CH)

Phrase Frequency, Proficiency and Grammaticality Interact in Non-Native Processing: Implications for Theories of SLA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shantz, Kailen

2017-01-01

This study reports on a self-paced reading experiment in which native and non-native speakers of English read sentences designed to evaluate the predictions of usage-based and rule-based approaches to second language acquisition (SLA). Critical stimuli were four-word sequences embedded into sentences in which phrase frequency and grammaticality…

On the optimization of a mixed speaker array in an enclosed space using the virtual-speaker weighting method

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Peng, Bo; Zheng, Sifa; Liao, Xiangning; Lian, Xiaomin

2018-03-01

In order to achieve sound field reproduction in a wide frequency band, multiple-type speakers are used. The reproduction accuracy is not only affected by the signals sent to the speakers, but also depends on the position and the number of each type of speaker. The method of optimizing a mixed speaker array is investigated in this paper. A virtual-speaker weighting method is proposed to optimize both the position and the number of each type of speaker. In this method, a virtual-speaker model is proposed to quantify the increment of controllability of the speaker array when the speaker number increases. While optimizing a mixed speaker array, the gain of the virtual-speaker transfer function is used to determine the priority orders of the candidate speaker positions, which optimizes the position of each type of speaker. Then the relative gain of the virtual-speaker transfer function is used to determine whether the speakers are redundant, which optimizes the number of each type of speaker. Finally the virtual-speaker weighting method is verified by reproduction experiments of the interior sound field in a passenger car. The results validate that the optimum mixed speaker array can be obtained using the proposed method.

Even with a green card, you can be put out to pasture and still have to work: non-native intuitions of the transparency of common English idioms.

PubMed

Malt, Barbara C; Eiter, Brianna

2004-09-01

Native speakers of English use idioms such as put your foot down and spill the beans to label events that are not described literally by the words that compose the idioms. For many such expressions, the idiomatic meanings are transparent; that is, the connection between the literal expression and its figurative meaning makes sense to native speakers. We tested Keysar and Bly's (1995) hypothesis that this sense of transparency for the meaning of everyday idioms does not necessarily obtain because the idiomatic meanings are derived from motivating literal meanings or conceptual metaphors, but rather (at least in part) because language users construct explanations after the fact for whatever meaning is conventionally assigned to the expression. Non-native speakers of English were exposed to common English idioms and taught either the conventional idiomatic meaning or an alternative meaning. In agreement with Keysar and Bly's suggestion, their subsequent sense of transparency was greater for the meaning that the speakers had learned and used, regardless of which one it was.

Grammatical and Nongrammatical Contributions to Closed-Class Word Selection

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alario, F.-Xavier; Ayora, Pauline; Costa, Albert; Melinger, Alissa

2008-01-01

Closed-class word selection was investigated by focusing on determiner production. Native speakers from three different languages named pictures of objects using determiner plus noun phrases (e.g., in French "la table" (the [subscript feminine] table), while ignoring distractor determiners printed on the pictures (e.g., "le"…

Speech Restoration: An Interactive Process

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grataloup, Claire; Hoen, Michael; Veuillet, Evelyne; Collet, Lionel; Pellegrino, Francois; Meunier, Fanny

2009-01-01

Purpose: This study investigates the ability to understand degraded speech signals and explores the correlation between this capacity and the functional characteristics of the peripheral auditory system. Method: The authors evaluated the capability of 50 normal-hearing native French speakers to restore time-reversed speech. The task required them…

Lexical Profiles of Comprehensible Second Language Speech: The Role of Appropriateness, Fluency, Variation, Sophistication, Abstractness, and Sense Relations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Kazuya; Webb, Stuart; Trofimovich, Pavel; Isaacs, Talia

2016-01-01

This study examined contributions of lexical factors to native-speaking raters' assessments of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) of second language (L2) speech. Extemporaneous oral narratives elicited from 40 French speakers of L2 English were transcribed and evaluated for comprehensibility by 10 raters. Subsequently, the samples were…

Native predators do not influence invasion success of pacific lionfish on Caribbean reefs.

PubMed

Hackerott, Serena; Valdivia, Abel; Green, Stephanie J; Côté, Isabelle M; Cox, Courtney E; Akins, Lad; Layman, Craig A; Precht, William F; Bruno, John F

2013-01-01

Biotic resistance, the process by which new colonists are excluded from a community by predation from and/or competition with resident species, can prevent or limit species invasions. We examined whether biotic resistance by native predators on Caribbean coral reefs has influenced the invasion success of red lionfishes (Pterois volitans and Pterois miles), piscivores from the Indo-Pacific. Specifically, we surveyed the abundance (density and biomass) of lionfish and native predatory fishes that could interact with lionfish (either through predation or competition) on 71 reefs in three biogeographic regions of the Caribbean. We recorded protection status of the reefs, and abiotic variables including depth, habitat type, and wind/wave exposure at each site. We found no relationship between the density or biomass of lionfish and that of native predators. However, lionfish densities were significantly lower on windward sites, potentially because of habitat preferences, and in marine protected areas, most likely because of ongoing removal efforts by reserve managers. Our results suggest that interactions with native predators do not influence the colonization or post-establishment population density of invasive lionfish on Caribbean reefs.

Faithful Imitator, Legitimate Speaker, Playful Creator and Dialogical Communicator: Shift in English Learners' Identity Prototypes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gao, Yihong

2014-01-01

This paper attempts to conceptualize identity prototypes regarding model L2 learners/users of English over the past 50 years, as embedded in research discourses. For a long time, the ideal learner was a "faithful imitator" whose L2 use and cultural conduct were strictly modeled on the native speaker (NS). With postcolonial changes around…

Native-likeness in second language lexical categorization reflects individual language history and linguistic community norms.

PubMed

Zinszer, Benjamin D; Malt, Barbara C; Ameel, Eef; Li, Ping

2014-01-01

SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS FACE A DUAL CHALLENGE IN VOCABULARY LEARNING: First, they must learn new names for the 100s of common objects that they encounter every day. Second, after some time, they discover that these names do not generalize according to the same rules used in their first language. Lexical categories frequently differ between languages (Malt et al., 1999), and successful language learning requires that bilinguals learn not just new words but new patterns for labeling objects. In the present study, Chinese learners of English with varying language histories and resident in two different language settings (Beijing, China and State College, PA, USA) named 67 photographs of common serving dishes (e.g., cups, plates, and bowls) in both Chinese and English. Participants' response patterns were quantified in terms of similarity to the responses of functionally monolingual native speakers of Chinese and English and showed the cross-language convergence previously observed in simultaneous bilinguals (Ameel et al., 2005). For English, bilinguals' names for each individual stimulus were also compared to the dominant name generated by the native speakers for the object. Using two statistical models, we disentangle the effects of several highly interactive variables from bilinguals' language histories and the naming norms of the native speaker community to predict inter-personal and inter-item variation in L2 (English) native-likeness. We find only a modest age of earliest exposure effect on L2 category native-likeness, but importantly, we find that classroom instruction in L2 negatively impacts L2 category native-likeness, even after significant immersion experience. We also identify a significant role of both L1 and L2 norms in bilinguals' L2 picture naming responses.

Native-likeness in second language lexical categorization reflects individual language history and linguistic community norms

PubMed Central

Zinszer, Benjamin D.; Malt, Barbara C.; Ameel, Eef; Li, Ping

2014-01-01

Second language learners face a dual challenge in vocabulary learning: First, they must learn new names for the 100s of common objects that they encounter every day. Second, after some time, they discover that these names do not generalize according to the same rules used in their first language. Lexical categories frequently differ between languages (Malt et al., 1999), and successful language learning requires that bilinguals learn not just new words but new patterns for labeling objects. In the present study, Chinese learners of English with varying language histories and resident in two different language settings (Beijing, China and State College, PA, USA) named 67 photographs of common serving dishes (e.g., cups, plates, and bowls) in both Chinese and English. Participants’ response patterns were quantified in terms of similarity to the responses of functionally monolingual native speakers of Chinese and English and showed the cross-language convergence previously observed in simultaneous bilinguals (Ameel et al., 2005). For English, bilinguals’ names for each individual stimulus were also compared to the dominant name generated by the native speakers for the object. Using two statistical models, we disentangle the effects of several highly interactive variables from bilinguals’ language histories and the naming norms of the native speaker community to predict inter-personal and inter-item variation in L2 (English) native-likeness. We find only a modest age of earliest exposure effect on L2 category native-likeness, but importantly, we find that classroom instruction in L2 negatively impacts L2 category native-likeness, even after significant immersion experience. We also identify a significant role of both L1 and L2 norms in bilinguals’ L2 picture naming responses. PMID:25386149

RTP Speakers Bureau

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

The Research Triangle Park Speakers Bureau page is a free resource that schools, universities, and community groups in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. area can use to request speakers and find educational resources.

Poetic rhyme reflects cross-linguistic differences in information structure.

PubMed

Wagner, Michael; McCurdy, Katherine

2010-11-01

Identical rhymes (right/write, attire/retire) are considered satisfactory and even artistic in French poetry but are considered unsatisfactory in English. This has been a consistent generalization over the course of centuries, a surprising fact given that other aspects of poetic form in French were happily applied in English. This paper puts forward the hypothesis that this difference is not merely one of poetic tradition, but is grounded in the distinct ways in which information-structure affects prosody in the two languages. A study of rhyme usage in poetry and a perception experiment confirm that native speakers' intuitions about rhyming in the two languages indeed differ, and a further perception experiment supports the hypothesis that this fact is due to a constraint on prosody that is active in English but not in French. The findings suggest that certain forms of artistic expression in poetry are influenced, and even constrained, by more general properties of a language. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Use of Pre-/Posttest and Self-Assessment Tools in a French Pronunciation Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lappin-Fortin, Kerry; Rye, B. J.

2014-01-01

This study investigated the relationships between students' self-assessments and experts' assessments in a university French pronunciation course for nonnative speakers using a pre-/posttest design. Results indicated that students were relatively accurate when making a global assessment (Time 1) and when judging some specific aspects of…

Variability in urban soils influences the health and growth of native tree seedlings

Treesearch

Clara C. Pregitzer; Nancy F. Sonti; Richard A. Hallett

2016-01-01

Reforesting degraded urban landscapes is important due to the many benefits urban forests provide. Urban soils are highly variable, yet little is known about how this variability in urban soils influences tree seedling performance and survival. We conducted a greenhouse study to assess health, growth, and survival of four native tree species growing in native glacial...

Bridging Gaps in Common Ground: Speakers Design Their Gestures for Their Listeners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hilliard, Caitlin; Cook, Susan Wagner

2016-01-01

Communication is shaped both by what we are trying to say and by whom we are saying it to. We examined whether and how shared information influences the gestures speakers produce along with their speech. Unlike prior work examining effects of common ground on speech and gesture, we examined a situation in which some speakers have the same amount…

Request a Speaker

Science.gov Websites

. Northern Command Speakers Program The U.S. Northern Command Speaker's Program works to increase face-to -face contact with our public to help build and sustain public understanding of our command missions and

Factors influencing French medical students towards a career in psychiatry.

PubMed

Andlauer, Olivier; Guicherd, William; Haffen, Emmanuel; Sechter, Daniel; Bonin, Bernard; Seed, Kitty; Lydall, Gregory; Malik, Amit; Bhugra, Dinesh; Howard, Rob

2012-09-01

There is a need to increase the recruitment to psychiatry in France. Our aim in this study was to compare factors influencing career choice between French medical students considering and not considering psychiatry as a specialty. Quantitative cross-sectional online survey on 145 French students in their last year of medical school. 22.7% of our sample considered choosing a career in psychiatry. A preference for a career in psychiatry was associated with more frequent history of personal/familial mental illness, higher ratings of psychiatric teaching, more weeks of compulsory psychiatry teaching and placement, during which students had more often met patients in recovery and been asked their opinion on patients. Students considering psychiatry as a career also emphasized more the need for a good work-life balance, and presented better attitudes toward psychiatry. Improving opportunities of interactions between students and psychiatrists or psychiatric patients might help to improve recruitment in psychiatry.

Perceptions of Female Hispanic ESL Students toward First-Year College Writing Courses: A Phenomenological Examination of Cultural Influences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Booker, Barbara B.

2012-01-01

The role of culture as a phenomenon guided this qualitative study, which examined the influence of diverse Hispanic cultures on the attitudes and perceptions towards college writing courses of female Hispanic students who are non-native speakers of English. With the increasing number of Hispanic immigrants coming to the U.S., the minority student…

The “Virtual” Panel: A Computerized Model for LGBT Speaker Panels

PubMed Central

Beasley, Christopher; Torres-Harding, Susan; Pedersen, Paula J.

2012-01-01

Recent societal trends indicate more tolerance for homosexuality, but prejudice remains on college campuses. Speaker panels are commonly used in classrooms as a way to educate students about sexual diversity and decrease negative attitudes toward sexual diversity. The advent of computer delivered instruction presents a unique opportunity to broaden the impact of traditional speaker panels. The current investigation examined the influence of an interactive “virtual” gay and lesbian speaker panel on cognitive, affective, and behavioral homonegativity. Findings suggest the computer-administered panel is lowers homonegativity, particularly for affective experiential homonegativity. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. PMID:23646036

How I See What You're Saying: The Role of Gestures in Native and Foreign Language Listening Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dahl, Tove Irene; Ludvigsen, Susanne

2014-01-01

In what ways do native language (NL) speakers and foreign language (FL) learners differ in understanding the same messages delivered with or without gestures? To answer this question, seventh- and eighth-grade NL and FL learners of English in the United States and Norway were shown a video of a speaker describing, in English, a cartoon image that…

Voice Quality in Native and Foreign Languages Investigated by Inverse Filtering and Perceptual Analyses.

PubMed

Järvinen, Kati; Laukkanen, Anne-Maria; Geneid, Ahmed

2017-03-01

Language shift from native (L1) to foreign language (L2) may affect speaker's voice production and induce vocal fatigue. This study investigates the effects of language shift on voice source and perceptual voice quality. This is a comparative experimental study. Twenty-four subjects were recorded in L1 and L2. Twelve of the subjects were native Finnish speakers and 12 were native English speakers, and the foreign languages were English and Finnish. Two groups were created based on reports of fatigability. Group 1 had the subjects who did not report more vocal fatigue in L2 than in L1, and in group 2 those who reported more vocal fatigue in L2 than in L1. Acoustic analyses by inverse filtering were conducted in L1 and L2. Also, the subjects' voices were perceptually evaluated in both languages. Results show that language shift from L1 to L2 increased perceived pressedness of voice. Acoustic analyses correlated with the perceptual evaluations. Also, the subjects who reported more vocal loading had poorer voice quality, more strenuous voice production, more pressed phonation, and a higher pitch. Voice production was less optimal in L2 than in L1. Speech training given in L2 could be beneficial for people who need to use L2 extensively. Copyright © 2017 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Native Predators Do Not Influence Invasion Success of Pacific Lionfish on Caribbean Reefs

PubMed Central

Hackerott, Serena; Valdivia, Abel; Green, Stephanie J.; Côté, Isabelle M.; Cox, Courtney E.; Akins, Lad; Layman, Craig A.; Precht, William F.; Bruno, John F.

2013-01-01

Biotic resistance, the process by which new colonists are excluded from a community by predation from and/or competition with resident species, can prevent or limit species invasions. We examined whether biotic resistance by native predators on Caribbean coral reefs has influenced the invasion success of red lionfishes (Pterois volitans and Pterois miles), piscivores from the Indo-Pacific. Specifically, we surveyed the abundance (density and biomass) of lionfish and native predatory fishes that could interact with lionfish (either through predation or competition) on 71 reefs in three biogeographic regions of the Caribbean. We recorded protection status of the reefs, and abiotic variables including depth, habitat type, and wind/wave exposure at each site. We found no relationship between the density or biomass of lionfish and that of native predators. However, lionfish densities were significantly lower on windward sites, potentially because of habitat preferences, and in marine protected areas, most likely because of ongoing removal efforts by reserve managers. Our results suggest that interactions with native predators do not influence the colonization or post-establishment population density of invasive lionfish on Caribbean reefs. PMID:23874565

Non-Native English Teachers' Beliefs on Grammar Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Önalan, Okan

2018-01-01

Research on teacher cognition, which mainly focuses on identifying what teachers think, know and believe, is essential to understanding teachers' cognitive framework as it relates to the instructional choices they make. The aim of this study is to find out the beliefs of non-native speaker teachers of English on grammar instruction and to explain…

One Label or Two? Linguistic Influences on the Similarity Judgment of Objects between English and Japanese Speakers

PubMed Central

Masuda, Takahiko; Ishii, Keiko; Miwa, Koji; Rashid, Marghalara; Lee, Hajin; Mahdi, Rania

2017-01-01

Recent findings have re-examined the linguistic influence on cognition and perception, while identifying evidence that supports the Whorfian hypothesis. We examine how English and Japanese speakers perceive similarity of pairs of objects, by using two sets of stimuli: one in which two distinct linguistic categories apply to respective object images in English, but only one linguistic category applies in Japanese; and another in which two distinct linguistic categories apply to respective object images in Japanese, but only one applies in English. We conducted four studies and tested different groups of participants in each of them. In Study 1, we asked participants to name the two objects before engaging in the similarity judgment task. Here, we expected a strong linguistic effect. In Study 2, we asked participants to engage in the same task without naming, where we assumed that the condition is close enough to our daily visual information processing where language is not necessarily prompted. We further explored whether the language still influences the similarity perception by asking participants to engage in the same task basing on the visual similarity (Study 3) and the functional similarity (Study 4). The results overall indicated that English and Japanese speakers perceived the two objects to be more similar when they were in the same linguistic categories than when they were in different linguistic categories in their respective languages. Implications for research testing the Whorfian hypothesis and the requirement for methodological development beyond behavioral measures are discussed. PMID:29018375

Reduced efficiency of audiovisual integration for nonnative speech.

PubMed

Yi, Han-Gyol; Phelps, Jasmine E B; Smiljanic, Rajka; Chandrasekaran, Bharath

2013-11-01

The role of visual cues in native listeners' perception of speech produced by nonnative speakers has not been extensively studied. Native perception of English sentences produced by native English and Korean speakers in audio-only and audiovisual conditions was examined. Korean speakers were rated as more accented in audiovisual than in the audio-only condition. Visual cues enhanced word intelligibility for native English speech but less so for Korean-accented speech. Reduced intelligibility of Korean-accented audiovisual speech was associated with implicit visual biases, suggesting that listener-related factors partially influence the efficiency of audiovisual integration for nonnative speech perception.

The Language of Fairness: how Cross-Linguistic Norms in Spanish and English Influence Reactions to Unfair Treatment.

PubMed

Birk, Sam J; Kausel, Edgar E

2016-11-14

We integrate recent findings from the linguistics literature with the organizational justice literature to examine how the language used to encode justice violations influences fairness perceptions. The study focused on the use of non-agentive syntax to encode mistakes in Spanish ("The vase was broken") versus using agentive syntax in English ("She broke the vase") influences event fairness perceptions. We hypothesized that when justice violations are encoded using Spanish, because the non-agentive syntax makes the responsible party less salient, the event would be perceived as less unfair. In Study 1 (n = 111), English-speaking participants rated the fairness of an event in which a mistake was made and an employee received a negative outcome. They rated it as more unfair (p < .01, η2 = .06) when the scenario was presented in agentive syntax. Experiment 2 (n = 70) used native English- and Spanish-speakers who watched a video of manager making a mistake. We found that Spanish-speakers used less agentive syntax (p < .01, η2 = .21), perceived the event as less unfair (p < .001, η2 = .23), and were more willing to help the manager who made the mistake. In Experiment 3 (n = 101) we replicated this effect controlling for cross-cultural differences and native language; further, we found an interaction between entity fairness (event vs. entity) and native language (Spanish vs. English) on citizenship intentions (p < .01, η2 = .08). These results extend our understanding of how language may influence relevant workplace attitudes.

Emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and the association with symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress in a multi-ethnic pregnant population in southern Sweden.

PubMed

Wangel, Anne-Marie; Ryding, Elsa Lena; Schei, Berit; Östman, Margareta; Lukasse, Mirjam

2016-10-01

This study aims to describe the prevalence of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse and analyze associations with symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress (PTS) in pregnancy, by ethnic background. This is a cross-sectional study of the Swedish data from the Bidens cohort study. Ethnicity was categorized as native and non-native Swedish-speakers. Women completed a questionnaire while attending routine antenatal care. The NorVold Abuse Questionnaire (NorAQ) assessed a history of emotional, physical or sexual abuse. The Edinburgh Depression Scale-5 measured symptoms of depression. Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress (PTS) included intrusion, avoidance and numbness. Of 1003 women, 78.6% were native and 21.4% were non-native Swedish-speakers. Native and non-native Swedish-speakers experienced a similar proportion of lifetime abuse. Moderate emotional and physical abuse in childhood was significantly more common among non-native Swedish-speakers. Sexual abuse in adulthood was significantly more prevalent among native Swedish-speakers. Emotional and sexual abuse were significantly associated with symptoms of depression for both natives and non-natives. Physical abuse was significantly associated with symptoms of depression for non-natives only. All types of abuse were significantly associated with symptoms of PTS for both native and non-native Swedish-speakers. Adding ethnicity to the multiple binary regression analyses did not really alter the association between the different types of abuse and symptoms of depression and PTS. The prevalence of lifetime abuse did not differ significantly for native and non-native Swedish-speakers but there were significant differences on a more detailed level. Abuse was associated with symptoms of depression and PTS. Being a non-native Swedish-speaker did not influence the association much. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

What Is the Impact of Video Conferencing on the Teaching and Learning of a Foreign Language in Primary Education?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gruson, Brigitte; Barnes, Francoise

2012-01-01

Under the French national project "1000 video conferencing systems for primary schools", a growing number of schools are being equipped of video conferencing systems. The assumption underlying this project is that, by putting students in a position to communicate with distant native speakers, it will enable them to improve their oral and…

What We Don't Learn in the Classroom: The Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Competence during Study Abroad

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kennedy, Kristen M.

2012-01-01

This study examines the acquisition of target-like patterns of variation by 22 American learners of French during study abroad (SA) in France and correlates such acquisition with the creation of dense, multiplex, exchange-based social networks (Milroy 1980) with native speakers (NSs) during the SA period. In this longitudinal study, naturalistic…

Native Speakers' Perceptions of Fluency and Accent in L2 Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pinget, Anne-France; Bosker, Hans Rutger; Quené, Hugo; de Jong, Nivja H.

2014-01-01

Oral fluency and foreign accent distinguish L2 from L1 speech production. In language testing practices, both fluency and accent are usually assessed by raters. This study investigates what exactly native raters of fluency and accent take into account when judging L2. Our aim is to explore the relationship between objectively measured temporal,…

Mismatch between aspects of hearing impairment and hearing disability/handicap in adult/elderly Cantonese speakers: some hypotheses concerning cultural and linguistic influences.

PubMed

Doyle, J; Wong, L L

1996-12-01

This paper addresses the observation that some Cantonese-speaking adults do not perceive a hearing problem even when hearing screening identifies hearing loss. A sample of 49 Cantonese speakers was surveyed about their self-perceptions of hearing prior to a 25 dB HTL pure-tone screening test. All 49 persons failed the screening test, yet 34 (69.4%) reported that they had no problems hearing during conversations. Persons who admitted hearing difficulties tended to have mean hearing levels in excess of 45 dB HTL. A number of hypotheses concerning cultural and linguistic influences are proposed as explanations for the apparent lack of significance of auditory sensitivity loss for some Cantonese speakers. Ways in which these hypotheses might be tested are suggested.

Review of the negative influences of non-native salmonids on native fish species

USGS Publications Warehouse

Turek, Kelly C.; Pegg, Mark A.; Pope, Kevin L.

2013-01-01

Non-native salmonids are often introduced into areas containing species of concern, yet a comprehensive overview of the short- and long-term consequences of these introductions is lacking in the Great Plains. Several authors have suggested that non-native salmonids negatively inflfluence species of concern. The objective of this paper is to review known interactions between non-native salmonids and native fifishes, with a focus on native species of concern. After an extensive search of the literature, it appears that in many cases non-native salmonids do negatively inflfl uence species of concern (e.g., reduce abundance and alter behavior) via different mechanisms (e.g., predation and competition). However, there are some instances in which introduced salmonids have had no perceived negative inflfl uence on native fifi shes. Unfortunately, the majority of the literature is circumstantial, and there is a need to experimentally manipulate these interactions.

Processing Focus Structure in L1 and L2 French: L2 Proficiency Effects on ERPs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reichle, Robert V.; Birdsong, David

2014-01-01

This study examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by focus processing among first language (L1) speakers and second language (L2) learners of French. Participants read wh-questions containing explicit focus marking, followed by responses instantiating contrastive and informational focus. We hypothesized that L2 proficiency would…

L'anglophone et l'apprentissage du passe en francais (The French Past Tenses and the English Speaking Learner).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moore, Victoria

1981-01-01

Discusses the difficulties English speakers experience in using correctly the various tenses of the past in French, focusing particularly on the imperfect tense. Proposes a series of exercises based on contrastive analysis that gradually lead the learner to restructure his intuitive grammar. (MES)

I "hear" what you're "saying": Auditory perceptual simulation, reading speed, and reading comprehension.

PubMed

Zhou, Peiyun; Christianson, Kiel

2016-01-01

Auditory perceptual simulation (APS) during silent reading refers to situations in which the reader actively simulates the voice of a character or other person depicted in a text. In three eye-tracking experiments, APS effects were investigated as people read utterances attributed to a native English speaker, a non-native English speaker, or no speaker at all. APS effects were measured via online eye movements and offline comprehension probes. Results demonstrated that inducing APS during silent reading resulted in observable differences in reading speed when readers simulated the speech of faster compared to slower speakers and compared to silent reading without APS. Social attitude survey results indicated that readers' attitudes towards the native and non-native speech did not consistently influence APS-related effects. APS of both native speech and non-native speech increased reading speed, facilitated deeper, less good-enough sentence processing, and improved comprehension compared to normal silent reading.

Salmon cycles: Influences of a science field study immersion experience with Native American young women

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ault, Phyllis Campbell

Native Americans, and particularly Native women, are not proportionally represented in higher education, or in science, mathematics, technology, and engineering fields. This study examined an out-of-school science education program which combined traditional Native American cultural and ecological knowledge with Western science in conducting authentic field studies. A qualitative, embedded case study approach was used to explore how young Native American women were influenced by an out-of-school program integrating a culturally responsive approach and experiential research projects. Within this context of combined cultures, three significant domains emerged: field study in science, sense of place, and networks of supportive relationships. These domains interacted with the aspirations of the eight Native women in the study. Using interview transcripts, reflective writings, and participant data, the study explored the blending of Indigenous and Western science in "communities of practice" (e.g., fisheries biology, restoration ecology, and forestry). The eight Native women in this study participated as young adolescents and later returned as counselors. Interviews focused on their postsecondary aspirations and choices. Findings validated previous research on the value of infusing Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Western science for Native students. The study found the combination of culturally responsive pedagogy and authentic experiences in "communities-of-practice" held a beneficial influence on postsecondary pathways. The importance of respect and friendships fostered through the program was associated with resilience and perseverance in educational aspirations. Immersion in field study with Native peers as well as Native and non-Native researchers was a catalyst for all the women, in a number of different ways, such as: deeper involvement with the Native community, strengthening cultural and academic identity, inspiration to learn more about their cultural

Is He Floating across or Crossing Afloat? Cross-Influence of L1 and L2 in Spanish-English Bilingual Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hohenstein, Jill; Eisenberg, Ann; Naigles, Letitia

2006-01-01

Research has begun to address the question of transfer of language usage patterns beyond the idea that people's native language (L1) can influence the way they produce a second language (L2). This study investigated bidirectional transfer, of both lexical and grammatical features, in adult speakers of English and Spanish who varied in age of L2…

State-of-the-Art in the Development of the Lokono Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rybka, Konrad

2015-01-01

Lokono is a critically endangered Northern Arawakan language spoken in the pericoastal areas of the Guianas (Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana). Today, in every Lokono village there remains only a small number of elderly native speakers. However, in spite of the ongoing language loss, across the three Guianas as well as in the Netherlands, where a…

A Study of Jordanian University Students' Perceptions of Using Email Exchanges with Native English Keypals for Improving Their Writing Competency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mahfouz, Safi Mahmoud

2010-01-01

English foreign language learners generally tend to consider email exchanges with native speakers (NSs) as an effective tool for improving their foreign language proficiency. This study investigated Jordanian university students' perceptions of using email exchanges with native English keypals (NEKs) for improving their writing competency. A…

Final Draft Feedback in First-Year Composition: A Case Study of Non-Native English Speaking Students in North America

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nash, J. Gail

2012-01-01

Scope and Methods: This dissertation examines final draft feedback in a semester long first-year composition class consisting of both native and non-native speakers of English (NES & NNES) attending university. In addition to examining the teacher's commentary on final drafts and the students' responses to it, this study investigated effects…

The relationship between native allophonic experience with vowel duration and perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast by Spanish and Russian listeners.

PubMed

Kondaurova, Maria V; Francis, Alexander L

2008-12-01

Two studies explored the role of native language use of an acoustic cue, vowel duration, in both native and non-native contexts in order to test the hypothesis that non-native listeners' reliance on vowel duration instead of vowel quality to distinguish the English tense/lax vowel contrast could be explained by the role of duration as a cue in native phonological contrasts. In the first experiment, native Russian, Spanish, and American English listeners identified stimuli from a beat/bit continuum varying in nine perceptually equal spectral and duration steps. English listeners relied predominantly on spectrum, but showed some reliance on duration. Russian and Spanish speakers relied entirely on duration. In the second experiment, three tests examined listeners' use of vowel duration in native contrasts. Duration was equally important for the perception of lexical stress for all three groups. However, English listeners relied more on duration as a cue to postvocalic consonant voicing than did native Spanish or Russian listeners, and Spanish listeners relied on duration more than did Russian listeners. Results suggest that, although allophonic experience may contribute to cross-language perceptual patterns, other factors such as the application of statistical learning mechanisms and the influence of language-independent psychoacoustic proclivities cannot be ruled out.

The relationship between native allophonic experience with vowel duration and perception of the English tense∕lax vowel contrast by Spanish and Russian listeners

PubMed Central

Kondaurova, Maria V.; Francis, Alexander L.

2008-01-01

Two studies explored the role of native language use of an acoustic cue, vowel duration, in both native and non-native contexts in order to test the hypothesis that non-native listeners’ reliance on vowel duration instead of vowel quality to distinguish the English tense∕lax vowel contrast could be explained by the role of duration as a cue in native phonological contrasts. In the first experiment, native Russian, Spanish, and American English listeners identified stimuli from a beat∕bit continuum varying in nine perceptually equal spectral and duration steps. English listeners relied predominantly on spectrum, but showed some reliance on duration. Russian and Spanish speakers relied entirely on duration. In the second experiment, three tests examined listeners’ use of vowel duration in native contrasts. Duration was equally important for the perception of lexical stress for all three groups. However, English listeners relied more on duration as a cue to postvocalic consonant voicing than did native Spanish or Russian listeners, and Spanish listeners relied on duration more than did Russian listeners. Results suggest that, although allophonic experience may contribute to cross-language perceptual patterns, other factors such as the application of statistical learning mechanisms and the influence of language-independent psychoacoustic proclivities cannot be ruled out. PMID:19206820

The Effect of Language Exposure and Word Characteristics on the Arab EFL Learners' Word Associations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

El-Dakhs, Dina Abdel

2017-01-01

The present study investigates the patterns of word associations among Arab EFL learners and compares these patterns with those of native speakers of English. The study also examines the influence of increased language exposure and word characteristics on the learners' association patterns. To this end, 45 native speakers of English and 421 Arab…

Cross-language categorization of French and German vowels by naive American listeners.

PubMed

Strange, Winifred; Levy, Erika S; Law, Franzo F

2009-09-01

American English (AE) speakers' perceptual assimilation of 14 North German (NG) and 9 Parisian French (PF) vowels was examined in two studies using citation-form disyllables (study 1) and sentences with vowels surrounded by labial and alveolar consonants in multisyllabic nonsense words (study 2). Listeners categorized multiple tokens of each NG and PF vowel as most similar to selected AE vowels and rated their category "goodness" on a nine-point Likert scale. Front, rounded vowels were assimilated primarily to back AE vowels, despite their acoustic similarity to front AE vowels. In study 1, they were considered poorer exemplars of AE vowels than were NG and PF back, rounded vowels; in study 2, front and back, rounded vowels were perceived as similar to each other. Assimilation of some front, unrounded and back, rounded NG and PF vowels varied with language, speaking style, and consonantal context. Differences in perceived similarity often could not be predicted from context-specific cross-language spectral similarities. Results suggest that listeners can access context-specific, phonetic details when listening to citation-form materials, but assimilate non-native vowels on the basis of context-independent phonological equivalence categories when processing continuous speech. Results are interpreted within the Automatic Selective Perception model of speech perception.

Acquisition of English Tense-Aspect Morphology by Advanced French Instructed Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ayoun, Dalila; Salaberry, M. Rafael

2008-01-01

The acquisition of English verbal morphology has been mostly tested as a second language (L2) in English-speaking settings (Bardovi-Harlig, 1992a, 1992b, 1992c, 1998; Bardovi-Harlig & Bergstrom, 1996; Bayley, 1991, 1994), more rarely as a foreign language (e.g., Robison, 1990, 1995), in only one cross-sectional study with native speakers of French…

Language matters: thirteen-month-olds understand that the language a speaker uses constrains conventionality.

PubMed

Scott, Jessica C; Henderson, Annette M E

2013-11-01

Object labels are valuable communicative tools because their meanings are shared among the members of a particular linguistic community. The current research was conducted to investigate whether 13-month-old infants appreciate that object labels should not be generalized across individuals who have been shown to speak different languages. Using a visual habituation paradigm, Experiment 1 tested whether infants would generalize a new object label that was taught to them by a speaker of a foreign language to a speaker from the infant's own linguistic group. The results suggest that infants do not expect 2 individuals who have been shown to speak different languages to use the same label to refer to the same object. The results of Experiment 2 reveal that infants do not generalize a new object label that was taught to them by a speaker of their native language to an individual who had been shown to speak a foreign language. These findings offer the first evidence that by the end of the 1st year of life, infants are sensitive to the fact that the conventional nature of language is constrained by the language that a person has been shown to speak.

Left hemisphere lateralization for lexical and acoustic pitch processing in Cantonese speakers as revealed by mismatch negativity.

PubMed

Gu, Feng; Zhang, Caicai; Hu, Axu; Zhao, Guoping

2013-12-01

For nontonal language speakers, speech processing is lateralized to the left hemisphere and musical processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere (i.e., function-dependent brain asymmetry). On the other hand, acoustic temporal processing is lateralized to the left hemisphere and spectral/pitch processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere (i.e., acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry). In this study, we examine whether the hemispheric lateralization of lexical pitch and acoustic pitch processing in tonal language speakers is consistent with the patterns of function- and acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry in nontonal language speakers. Pitch contrast in both speech stimuli (syllable /ji/ in Experiment 1) and nonspeech stimuli (harmonic tone in Experiment 1; pure tone in Experiment 2) was presented to native Cantonese speakers in passive oddball paradigms. We found that the mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited by lexical pitch contrast was lateralized to the left hemisphere, which is consistent with the pattern of function-dependent brain asymmetry (i.e., left hemisphere lateralization for speech processing) in nontonal language speakers. However, the MMN elicited by acoustic pitch contrast was also left hemisphere lateralized (harmonic tone in Experiment 1) or showed a tendency for left hemisphere lateralization (pure tone in Experiment 2), which is inconsistent with the pattern of acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry (i.e., right hemisphere lateralization for acoustic pitch processing) in nontonal language speakers. The consistent pattern of function-dependent brain asymmetry and the inconsistent pattern of acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry between tonal and nontonal language speakers can be explained by the hypothesis that the acoustic-dependent brain asymmetry is the consequence of a carryover effect from function-dependent brain asymmetry. Potential evolutionary implication of this hypothesis is discussed. © 2013.

The French Revolution.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baltimore City Public Schools, MD.

This outline on the French Revolution is designed to illustrate how this period of French history influenced various aspects of contemporary culture. Four main sections are treated: (1) ideas that led to the Revolution, (2) the reigns of the Bourbon kings, (3) the Revolution, and (4) the rise of Napoleon as a reaction to chaos. A list of 16mm…

Physiological Indices of Bilingualism: Oral-Motor Coordination and Speech Rate in Bengali-English Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chakraborty, Rahul; Goffman, Lisa; Smith, Anne

2008-01-01

Purpose: To examine how age of immersion and proficiency in a 2nd language influence speech movement variability and speaking rate in both a 1st language and a 2nd language. Method: A group of 21 Bengali-English bilingual speakers participated. Lip and jaw movements were recorded. For all 21 speakers, lip movement variability was assessed based on…

Good Teachers Know Where to Scratch when Learners Feel Itchy: Korean Learners' Views of Native-Speaking Teachers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Han, Song-Ae

2005-01-01

Cross-border education has been growing dramatically in both English-speaking countries and non-native English-speaking countries. While more and more students, particularly from Asian countries such as Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan choose to study in English-speaking countries, many native English speakers go to Asian countries to…

Bilinguisme et problematique des langues ethniques. Enquete sur le comportement linguistique des jeunes montrealais d'origine italienne (Bilingualism and the Problem of Ethnic Languages. A Study of the Linguistic Behavior of Young Montrealers of Italian Descent). Publication B-149.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Villata, Bruno

A study is reported of the language behavior of trilingual 9-to-12-year-old native Italian speakers in Montreal, some of whom were studying Italian on Saturdays and some of whom were not. The study focused on their available vocabulary in the three languages (Italian, French, and English) and on their language productivity during their various…

Starting Young: Best Practices for Ages 0-6

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mighdoll, Jackie Friedman

2008-01-01

After 18 months of research and many practice sessions, Sponge opened in the fall of 2005. This year, Sponge will provide language classes for over 350 children from newborn to seven years in the Seattle area. This language program offers Spanish, Mandarin, French and Japanese--all taught by native speakers. While the staff sets out to create a…

Disentangling Accent from Comprehensibility

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Trofimovich, Pavel; Isaacs, Talia

2012-01-01

The goal of this study was to determine which linguistic aspects of second language speech are related to accent and which to comprehensibility. To address this goal, 19 different speech measures in the oral productions of 40 native French speakers of English were examined in relation to accent and comprehensibility, as rated by 60 novice raters…

How much does language proficiency by non-native listeners influence speech audiometric tests in noise?

PubMed

Warzybok, Anna; Brand, Thomas; Wagener, Kirsten C; Kollmeier, Birger

2015-01-01

The current study investigates the extent to which the linguistic complexity of three commonly employed speech recognition tests and second language proficiency influence speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) in noise in non-native listeners. SRTs were measured for non-natives and natives using three German speech recognition tests: the digit triplet test (DTT), the Oldenburg sentence test (OLSA), and the Göttingen sentence test (GÖSA). Sixty-four non-native and eight native listeners participated. Non-natives can show native-like SRTs in noise only for the linguistically easy speech material (DTT). Furthermore, the limitation of phonemic-acoustical cues in digit triplets affects speech recognition to the same extent in non-natives and natives. For more complex and less familiar speech materials, non-natives, ranging from basic to advanced proficiency in German, require on average 3-dB better signal-to-noise ratio for the OLSA and 6-dB for the GÖSA to obtain 50% speech recognition compared to native listeners. In clinical audiology, SRT measurements with a closed-set speech test (i.e. DTT for screening or OLSA test for clinical purposes) should be used with non-native listeners rather than open-set speech tests (such as the GÖSA or HINT), especially if a closed-set version in the patient's own native language is available.

Number word structure in first and second language influences arithmetic skills

PubMed Central

Prior, Anat; Katz, Michal; Mahajna, Islam; Rubinsten, Orly

2015-01-01

Languages differ in how they represent numerical information, and specifically whether the verbal notation of numbers follows the same order as the symbolic notation (in non-inverted languages, e.g., Hebrew, “25, twenty-five”) or whether the two notations diverge (in inverted languages, e.g., Arabic, “25, five-and-twenty”). We examined how the structure of number–words affects how arithmetic operations are processed by bilingual speakers of an inverted and a non-inverted language. We examined Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals’ performance in the first language, L1 (inverted) and in the second language, L2 (non-inverted). Their performance was compared to that of Hebrew L1 speakers, who do not speak an inverted language. Participants judged the accuracy of addition problems presented aurally in L1, aurally in L2 or in visual symbolic notation. Problems were presented such that they matched or did not match the structure of number words in the language. Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals demonstrated both flexibility in processing and adaptation to the language of aural–verbal presentation – they were more accurate for the inverted order of presentation in Arabic, but more accurate for non-inverted order of presentation in Hebrew, thus exhibiting the same pattern found for native Hebrew speakers. In addition, whereas native Hebrew speakers preferred the non-inverted order in visual symbolic presentation as well, the Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals showed enhanced flexibility, without a significant preference for one order over the other, in either speed or accuracy. These findings suggest that arithmetic processing is sensitive to the linguistic representations of number words. Moreover, bilinguals exposed to inverted and non-inverted languages showed influence of both systems, and enhanced flexibility in processing. Thus, the L1 does not seem to have exclusive power in shaping numerical mental representations, but rather the system remains open to influences from a

First- and Final-Semester Non-Native Students in an English-Medium University: Judgments of Their Speech by University Peers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kennedy, Sara; Trofimovich, Pavel

2014-01-01

By the end of their studies, non-native speakers of English studying at English-medium universities have had several years of exposure to English in that setting. Do non-native students, particularly those enrolled in non-language related programs, show different levels of second language (L2) speaking ability in their final semester of studies…

What a speaker's choice of frame reveals: reference points, frame selection, and framing effects.

PubMed

McKenzie, Craig R M; Nelson, Jonathan D

2003-09-01

Framing effects are well established: Listeners' preferences depend on how outcomes are described to them, or framed. Less well understood is what determines how speakers choose frames. Two experiments revealed that reference points systematically influenced speakers' choices between logically equivalent frames. For example, speakers tended to describe a 4-ounce cup filled to the 2-ounce line as half full if it was previously empty but described it as half empty if it was previously full. Similar results were found when speakers could describe the outcome of a medical treatment in terms of either mortality or survival (e.g., 25% die vs. 75% survive). Two additional experiments showed that listeners made accurate inferences about speakers' reference points on the basis of the selected frame (e.g., if a speaker described a cup as half empty, listeners inferred that the cup used to be full). Taken together, the data suggest that frames reliably convey implicit information in addition to their explicit content, which helps explain why framing effects are so robust.

Influence of the native topology on the folding barrier for small proteins

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)