Second language experience modulates word retrieval effort in bilinguals: evidence from pupillometry

PubMed Central

Schmidtke, Jens

2014-01-01

Bilingual speakers often have less language experience compared to monolinguals as a result of speaking two languages and/or a later age of acquisition of the second language. This may result in weaker and less precise phonological representations of words in memory, which may cause greater retrieval effort during spoken word recognition. To gauge retrieval effort, the present study compared the effects of word frequency, neighborhood density (ND), and level of English experience by testing monolingual English speakers and native Spanish speakers who differed in their age of acquisition of English (early/late). In the experimental paradigm, participants heard English words and matched them to one of four pictures while the pupil size, an indication of cognitive effort, was recorded. Overall, both frequency and ND effects could be observed in the pupil response, indicating that lower frequency and higher ND were associated with greater retrieval effort. Bilingual speakers showed an overall delayed pupil response and a larger ND effect compared to the monolingual speakers. The frequency effect was the same in early bilinguals and monolinguals but was larger in late bilinguals. Within the group of bilingual speakers, higher English proficiency was associated with an earlier pupil response in addition to a smaller frequency and ND effect. These results suggest that greater retrieval effort associated with bilingualism may be a consequence of reduced language experience rather than constitute a categorical bilingual disadvantage. Future avenues for the use of pupillometry in the field of spoken word recognition are discussed. PMID:24600428

How Well Do U.S. High School Students Achieve in Spanish When Compared to Native Spanish Speakers?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sparks, Richard L.; Luebbers, Julie; Castañeda, Martha E.

2017-01-01

Foreign language educators have developed measures to assess the proficiency of U.S. high school learners. Most have compared language learners to clearly defined criteria for proficiency in the language (criterion-referenced assessment) or to the performance of other monolingual English speakers (norm-referenced assessment). In this study, the…

Implications for Language Diversity in Instruction in the Context of Target Language Classrooms: Development of a Preliminary Model of the Effectiveness of Teacher Code-Switching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jang Ho

2012-01-01

This paper concerns the conceptual and pedagogical issues that revolve around target language (TL) only instruction and teacher code-switching in the context of TL classrooms. To this end, I first examine four intertwined ideas (that is, monolingualism, naturalism, native-speakerism, and absolutism) that run through the monolingual approach to TL…

Vowel reduction in word-final position by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals.

PubMed

Byers, Emily; Yavas, Mehmet

2017-01-01

Vowel reduction is a prominent feature of American English, as well as other stress-timed languages. As a phonological process, vowel reduction neutralizes multiple vowel quality contrasts in unstressed syllables. For bilinguals whose native language is not characterized by large spectral and durational differences between tonic and atonic vowels, systematically reducing unstressed vowels to the central vowel space can be problematic. Failure to maintain this pattern of stressed-unstressed syllables in American English is one key element that contributes to a "foreign accent" in second language speakers. Reduced vowels, or "schwas," have also been identified as particularly vulnerable to the co-articulatory effects of adjacent consonants. The current study examined the effects of adjacent sounds on the spectral and temporal qualities of schwa in word-final position. Three groups of English-speaking adults were tested: Miami-based monolingual English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals, and late Spanish-English bilinguals. Subjects performed a reading task to examine their schwa productions in fluent speech when schwas were preceded by consonants from various points of articulation. Results indicated that monolingual English and late Spanish-English bilingual groups produced targeted vowel qualities for schwa, whereas early Spanish-English bilinguals lacked homogeneity in their vowel productions. This extends prior claims that schwa is targetless for F2 position for native speakers to highly-proficient bilingual speakers. Though spectral qualities lacked homogeneity for early Spanish-English bilinguals, early bilinguals produced schwas with near native-like vowel duration. In contrast, late bilinguals produced schwas with significantly longer durations than English monolinguals or early Spanish-English bilinguals. Our results suggest that the temporal properties of a language are better integrated into second language phonologies than spectral qualities. Finally, we examined the role of nonstructural variables (e.g. linguistic history measures) in predicting native-like vowel duration. These factors included: Age of L2 learning, amount of L1 use, and self-reported bilingual dominance. Our results suggested that different sociolinguistic factors predicted native-like reduced vowel duration than predicted native-like vowel qualities across multiple phonetic environments.

Vowel reduction in word-final position by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Vowel reduction is a prominent feature of American English, as well as other stress-timed languages. As a phonological process, vowel reduction neutralizes multiple vowel quality contrasts in unstressed syllables. For bilinguals whose native language is not characterized by large spectral and durational differences between tonic and atonic vowels, systematically reducing unstressed vowels to the central vowel space can be problematic. Failure to maintain this pattern of stressed-unstressed syllables in American English is one key element that contributes to a “foreign accent” in second language speakers. Reduced vowels, or “schwas,” have also been identified as particularly vulnerable to the co-articulatory effects of adjacent consonants. The current study examined the effects of adjacent sounds on the spectral and temporal qualities of schwa in word-final position. Three groups of English-speaking adults were tested: Miami-based monolingual English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals, and late Spanish-English bilinguals. Subjects performed a reading task to examine their schwa productions in fluent speech when schwas were preceded by consonants from various points of articulation. Results indicated that monolingual English and late Spanish-English bilingual groups produced targeted vowel qualities for schwa, whereas early Spanish-English bilinguals lacked homogeneity in their vowel productions. This extends prior claims that schwa is targetless for F2 position for native speakers to highly-proficient bilingual speakers. Though spectral qualities lacked homogeneity for early Spanish-English bilinguals, early bilinguals produced schwas with near native-like vowel duration. In contrast, late bilinguals produced schwas with significantly longer durations than English monolinguals or early Spanish-English bilinguals. Our results suggest that the temporal properties of a language are better integrated into second language phonologies than spectral qualities. Finally, we examined the role of nonstructural variables (e.g. linguistic history measures) in predicting native-like vowel duration. These factors included: Age of L2 learning, amount of L1 use, and self-reported bilingual dominance. Our results suggested that different sociolinguistic factors predicted native-like reduced vowel duration than predicted native-like vowel qualities across multiple phonetic environments. PMID:28384234

Novel Morpheme Learning in Monolingual and Bilingual Children

PubMed Central

Gross, Megan; Sheena, Enanna; Roman, Rachel

2017-01-01

Purpose The purpose of the present study was to examine the utility of a novel morpheme learning task for indexing typical language abilities in children characterized by diverse language backgrounds. Method Three groups of 5- to 6-year-old children were tested: monolingual speakers of English, native speakers of Spanish who also spoke English (Spanish-L1 bilinguals), and native speakers of English who also spoke Spanish (English-L1 bilinguals). All children were taught a new derivational morpheme /ku/ marking part–whole distinction in conjunction with English nouns. Retention was measured via a receptive task, and sensitivity and reaction time (RT) data were collected. Results All three groups of children learned the novel morpheme successfully and were able to generalize its use to untaught nouns. Furthermore, language characteristics (degree of exposure and levels of performance on standardized measures) did not contribute to bilingual children's learning outcomes. Conclusion Together, the findings indicate that this particular version of the novel morpheme learning task may be resistant to influences associated with language background and suggest potential usefulness of the task to clinical practice. PMID:28399578

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.

Language Growth in English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Children from 2.5 to 5 Years.

PubMed

Hoff, Erika; Ribot, Krystal M

2017-11-01

To describe the trajectories of English and Spanish language growth in typically developing children from bilingual homes and compare those with the trajectories of English growth in children from monolingual homes, to assess effects of dual language exposure on language growth in typically developing children. Expressive vocabularies were assessed at 6-month intervals from age 30 to 60 months, in English for monolinguals and English and Spanish for bilinguals. Use of English and Spanish in the home was assessed via parental report. Multilevel modeling, including parent education as a covariate, revealed that children from bilingual homes lagged 6 months to 1 year behind monolingual children in English vocabulary growth. The size of the lag was related to the relative amount of English use in the home, but the relation was not linear. Increments in English use conferred the greatest benefit most among homes with already high levels of English use. These homes also were likely to have 1 parent who was a native English speaker. Bilingual children showed stronger growth in English than in Spanish. Bilingual children can lag 6 months to 1 year behind monolingual children in normal English language development. Such lags may not necessarily signify clinically relevant delay if parents report that children also have skills in the home language. Shorter lags are associated with 2 correlated factors: more English exposure and more exposure from native English speakers. Early exposure to Spanish in the home does not guarantee acquisition of Spanish. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Metalinguistic awareness and reading performance: a cross language comparison.

PubMed

Ibrahim, Raphiq; Eviatar, Zohar; Aharon-Peretz, Judith

2007-07-01

The study examined two questions: (1) do the greater phonological awareness skills of billinguals affect reading performance; (2) to what extent do the orthographic characteristics of a language influence reading performance and how does this interact with the effects of phonological awareness. We estimated phonological metalinguistic abilities and reading measures in three groups of first graders: monolingual Hebrew speakers, bilingual Russian-Hebrew speakers, and Arabic-speaking children. We found that language experience affects phonological awareness, as both Russian-Hebrew bilinguals and the Arabic speakers achieved higher scores on metalinguistic tests than Hebrew speakers. Orthography affected reading measures and their correlation with phonological abilitites. Children reading Hebrew showed better text reading ability and significant correlations between phonological awareness and reading scores. Children reading Arabic showed a slight advantage in single word and nonword reading over the two Hebrew reading groups, and very weak relationships between phonological abilities and reading performance. We conclude that native Arabic speakers have more difficulty in processing Arabic orthography than Hebrew monolinguals and bilinguals have in processing Hebrew orthography, and suggest that this is due to the additional visual complexity of Arabic orthography.

The Overt Pronoun Constraint across Three Dialects of Spanish

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gelormini-Lezama, Carlos; Huepe, David; Herrera, Eduar; Melloni, Margherita; Manes, Facundo; García, Adolfo M.; Ibáñez, Agustín

2016-01-01

The overt pronoun constraint (OPC) states that, in null subject languages, overt pronoun subjects of embedded clauses cannot be bound by "wh-" or quantifier antecedents. Through the administration of two written questionnaires, we examined the OPC in 246 monolingual native speakers of three dialects of Spanish, spoken in Barranquilla…

Students' Understanding of Dictionary Entries: A Study with Respect to Four Learners' Dictionaries.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jana, Abhra; Amritavalli, Vijaya; Amritavalli, R.

2003-01-01

Investigates the effects of definitional information in the form of dictionary entries, on second language learners' vocabulary learning in an instructed setting. Indian students (Native Hindi speakers) of English received monolingual English dictionary entries of five previously unknown words from four different learner's dictionaries. Results…

Late Bilinguals Are Sensitive to Unique Aspects of Second Language Processing: Evidence from Clitic Pronouns Word-Order

PubMed Central

Rossi, Eleonora; Diaz, Michele; Kroll, Judith F.; Dussias, Paola E.

2017-01-01

In two self-paced reading experiments we asked whether late, highly proficient, English–Spanish bilinguals are able to process language-specific morpho-syntactic information in their second language (L2). The processing of Spanish clitic pronouns’ word order was tested in two sentential constructions. Experiment 1 showed that English–Spanish bilinguals performed similarly to Spanish–English bilinguals and revealed sensitivity to word order violations for a grammatical structure unique to the L2. Experiment 2 replicated the pattern observed for native speakers in Experiment 1 with a group of monolingual Spanish speakers, demonstrating the stability of processing clitic pronouns in the native language. Taken together, the results show that late bilinguals can process aspects of grammar that are encoded in L2-specific linguistic constructions even when the structure is relatively subtle and not affected for native speakers by the presence of a second language. PMID:28367130

Lexical representation of novel L2 contrasts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hayes-Harb, Rachel; Masuda, Kyoko

2005-04-01

There is much interest among psychologists and linguists in the influence of the native language sound system on the acquisition of second languages (Best, 1995; Flege, 1995). Most studies of second language (L2) speech focus on how learners perceive and produce L2 sounds, but we know of only two that have considered how novel sound contrasts are encoded in learners' lexical representations of L2 words (Pallier et al., 2001; Ota et al., 2002). In this study we investigated how native speakers of English encode Japanese consonant quantity contrasts in their developing Japanese lexicons at different stages of acquisition (Japanese contrasts singleton versus geminate consonants but English does not). Monolingual English speakers, native English speakers learning Japanese for one year, and native speakers of Japanese were taught a set of Japanese nonwords containing singleton and geminate consonants. Subjects then performed memory tasks eliciting perception and production data to determine whether they encoded the Japanese consonant quantity contrast lexically. Overall accuracy in these tasks was a function of Japanese language experience, and acoustic analysis of the production data revealed non-native-like patterns of differentiation of singleton and geminate consonants among the L2 learners of Japanese. Implications for theories of L2 speech are discussed.

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

Strategies and Struggles in the ELT Classroom: Language Policy, Learner Autonomy, and Innovative Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rivers, Damian J.

2011-01-01

Within the Japanese English Language Teaching context and consistent with the dominant conversation role assigned to the native English speaker teacher, there exists a belief that the most effective manner in which to teach and promote multilingualism and intercultural understanding is through restricting students to monolingual practices and…

In Search of the Right Questions: Language Background Profiling at Ontario Public Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Slavkov, Nikolay

2016-01-01

This article examines some of the challenges that the notion of a (monolingual) native speaker faces in a global context of increasing awareness that bilingualism and multilingualism are the norm rather than the exception. It also discusses the distinction between two child language acquisition environments, bilingual first language acquisition…

The Multi/Plural Turn, Postcolonial Theory, and Neoliberal Multiculturalism: Complicities and Implications for Applied Linguistics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kubota, Ryuko

2016-01-01

In applied linguistics and language education, an increased focus has been placed on plurality and hybridity to challenge monolingualism, the native speaker norm, and the modernist view of language and language use as unitary and bounded. The multi/plural turn parallels postcolonial theory in that they both support hybridity and fluidity while…

Effects of L1 Definitions and Cognate Status of Test Items on the Vocabulary Size Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elgort, Irina

2013-01-01

This study examines the development and evaluation of a bilingual Vocabulary Size Test (VST, Nation, 2006). A bilingual (English-Russian) test was developed and administered to 121 intermediate proficiency EFL learners (native speakers of Russian), alongside the original monolingual (English-only) version of the test. A comparison of the bilingual…

The Effect of Linguistic Proficiency, Age of Second Language Acquisition, and Length of Exposure to a New Cultural Environment on Bilinguals' Divergent Thinking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kharkhurin, Anatoliy V.

2008-01-01

The study argues that, in addition to advantages in conscious attention-demanding processing, bilinguals may also exhibit enhanced unconscious divergent thinking. To investigate this issue, the performance of Russian-English bilingual immigrants and English monolingual native speakers was compared on the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults, which…

Diagnostic Accuracy of Traditional Measures of Phonological Ability for Bilingual Preschoolers and Kindergarteners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fabiano-Smith, Leah; Hoffman, Katherine

2018-01-01

Purpose: Bilingual children whose phonological skills are evaluated using measures designed for monolingual English speakers are at risk for misdiagnosis of speech sound disorders (De Lamo White & Jin, 2011). Method: Forty-four children participated in this study: 15 typically developing monolingual English speakers, 7 monolingual English…

Russian Emotion Vocabulary in American Learners' Narratives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pavlenko, Aneta; Driagina, Viktoria

2007-01-01

This study compared the uses of emotion vocabulary in narratives elicited from monolingual speakers of Russian and English and advanced American learners of Russian. Monolingual speakers differed significantly in the distribution of emotion terms across morphosyntactic categories: English speakers favored an adjectival pattern of emotion…

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.

Vowel space development in a child acquiring English and Spanish from birth

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andruski, Jean; Kim, Sahyang; Nathan, Geoffrey; Casielles, Eugenia; Work, Richard

2005-04-01

To date, research on bilingual first language acquisition has tended to focus on the development of higher levels of language, with relatively few analyses of the acoustic characteristics of bilingual infants' and childrens' speech. Since monolingual infants begin to show perceptual divisions of vowel space that resemble adult native speakers divisions by about 6 months of age [Kuhl et al., Science 255, 606-608 (1992)], bilingual childrens' vowel production may provide evidence of their awareness of language differences relatively early during language development. This paper will examine the development of vowel categories in a child whose mother is a native speaker of Castilian Spanish, and whose father is a native speaker of American English. Each parent speaks to the child only in her/his native language. For this study, recordings made at the ages of 2;5 and 2;10 were analyzed and F1-F2 measurements were made of vowels from the stressed syllables of content words. The development of vowel space is compared across ages within each language, and across languages at each age. In addition, the child's productions are compared with the mother's and father's vocalic productions, which provide the predominant input in Spanish and English respectively.

Investigating Linguistic Relativity through Bilingualism: The Case of Grammatical Gender

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kousta, Stavroula-Thaleia; Vinson, David P.; Vigliocco, Gabriella

2008-01-01

The authors investigated linguistic relativity effects by examining the semantic effects of grammatical gender (present in Italian but absent in English) in fluent bilingual speakers as compared with monolingual speakers. In an error-induction experiment, they used responses by monolingual speakers to establish a baseline for bilingual speakers…

Effects of Speech Practice on Fast Mapping in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kan, Pui Fong; Sadagopan, Neeraja; Janich, Lauren; Andrade, Marixa

2014-01-01

Purpose: This study examines the effects of the levels of speech practice on fast mapping in monolingual and bilingual speakers. Method: Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual and 30 Spanish-English bilingual young adults. Each participant was randomly assigned to 1 of 3 practice conditions prior to the fast-mapping task: (a) intensive…

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

Spanish stop-rhotic sequences in Spanish-Basque bilinguals and second language learners: An acoustic study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weissglass, Christine A.

This dissertation investigates transfer and markedness in bilingual and L2 Spanish stop-rhotic sequences (e.g., the 'br' in brisa 'breeze'). It also examines the phonetics-phonology interface in Spanish. To this end, it explores the production of these sequences in two different experiments. Experiment 1 compares the production of these sequences by 6 Spanish monolinguals and 6 Spanish-Basque bilinguals. Experiment 2 does so for 25 L2 learners and 5 native Spanish speakers. Acoustic analysis of these sequences revealed that Spanish-Basque bilinguals produced trills 5% of the time whereas Spanish monolinguals did not have any trills. Additionally, fricative rhotics and coarticulation accounted for 35% of L2 realizations, but were not present in the native Spanish speaker dataset. These findings indicate a role for transfer in both bilingual and L2 phonological acquisition, although it is more prevalent in the L2 learner dataset. This is in line with the Speech Learning Model (Flege, 1995), which posits a stronger role for transfer amongst late learners (i.e., L2 learners) than early learners (i.e., Spanish-Basque bilinguals). In order to examine the role of markedness in bilingual and L2 phonological acquisition, this dissertation investigates the role of sonority in bilingual and L2 Spanish syllable structure. To do so, it proposes a sonority hierarchy for rhotic variants based on their specifications for voicing, intensity and continuancy. According to this hierarchy, approximant rhotics are the most sonorous, followed by taps, trills and fricative rhotics. Therefore, approximant rhotics were expected to be the most common realization followed by taps, trills and fricative rhotics. Although Spanish monolinguals adhered to this expectation, the other groups did not; taps were the most common realization for Spanish-Basque bilinguals, L2 learners, and native Spanish speakers and fricative rhotics were more common than trills for Spanish-Basque bilinguals and L2 learners. These results suggest an interaction between transfer and markedness, consistent with Major (2001). They also reflect dialectal differences in native Spanish speakers. Finally, this dissertation explores the phonetic-phonology interface in Spanish in two ways. First, it investigates the function of svarabhakti vowels, vocalic elements of variable duration that emerge between consonants, in Spanish stop-rhotic sequences. For the most part, the findings support a dissimilatory role for svarabhakti vowels in this context (see also Colantoni & Steele, 2005). Second, in order to examine the impact of gestural timing in Spanish stop-rhotic realization, it considers the role of the sounds surrounding the rhotic (see also Bradley & Schmeiser, 2003). The results can be explained in terms of different degrees of gestural overlap for all groups except L2 learners, which may be due to a strong role of transfer.

Language shift, bilingualism and the future of Britain's Celtic languages.

PubMed

Kandler, Anne; Unger, Roman; Steele, James

2010-12-12

'Language shift' is the process whereby members of a community in which more than one language is spoken abandon their original vernacular language in favour of another. The historical shifts to English by Celtic language speakers of Britain and Ireland are particularly well-studied examples for which good census data exist for the most recent 100-120 years in many areas where Celtic languages were once the prevailing vernaculars. We model the dynamics of language shift as a competition process in which the numbers of speakers of each language (both monolingual and bilingual) vary as a function both of internal recruitment (as the net outcome of birth, death, immigration and emigration rates of native speakers), and of gains and losses owing to language shift. We examine two models: a basic model in which bilingualism is simply the transitional state for households moving between alternative monolingual states, and a diglossia model in which there is an additional demand for the endangered language as the preferred medium of communication in some restricted sociolinguistic domain, superimposed on the basic shift dynamics. Fitting our models to census data, we successfully reproduce the demographic trajectories of both languages over the past century. We estimate the rates of recruitment of new Scottish Gaelic speakers that would be required each year (for instance, through school education) to counteract the 'natural wastage' as households with one or more Gaelic speakers fail to transmit the language to the next generation informally, for different rates of loss during informal intergenerational transmission.

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

Early-, middle-, and late-developing sounds in monolingual and bilingual children: an exploratory investigation.

PubMed

Fabiano-Smith, Leah; Goldstein, Brian A

2010-02-01

To examine the accuracy of early-, middle-, and late-developing (EML) sounds in Spanish-English bilingual children and their monolingual peers. Twenty-four typically developing children, age 3-4 years, were included in this study: 8 bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children, 8 monolingual Spanish speakers, and 8 monolingual English speakers. Single-word speech samples were obtained to examine (a) differences on the accuracy of EML sounds between Spanish-English bilingual children and monolingual Spanish and monolingual English children and (b) the developmental trend on the accuracy of EML sounds within languages for Spanish-English bilingual children and monolingual Spanish and monolingual English children. Findings support those of Shriberg (1993) for English-speaking children and suggest possible EML categories for monolingual Spanish-speaking children and bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children. These exploratory findings indicate the need for longitudinal examination of EML categories with a larger cohort of children to observe similarities and differences between monolingual and bilingual development.

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…

Case, Inflection, and Subject Licensing in Child Catalan and Spanish.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grindstead, John

2000-01-01

Development of specified tense and number morphology in child Catalan and Spanish was found to correlate with the onset of overt subject use in one monolingual child Spanish speaker and four monolingual child Catalan speakers who were studied longitudinally. (Author/VWL)

Second language attainment and first language attrition: The case of VOT in immersed Dutch–German late bilinguals

PubMed Central

Stoehr, Antje; Benders, Titia; van Hell, Janet G; Fikkert, Paula

2017-01-01

Speech of late bilinguals has frequently been described in terms of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from the native language (L1) to the second language (L2), but CLI from the L2 to the L1 has received relatively little attention. This article addresses L2 attainment and L1 attrition in voicing systems through measures of voice onset time (VOT) in two groups of Dutch–German late bilinguals in the Netherlands. One group comprises native speakers of Dutch and the other group comprises native speakers of German, and the two groups further differ in their degree of L2 immersion. The L1-German–L2-Dutch bilinguals (N = 23) are exposed to their L2 at home and outside the home, and the L1-Dutch–L2-German bilinguals (N = 18) are only exposed to their L2 at home. We tested L2 attainment by comparing the bilinguals’ L2 to the other bilinguals’ L1, and L1 attrition by comparing the bilinguals’ L1 to Dutch monolinguals (N = 29) and German monolinguals (N = 27). Our findings indicate that complete L2 immersion may be advantageous in L2 acquisition, but at the same time it may cause L1 phonetic attrition. We discuss how the results match the predictions made by Flege’s Speech Learning Model and explore how far bilinguals’ success in acquiring L2 VOT and maintaining L1 VOT depends on the immersion context, articulatory constraints and the risk of sounding foreign accented. PMID:29081568

Native language change during early stages of second language learning.

PubMed

Bice, Kinsey; Kroll, Judith F

2015-11-11

Research on proficient bilinguals has demonstrated that both languages are always active, even when only one is required. The coactivation of the two languages creates both competition and convergence, facilitating the processing of cognate words, but slowing lexical access when there is a requirement to engage control mechanisms to select the target language. Critically, these consequences are evident in the native language (L1) as well as in the second language (L2). The present study questioned whether L1 changes can be detected at early stages of L2 learning and how they are modulated by L2 proficiency. Native English speakers learning Spanish performed an English (L1) lexical decision task that included cognates while event-related potentials were recorded. They also performed verbal fluency, working memory, and inhibitory control tasks. A group of matched monolinguals performed the same tasks in English only. The results revealed that intermediate learners demonstrate a reduced N400 for cognates compared with noncognates in English (L1), and an emerging effect is visually present in beginning learners as well; however, no behavioral cognate effect was present for either group. In addition, slower reaction times in English (L1) are related to a larger cognate N400 magnitude in English (L1) and Spanish (L2), and to better inhibitory control for learners but not for monolinguals. The results suggest that contrary to the claim that L2 affects L1 only when L2 speakers are highly proficient, L2 learning begins to impact L1 early in the development of the L2 skill.

Second language attainment and first language attrition: The case of VOT in immersed Dutch-German late bilinguals.

PubMed

Stoehr, Antje; Benders, Titia; van Hell, Janet G; Fikkert, Paula

2017-10-01

Speech of late bilinguals has frequently been described in terms of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from the native language (L1) to the second language (L2), but CLI from the L2 to the L1 has received relatively little attention. This article addresses L2 attainment and L1 attrition in voicing systems through measures of voice onset time (VOT) in two groups of Dutch-German late bilinguals in the Netherlands. One group comprises native speakers of Dutch and the other group comprises native speakers of German, and the two groups further differ in their degree of L2 immersion. The L1-German-L2-Dutch bilinguals ( N = 23) are exposed to their L2 at home and outside the home, and the L1-Dutch-L2-German bilinguals ( N = 18) are only exposed to their L2 at home. We tested L2 attainment by comparing the bilinguals' L2 to the other bilinguals' L1, and L1 attrition by comparing the bilinguals' L1 to Dutch monolinguals ( N = 29) and German monolinguals ( N = 27). Our findings indicate that complete L2 immersion may be advantageous in L2 acquisition, but at the same time it may cause L1 phonetic attrition. We discuss how the results match the predictions made by Flege's Speech Learning Model and explore how far bilinguals' success in acquiring L2 VOT and maintaining L1 VOT depends on the immersion context, articulatory constraints and the risk of sounding foreign accented.

Reanalysis in Adult Heritage Language: New Evidence in Support of Attrition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polinsky, Maria

2011-01-01

This study presents and analyzes the comprehension of relative clauses in child and adult speakers of Russian, comparing monolingual controls with Russian heritage speakers (HSs) who are English-dominant. Monolingual and bilingual children demonstrate full adultlike mastery of relative clauses. Adult HSs, however, are significantly different from…

Language shift, bilingualism and the future of Britain's Celtic languages

PubMed Central

Kandler, Anne; Unger, Roman; Steele, James

2010-01-01

‘Language shift’ is the process whereby members of a community in which more than one language is spoken abandon their original vernacular language in favour of another. The historical shifts to English by Celtic language speakers of Britain and Ireland are particularly well-studied examples for which good census data exist for the most recent 100–120 years in many areas where Celtic languages were once the prevailing vernaculars. We model the dynamics of language shift as a competition process in which the numbers of speakers of each language (both monolingual and bilingual) vary as a function both of internal recruitment (as the net outcome of birth, death, immigration and emigration rates of native speakers), and of gains and losses owing to language shift. We examine two models: a basic model in which bilingualism is simply the transitional state for households moving between alternative monolingual states, and a diglossia model in which there is an additional demand for the endangered language as the preferred medium of communication in some restricted sociolinguistic domain, superimposed on the basic shift dynamics. Fitting our models to census data, we successfully reproduce the demographic trajectories of both languages over the past century. We estimate the rates of recruitment of new Scottish Gaelic speakers that would be required each year (for instance, through school education) to counteract the ‘natural wastage’ as households with one or more Gaelic speakers fail to transmit the language to the next generation informally, for different rates of loss during informal intergenerational transmission. PMID:21041210

Bilingualism, executive control, and age at diagnosis among people with early-stage Alzheimer's disease in Wales.

PubMed

Clare, Linda; Whitaker, Christopher J; Craik, Fergus I M; Bialystok, Ellen; Martyr, Anthony; Martin-Forbes, Pamela A; Bastable, Alexandra J M; Pye, Kirstie L; Quinn, Catherine; Thomas, Enlli M; Gathercole, Virginia C Mueller; Hindle, John V

2016-09-01

The observation of a bilingual advantage in executive control tasks involving inhibition and management of response conflict suggests that being bilingual might contribute to increased cognitive reserve. In support of this, recent evidence indicates that bilinguals develop Alzheimer's disease (AD) later than monolinguals, and may retain an advantage in performance on executive control tasks. We compared age at the time of receiving an AD diagnosis in bilingual Welsh/English speakers (n = 37) and monolingual English speakers (n = 49), and assessed the performance of bilinguals (n = 24) and monolinguals (n = 49) on a range of executive control tasks. There was a non-significant difference in age at the time of diagnosis, with bilinguals being on average 3 years older than monolinguals, but bilinguals were also significantly more cognitively impaired at the time of diagnosis. There were no significant differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in performance on executive function tests, but bilinguals appeared to show relative strengths in the domain of inhibition and response conflict. Bilingual Welsh/English speakers with AD do not show a clear advantage in executive function over monolingual English speakers, but may retain some benefits in inhibition and management of response conflict. There may be a delay in onset of AD in Welsh/English bilinguals, but if so, it is smaller than that found in some other clinical populations. In this Welsh sample, bilinguals with AD came to the attention of services later than monolinguals, and reasons for this pattern could be explored further. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

How Word Frequency Affects Morphological Processing in Monolinguals and Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lehtonen, Minna; Laine, Matti

2003-01-01

The present study investigated processing of morphologically complex words in three different frequency ranges in monolingual Finnish speakers and Finnish-Swedish bilinguals. By employing a visual lexical decision task, we found a differential pattern of results in monolinguals vs. bilinguals. Monolingual Finns seemed to process low frequency and…

Comprehension of Competing Argument Marking Systems in Two Australian Mixed Languages

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Shannessy, Carmel; Meakins, Felicity

2012-01-01

Crosslinguistic influence has been seen in bilingual adult and child learners when compared to monolingual learners. For speakers of Light Warlpiri and Gurindji Kriol there is no monolingual group for comparison, yet crosslinguistic influence can be seen in how the speakers resolve competition between case-marking and word order systems in each…

The Monolingual Cataloging Monolith: A Barrier to Library Access for Readers of Spanish.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jensen, Bruce

2003-01-01

Asserts that despite growing awareness of frontline public service concerns in accommodating Spanish speakers, little care is invested in the technical processing side of the library's responsibility to Spanish speakers. Examines the usefulness and accessibility of online public access catalogs for monolingual Spanish readers, focusing on records…

The relationship between spoken English proficiency and participation in higher education, employment and income from two Australian censuses.

PubMed

Blake, Helen L; Mcleod, Sharynne; Verdon, Sarah; Fuller, Gail

2018-04-01

Proficiency in the language of the country of residence has implications for an individual's level of education, employability, income and social integration. This paper explores the relationship between the spoken English proficiency of residents of Australia on census day and their educational level, employment and income to provide insight into multilingual speakers' ability to participate in Australia as an English-dominant society. Data presented are derived from two Australian censuses i.e. 2006 and 2011 of over 19 million people. The proportion of Australians who reported speaking a language other than English at home was 21.5% in the 2006 census and 23.2% in the 2011 census. Multilingual speakers who also spoke English very well were more likely to have post-graduate qualifications, full-time employment and high income than monolingual English-speaking Australians. However, multilingual speakers who reported speaking English not well were much less likely to have post-graduate qualifications or full-time employment than monolingual English-speaking Australians. These findings provide insight into the socioeconomic and educational profiles of multilingual speakers, which will inform the understanding of people such as speech-language pathologists who provide them with support. The results indicate spoken English proficiency may impact participation in Australian society. These findings challenge the "monolingual mindset" by demonstrating that outcomes for multilingual speakers in education, employment and income are higher than for monolingual speakers.

Motion Event Similarity Judgments in One or Two Languages: An Exploration of Monolingual Speakers of English and Chinese vs. L2 Learners of English.

PubMed

Ji, Yinglin

2017-01-01

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualize motion events, as suggested by behavioral evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was compared to that of two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioral pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages.

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.

Exploring problem solving strategies on multiple-choice science items: Comparing native Spanish-speaking English Language Learners and mainstream monolinguals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kachchaf, Rachel Rae

The purpose of this study was to compare how English language learners (ELLs) and monolingual English speakers solved multiple-choice items administered with and without a new form of testing accommodation---vignette illustration (VI). By incorporating theories from second language acquisition, bilingualism, and sociolinguistics, this study was able to gain more accurate and comprehensive input into the ways students interacted with items. This mixed methods study used verbal protocols to elicit the thinking processes of thirty-six native Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs), and 36 native-English speaking non-ELLs when solving multiple-choice science items. Results from both qualitative and quantitative analyses show that ELLs used a wider variety of actions oriented to making sense of the items than non-ELLs. In contrast, non-ELLs used more problem solving strategies than ELLs. There were no statistically significant differences in student performance based on the interaction of presence of illustration and linguistic status or the main effect of presence of illustration. However, there were significant differences based on the main effect of linguistic status. An interaction between the characteristics of the students, the items, and the illustrations indicates considerable heterogeneity in the ways in which students from both linguistic groups think about and respond to science test items. The results of this study speak to the need for more research involving ELLs in the process of test development to create test items that do not require ELLs to carry out significantly more actions to make sense of the item than monolingual students.

Visual Feedback of Tongue Movement for Novel Speech Sound Learning

PubMed Central

Katz, William F.; Mehta, Sonya

2015-01-01

Pronunciation training studies have yielded important information concerning the processing of audiovisual (AV) information. Second language (L2) learners show increased reliance on bottom-up, multimodal input for speech perception (compared to monolingual individuals). However, little is known about the role of viewing one's own speech articulation processes during speech training. The current study investigated whether real-time, visual feedback for tongue movement can improve a speaker's learning of non-native speech sounds. An interactive 3D tongue visualization system based on electromagnetic articulography (EMA) was used in a speech training experiment. Native speakers of American English produced a novel speech sound (/ɖ/; a voiced, coronal, palatal stop) before, during, and after trials in which they viewed their own speech movements using the 3D model. Talkers' productions were evaluated using kinematic (tongue-tip spatial positioning) and acoustic (burst spectra) measures. The results indicated a rapid gain in accuracy associated with visual feedback training. The findings are discussed with respect to neural models for multimodal speech processing. PMID:26635571

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

A comparison of proficiency levels in 4-year-old monolingual and trilingual speakers of Afrikaans, isiXhosa and South African English across SES boundaries, using LITMUS-CLT.

PubMed

Perold Potgieter, Anneke; Southwood, Frenette

2016-01-01

This study investigated how trilinguals fare on the cross-linguistic lexical tasks (CLT)-Afrikaans, -isiXhosa and -South African English (SAE) (cf. Haman et al., 2015) compared to monolingual controls, and whether the CLT-Afrikaans renders comparable results across socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. The LITMUS-CLTs were administered to 41 low SES 4-year-olds (11 trilinguals; 10 monolingual speakers of Afrikaans, isiXhosa and SAE) and the LITMUS-CLT-Afrikaans to 11 mid-SES 4-year-old monolinguals. Results (a) indicate that trilinguals' proficiency in their exposure-dominant language did not differ significantly from monolinguals' proficiency, but their proficiency in their additional two languages was significantly lower than monolinguals' proficiency; (b) reflect the extent, but not current amount, of exposure trilinguals had had over time to each of their languages; and (c) show that low and mid-SES monolinguals differed significantly on noun-related, but not verb-related, CLT measures. Possible reasons for and the clinical implications of these results are discussed.

Focusing the lens of language experience: Perception of Ma'di stops by Greek and English bilinguals and monolinguals

PubMed Central

Antoniou, Mark; Best, Catherine T.; Tyler, Michael D.

2013-01-01

Monolingual listeners are constrained by native language experience when categorizing and discriminating unfamiliar non-native contrasts. Are early bilinguals constrained in the same way by their two languages, or do they possess an advantage? Greek–English bilinguals in either Greek or English language mode were compared to monolinguals on categorization and discrimination of Ma'di stop-voicing distinctions that are non-native to both languages. As predicted, English monolinguals categorized Ma'di prevoiced plosive and implosive stops and the coronal voiceless stop as English voiced stops. The Greek monolinguals categorized the Ma'di short-lag voiceless stops as Greek voiceless stops, and the prevoiced implosive stops and the coronal prevoiced stop as Greek voiced stops. Ma'di prenasalized stops were uncategorized. Greek monolinguals discriminated the non-native voiced-voiceless contrasts very well, whereas the English monolinguals did poorly. Bilinguals were given all oral and written instructions either in English or in Greek (language mode manipulation). Each language mode subgroup categorized Ma'di stop-voicing comparably to the corresponding monolingual group. However, the bilinguals’ discrimination was unaffected by language mode: both subgroups performed intermediate to the monolinguals for the prevoiced-voiceless contrast. Thus, bilinguals do not possess an advantage for unfamiliar non-native contrasts, but are nonetheless uniquely configured language users, differing from either monolingual group. PMID:23556605

Focusing the lens of language experience: perception of Ma'di stops by Greek and English bilinguals and monolinguals.

PubMed

Antoniou, Mark; Best, Catherine T; Tyler, Michael D

2013-04-01

Monolingual listeners are constrained by native language experience when categorizing and discriminating unfamiliar non-native contrasts. Are early bilinguals constrained in the same way by their two languages, or do they possess an advantage? Greek-English bilinguals in either Greek or English language mode were compared to monolinguals on categorization and discrimination of Ma'di stop-voicing distinctions that are non-native to both languages. As predicted, English monolinguals categorized Ma'di prevoiced plosive and implosive stops and the coronal voiceless stop as English voiced stops. The Greek monolinguals categorized the Ma'di short-lag voiceless stops as Greek voiceless stops, and the prevoiced implosive stops and the coronal prevoiced stop as Greek voiced stops. Ma'di prenasalized stops were uncategorized. Greek monolinguals discriminated the non-native voiced-voiceless contrasts very well, whereas the English monolinguals did poorly. Bilinguals were given all oral and written instructions either in English or in Greek (language mode manipulation). Each language mode subgroup categorized Ma'di stop-voicing comparably to the corresponding monolingual group. However, the bilinguals' discrimination was unaffected by language mode: both subgroups performed intermediate to the monolinguals for the prevoiced-voiceless contrast. Thus, bilinguals do not possess an advantage for unfamiliar non-native contrasts, but are nonetheless uniquely configured language users, differing from either monolingual group.

Motion Event Similarity Judgments in One or Two Languages: An Exploration of Monolingual Speakers of English and Chinese vs. L2 Learners of English

PubMed Central

Ji, Yinglin

2017-01-01

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualize motion events, as suggested by behavioral evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was compared to that of two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioral pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages. PMID:28638355

Learning foreign labels from a foreign speaker: the role of (limited) exposure to a second language.

PubMed

Akhtar, Nameera; Menjivar, Jennifer; Hoicka, Elena; Sabbagh, Mark A

2012-11-01

Three- and four-year-olds (N = 144) were introduced to novel labels by an English speaker and a foreign speaker (of Nordish, a made-up language), and were asked to endorse one of the speaker's labels. Monolingual English-speaking children were compared to bilingual children and English-speaking children who were regularly exposed to a language other than English. All children tended to endorse the English speaker's labels when asked 'What do you call this?', but when asked 'What do you call this in Nordish?', children with exposure to a second language were more likely to endorse the foreign label than monolingual and bilingual children. The findings suggest that, at this age, exposure to, but not necessarily immersion in, more than one language may promote the ability to learn foreign words from a foreign speaker.

Stress Judgment and Production in English Derivation, and Word Reading in Adult Mandarin-Speaking English Learners.

PubMed

Chung, Wei-Lun; Jarmulowicz, Linda

2017-08-01

For monolingual English-speaking children, judgment and production of stress in derived words, including words with phonologically neutral (e.g., -ness) and non-neutral suffixes (e.g., -ity), is important to both academic vocabulary growth and to word reading. For Mandarin-speaking adult English learners (AELs) the challenge of learning the English stress system might be complicated by cross-linguistic differences in prosodic function and features. As Mandarin-speakers become more proficient in English, patterns similar to those seen in monolingual children could emerge in which awareness and use of stress and suffix cues benefit word reading. A correlational design was used to examine the contributions of English stress in derivation with neutral and non-neutral suffixes to English word and nonword reading. Stress judgment in non-neutral derivation predicted word reading after controlling for working memory and English vocabulary; whereas stress production in neutral derivation contributed to word reading and pseudoword decoding, independent of working memory and English vocabulary. Although AELs could use stress and suffix cues for word reading, AELs were different from native English speakers in awareness of non-neutral suffix cues conditioning lexical stress placement. AELs may need to rely on lexical storage of primary stress in derivations with non-neutral suffixes.

Early-, Middle-, and Late-Developing Sounds in Monolingual and Bilingual Children: An Exploratory Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fabiano-Smith, Leah; Goldstein, Brian A.

2010-01-01

Purpose: To examine the accuracy of early-, middle-, and late-developing (EML) sounds in Spanish-English bilingual children and their monolingual peers. Method: Twenty-four typically developing children, age 3-4 years, were included in this study: 8 bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children, 8 monolingual Spanish speakers, and 8 monolingual…

Effects of Semantic Richness on Lexical Processing in Monolinguals and Bilinguals

PubMed Central

Taler, Vanessa; López Zunini, Rocío; Kousaie, Shanna

2016-01-01

The effect of number of senses (NoS), a measure of semantic richness, was examined in monolingual English speakers (n = 17) and bilingual speakers of English and French (n = 18). Participants completed lexical decision tasks while EEG was recorded: monolinguals completed the task in English only, and bilinguals completed two lexical decision tasks, one in English and one in French. Effects of NoS were observed in both participant groups, with shorter response times and reduced N400 amplitudes to high relative to low NoS items. These effects were stronger in monolinguals than in bilinguals. Moreover, we found dissociations across languages in bilinguals, with stronger behavioral NoS effects in English and stronger event-related potential (ERP) NoS effects in French. This finding suggests that different aspects of linguistic performance may be stronger in each of a bilingual’s two languages. PMID:27524963

The effect of language on functional capacity assessment in middle-aged and older US Latinos with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Bengoetxea, Eneritz; Burton, Cynthia Z; Mausbach, Brent T; Patterson, Thomas L; Twamley, Elizabeth W

2014-08-15

The U.S. Latino population is steadily increasing, prompting a need for cross-cultural outcome measures in schizophrenia research. This study examined the contribution of language to functional assessment in middle-aged Latino patients with schizophrenia by comparing 29 monolingual Spanish-speakers, 29 Latino English-speakers, and 29 non-Latino English-speakers who were matched on relevant demographic variables and who completed cognitive and functional assessments in their native language. There were no statistically significant differences between groups on the four everyday functioning variables (UCSD Performance-Based Skills Assessment [UPSA], Social Skills Performance Assessment [SSPA], Medication Management Ability Assessment [MMAA], and the Global Assessment of Functioning [GAF]). The results support the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural acceptability of these functional assessment instruments. It appears that demographic variables other than language (e.g., age, education) better explain differences in functional assessment among ethnically diverse subpopulations. Considering the influence of these other factors in addition to language on functional assessments will help ensure that measures can be appropriately interpreted among the diverse residents of the United States. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

The effect of language on functional capacity assessment in middle-aged and older US Latinos with schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Bengoetxea, Eneritz; Burton, Cynthia Z.; Mausbach, Brent T.; Patterson, Thomas L.; Twamley, Elizabeth W.

2014-01-01

The U.S. Latino population is steadily increasing, prompting a need for cross-cultural outcome measures in schizophrenia research. This study examined the contribution of language to functional assessment in middle-aged Latino patients with schizophrenia by comparing 29 monolingual Spanish-speakers, 29 Latino English-speakers, and 29 non-Latino English-speakers who were matched on relevant demographic variables and who completed cognitive and functional assessments in their native language. There were no statistically significant differences between groups on the four everyday functioning variables (UCSD Performance-Based Skills Assessment [UPSA], Social Skills Performance Assessment [SSPA], Medication Management Ability Assessment [MMAA], and the Global Assessment of Functioning [GAF]). The results support the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural acceptability of these functional assessment instruments. It appears that demographic variables other than language (e.g., age, education) better explain differences in functional assessment among ethnically diverse subpopulations. Considering the influence of these other factors in addition to language on functional assessments will help ensure that measures can be appropriately interpreted among the diverse residents of the United States. PMID:24751379

Exploring Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers' Beliefs about the Monolingual Approach: Differences between Pre-Service and In-Service Korean Teachers of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Jang Ho

2016-01-01

The non-native English-speaking teachers' (NNESTs) beliefs about the monolingual approach have not been sufficiently studied in the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL). In examining the NNESTs' beliefs about that issue, the present study adapts Guy Cook's recent framework, according to which the monolingual approach is based upon four…

Speaking Japanese in Japan: Issues for English Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stephens, Meredith

2010-01-01

Due to the global momentum of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), Anglophones may perceive that there is less urgency for them to learn other languages than for speakers of other languages to learn English. The monolingual expectations of English speakers are evidenced not only in Anglophone countries but also abroad. This study reports on the…

Effects of Speed of Word Processing on Semantic Access: The Case of Bilingualism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Clara D.; Costa, Albert; Dering, Benjamin; Hoshino, Noriko; Wu, Yan Jing; Thierry, Guillaume

2012-01-01

Bilingual speakers generally manifest slower word recognition than monolinguals. We investigated the consequences of the word processing speed on semantic access in bilinguals. The paradigm involved a stream of English words and pseudowords presented in succession at a constant rate. English-Welsh bilinguals and English monolinguals were asked to…

Health Literacy Screening of Geriatric Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Patients Using Single-Item Literacy Screening Questions and Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cordasco, Kristina M.; Homeier, Diana C.; Franco, Idalid; Wang, Pin-Chieh; Sarkisian, Catherine A.

2012-01-01

Objective: We describe the performance of Single Item Literacy Screener (SILS) questions, and educational attainment, as screening for inadequate health literacy (IHL) in older monolingual Spanish speakers. Design: We used a cross-sectional design, interviewing participants once at the time of their arrival for a clinic appointment. Setting: We…

Increase in Speech Recognition Due to Linguistic Mismatch between Target and Masker Speech: Monolingual and Simultaneous Bilingual Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Calandruccio, Lauren; Zhou, Haibo

2014-01-01

Purpose: To examine whether improved speech recognition during linguistically mismatched target-masker experiments is due to linguistic unfamiliarity of the masker speech or linguistic dissimilarity between the target and masker speech. Method: Monolingual English speakers (n = 20) and English-Greek simultaneous bilinguals (n = 20) listened to…

Bilinguals Use Language-Specific Articulatory Settings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilson, Ian; Gick, Bryan

2014-01-01

Purpose: Previous work has shown that monolingual French and English speakers use distinct articulatory settings, the underlying articulatory posture of a language. In the present article, the authors report on an experiment in which they investigated articulatory settings in bilingual speakers. The authors first tested the hypothesis that in…

Linguistically Directed Attention to the Temporal Aspect of Action Events in Monolingual English Speakers and Chinese-English Bilingual Speakers with Varying English Proficiency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Jenn-Yeu; Su, Jui-Ju; Lee, Chao-Yang; O'Seaghdha, Padraig G.

2012-01-01

Chinese and English speakers seem to hold different conceptions of time which may be related to the different codings of time in the two languages. Employing a sentence-picture matching task, we have investigated this linguistic relativity in Chinese-English bilinguals varying in English proficiency and found that those with high proficiency…

The Influence of Emotional Arousal on Affective Priming in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altarriba, Jeanette; Canary, Tina M.

2004-01-01

The activation of arousal components for emotion-laden words in English (e.g. kiss, death) was examined in two groups of participants: English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1, emotion-laden words were rated on valence and perceived arousal. These norms were used to construct prime-target word pairs that were used in…

A monolingual mind can have two time lines: Exploring space-time mappings in Mandarin monolinguals.

PubMed

Yang, Wenxing; Sun, Ying

2016-06-01

Can a mind accommodate two time lines? Miles, Tan, Noble, Lumsden and Macrae (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 18, 598-604, 2011) shows that Mandarin-English bilinguals have both a horizontal space-time mapping consistent with linguistic conventions within English and a vertical representation of time commensurate with Mandarin. However, the present study, via two experiments, demonstrates that Mandarin monolinguals possess two mental time lines, i.e., one horizontal and one vertical line. This study concludes that a Mandarin speaker has two mental time lines not because he/she has acquired L2 English, but because there are both horizontal and vertical expressions in Mandarin spatiotemporal metaphors. Specifically, this study highlights the fact that a horizontal time line does exist in a Mandarin speaker's cognition, even if he/she is a Mandarin monolingual instead of a ME bilingual. Taken together, the evidence in hand is far from sufficient to support Miles et al.'s (2011) conclusion that ME bilinguals' horizontal concept of time is manipulated by English. Implications for theoretical issues concerning the language-thought relationship in general and the effect of bilingualism on cognition in particular are discussed.

Factors Influencing Consonant Acquisition in Brazilian Portuguese-Speaking Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ceron, Marizete Ilha; Gubiani, Marileda Barichello; de Oliveira, Camila Rosa; Keske-Soares, Márcia

2017-01-01

Purpose: We sought to provide valid and reliable data on the acquisition of consonant sounds in speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Method: The sample comprised 733 typically developing monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (ages 3;0-8;11 [years;months]). The presence of surface speech error patterns, the revised percentage consonants…

Hemispheric asymmetry of emotion words in a non-native mind: a divided visual field study.

PubMed

Jończyk, Rafał

2015-05-01

This study investigates hemispheric specialization for emotional words among proficient non-native speakers of English by means of the divided visual field paradigm. The motivation behind the study is to extend the monolingual hemifield research to the non-native context and see how emotion words are processed in a non-native mind. Sixty eight females participated in the study, all highly proficient in English. The stimuli comprised 12 positive nouns, 12 negative nouns, 12 non-emotional nouns and 36 pseudo-words. To examine the lateralization of emotion, stimuli were presented unilaterally in a random fashion for 180 ms in a go/no-go lexical decision task. The perceptual data showed a right hemispheric advantage for processing speed of negative words and a complementary role of the two hemispheres in the recognition accuracy of experimental stimuli. The data indicate that processing of emotion words in non-native language may require greater interhemispheric communication, but at the same time demonstrates a specific role of the right hemisphere in the processing of negative relative to positive valence. The results of the study are discussed in light of the methodological inconsistencies in the hemifield research as well as the non-native context in which the study was conducted.

Bilingualism affects audiovisual phoneme identification

PubMed Central

Burfin, Sabine; Pascalis, Olivier; Ruiz Tada, Elisa; Costa, Albert; Savariaux, Christophe; Kandel, Sonia

2014-01-01

We all go through a process of perceptual narrowing for phoneme identification. As we become experts in the languages we hear in our environment we lose the ability to identify phonemes that do not exist in our native phonological inventory. This research examined how linguistic experience—i.e., the exposure to a double phonological code during childhood—affects the visual processes involved in non-native phoneme identification in audiovisual speech perception. We conducted a phoneme identification experiment with bilingual and monolingual adult participants. It was an ABX task involving a Bengali dental-retroflex contrast that does not exist in any of the participants' languages. The phonemes were presented in audiovisual (AV) and audio-only (A) conditions. The results revealed that in the audio-only condition monolinguals and bilinguals had difficulties in discriminating the retroflex non-native phoneme. They were phonologically “deaf” and assimilated it to the dental phoneme that exists in their native languages. In the audiovisual presentation instead, both groups could overcome the phonological deafness for the retroflex non-native phoneme and identify both Bengali phonemes. However, monolinguals were more accurate and responded quicker than bilinguals. This suggests that bilinguals do not use the same processes as monolinguals to decode visual speech. PMID:25374551

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.

Beating the Odds: A Longitudinal Investigation of Low-Income Dual-Language and Monolingual Children's English Language and Literacy Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Han, Myae; Vukelich, Carol; Buell, Martha; Meacham, Sohyun

2014-01-01

Research Findings: The current study reports on the results of a longitudinal investigation of the language and early literacy development of a sample of dual-language learners (DLLs) and monolingual English speakers from low-income families who received an Early Reading First intervention during their Head Start preschool year. A total of 62…

A Corpus-Based Study on Turkish Spoken Productions of Bilingual Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Agçam, Reyhan; Bulut, Adem

2016-01-01

The current study investigated whether monolingual adult speakers of Turkish and bilingual adult speakers of Arabic and Turkish significantly differ regarding their spoken productions in Turkish. Accordingly, two groups of undergraduate students studying Turkish Language and Literature at a state university in Turkey were presented two videos on a…

Influential Factors in Incomplete Acquisition and Attrition of Young Heritage Speakers' Vocabulary Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gharibi, Khadijeh; Boers, Frank

2017-01-01

This study investigates whether young heritage speakers, either simultaneous or sequential bilinguals, have limited vocabulary knowledge in their family language compared to matched monolingual counterparts and, if so, what factors help to account for this difference. These factors include age, age at emigration, length of emigration, frequency of…

Quantitative and qualitative differences in the lexical knowledge of monolingual and bilingual children on the LITMUS-CLT task.

PubMed

Altman, Carmit; Goldstein, Tamara; Armon-Lotem, Sharon

2017-01-01

While bilingual children follow the same milestones of language acquisition as monolingual children do in learning the syntactic patterns of their second language (L2), their vocabulary size in L2 often lags behind compared to monolinguals. The present study explores the comprehension and production of nouns and verbs in Hebrew, by two groups of 5- to 6-year olds with typical language development: monolingual Hebrew speakers (N = 26), and Russian-Hebrew bilinguals (N = 27). Analyses not only show quantitative gaps between comprehension and production and between nouns and verbs, with a bilingual effect in both, but also a qualitative difference between monolinguals and bilinguals in their production errors: monolinguals' errors reveal knowledge of the language rules despite temporary access difficulties, while bilinguals' errors reflect gaps in their knowledge of Hebrew (L2). The nature of Hebrew as a Semitic language allows one to explore this qualitative difference in the semantic and morphological level.

The (Il)logical Problem of Heritage Speaker Bilingualism and Incomplete Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cabo, Diego Pascual Y.; Rothman, Jason

2012-01-01

This Forum challenges and problematizes the term "incomplete acquisition," which has been widely used to describe the state of competence of heritage speaker (HS) bilinguals for well over a decade (see, e.g., Montrul, 2008). It is suggested and defended that HS competence, while often different from monolingual peers, is in fact not incomplete…

Cognitive Effects of Literacy: Linguistic Awareness in Adult Non-Readers. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferguson, Charles A.

A project that investigated the metalinguistic awareness of adults (what they know about language as distinct from their ability to use language) is described and summarized in this final report. Subjects were 60 monolingual English speakers and 26 bilingual (Spanish and English) speakers enrolled in adult education classes. They fell into three…

Literacy Skill Differences between Adult Native English and Native Spanish Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herman, Julia; Cote, Nicole Gilbert; Reilly, Lenore; Binder, Katherine S.

2013-01-01

The goal of this study was to compare the literacy skills of adult native English and native Spanish ABE speakers. Participants were 169 native English speakers and 124 native Spanish speakers recruited from five prior research projects. The results showed that the native Spanish speakers were less skilled on morphology and passage comprehension…

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 for the across-category lexical tone contrast. Overall, the results support the use of IDS characteristics in training non-native speech contrasts and provide impetus for further research.

The Indicating Factors of Oral Reading Fluency of Monolingual and Bilingual Children in Egypt

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hussien, Abdelaziz M.

2014-01-01

This study examined oral reading fluency (ORF) of bilingual and monolingual students. The author selected a sample of 510 (258 males and 252 females) native Arabic-speaking sixth-graders (62 bilinguals and 448 monolinguals) in Egypt. The purposes were; (a) to examine oral reading rate, oral reading accuracy, prosody, and oral reading comprehension…

Lexical Learning in Bilingual Adults: The Relative Importance of Short-Term Memory for Serial Order and Phonological Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Majerus, Steve; Poncelet, Martine; Van der Linden, Martial; Weekes, Brendan S.

2008-01-01

Studies of monolingual speakers have shown a strong association between lexical learning and short-term memory (STM) capacity, especially STM for serial order information. At the same time, studies of bilingual speakers suggest that phonological knowledge is the main factor that drives lexical learning. This study tested these two hypotheses…

San Luis Valley Board of Cooperative Services Bilingual-Bicultural Program. Curriculum: Kindergarten Through Third Grade.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

San Luis Valley Board of Cooperative Services, Alamosa, CO.

For the children in the San Luis Valley (Colorado), bilingual education has provided a successful atmosphere for both the monolingual English speakers and the non-English speakers. They teach each other, learn about each other's culture, and appreciate and understand others better. This curriculum guide, funded by Title VII of the Elementary and…

Experimental U.S. Census Bureau Race and Hispanic Origin Survey Questions: Reactions from Spanish Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Terry, Rodney L.; Fond, Marissa

2013-01-01

People of Hispanic origin, including monolingual Spanish speakers, have experienced difficulty identifying with a race category on U.S. demographic surveys. As part of a larger research effort by the U.S. Census Bureau to improve race and Hispanic origin questions for the 2020 Census, we tested experimental versions of race and Hispanic origin…

How auditory discontinuities and linguistic experience affect the perception of speech and non-speech in English- and Spanish-speaking listeners

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hay, Jessica F.; Holt, Lori L.; Lotto, Andrew J.; Diehl, Randy L.

2005-04-01

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of long-term linguistic experience on the perception of non-speech sounds in English and Spanish speakers. Research using tone-onset-time (TOT) stimuli, a type of non-speech analogue of voice-onset-time (VOT) stimuli, has suggested that there is an underlying auditory basis for the perception of stop consonants based on a threshold for detecting onset asynchronies in the vicinity of +20 ms. For English listeners, stop consonant labeling boundaries are congruent with the positive auditory discontinuity, while Spanish speakers place their VOT labeling boundaries and discrimination peaks in the vicinity of 0 ms VOT. The present study addresses the question of whether long-term linguistic experience with different VOT categories affects the perception of non-speech stimuli that are analogous in their acoustic timing characteristics. A series of synthetic VOT stimuli and TOT stimuli were created for this study. Using language appropriate labeling and ABX discrimination tasks, labeling boundaries (VOT) and discrimination peaks (VOT and TOT) are assessed for 24 monolingual English speakers and 24 monolingual Spanish speakers. The interplay between language experience and auditory biases are discussed. [Work supported by NIDCD.

The Role of Oral Language Skills in Reading and Listening Comprehension of Text: A Comparison of Monolingual (L1) and Bilingual (L2) Speakers of English Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Babayigit, Selma

2014-01-01

The study examined the role of oral language skills in reading comprehension and listening comprehension levels of 125 monolingual (L1) and bilingual (L2) English-speaking learners (M = 121.5 months, SD = 4.65) in England. All testing was conducted in English. The L1 learners outperformed their L2 peers on the measures of oral language and text…

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 and spatial frames of reference in mind and brain.

PubMed

Gallistel, C R.

2002-08-01

Some language communities routinely use allocentric reference directions (e.g. 'uphill-downhill') where speakers of European languages would use egocentric references ('left-right'). Previous experiments have suggested that the different language groups use different reference frames in non-linguistic tasks involving the recreation of oriented arrays. However, a recent paper argues that manipulating test conditions produces similar effects in monolingual English speakers, and in animals.

A Model of Mandarin Tone Categories--A Study of Perception and Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Bei

2010-01-01

The current study lays the groundwork for a model of Mandarin tones based on both native speakers' and non-native speakers' perception and production. It demonstrates that there is variability in non-native speakers' tone productions and that there are differences in the perceptual boundaries in native speakers and non-native speakers. There…

Speech Recognition in Nonnative versus Native English-Speaking College Students in a Virtual Classroom.

PubMed

Neave-DiToro, Dorothy; Rubinstein, Adrienne; Neuman, Arlene C

2017-05-01

Limited attention has been given to the effects of classroom acoustics at the college level. Many studies have reported that nonnative speakers of English are more likely to be affected by poor room acoustics than native speakers. An important question is how classroom acoustics affect speech perception of nonnative college students. The combined effect of noise and reverberation on the speech recognition performance of college students who differ in age of English acquisition was evaluated under conditions simulating classrooms with reverberation times (RTs) close to ANSI recommended RTs. A mixed design was used in this study. Thirty-six native and nonnative English-speaking college students with normal hearing, ages 18-28 yr, participated. Two groups of nine native participants (native monolingual [NM] and native bilingual) and two groups of nine nonnative participants (nonnative early and nonnative late) were evaluated in noise under three reverberant conditions (0.03, 0.06, and 0.08 sec). A virtual test paradigm was used, which represented a signal reaching a student at the back of a classroom. Speech recognition in noise was measured using the Bamford-Kowal-Bench Speech-in-Noise (BKB-SIN) test and signal-to-noise ratio required for correct repetition of 50% of the key words in the stimulus sentences (SNR-50) was obtained for each group in each reverberant condition. A mixed-design analysis of variance was used to determine statistical significance as a function of listener group and RT. SNR-50 was significantly higher for nonnative listeners as compared to native listeners, and a more favorable SNR-50 was needed as RT increased. The most dramatic effect on SNR-50 was found in the group with later acquisition of English, whereas the impact of early introduction of a second language was subtler. At the ANSI standard's maximum recommended RT (0.6 sec), all groups except the NM group exhibited a mild signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) loss. At the 0.8 sec RT, all groups exhibited a mild SNR loss. Acoustics in the classroom are an important consideration for nonnative speakers who are proficient in English and enrolled in college. To address the need for a clearer speech signal by nonnative students (and for all students), universities should follow ANSI recommendations, as well as minimize background noise in occupied classrooms. Behavioral/instructional strategies should be considered to address factors that cannot be compensated for through acoustic design. American Academy of Audiology

Mixing Languages during Learning? Testing the One Subject-One Language Rule.

PubMed

Antón, Eneko; Thierry, Guillaume; Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni

2015-01-01

In bilingual communities, mixing languages is avoided in formal schooling: even if two languages are used on a daily basis for teaching, only one language is used to teach each given academic subject. This tenet known as the one subject-one language rule avoids mixing languages in formal schooling because it may hinder learning. The aim of this study was to test the scientific ground of this assumption by investigating the consequences of acquiring new concepts using a method in which two languages are mixed as compared to a purely monolingual method. Native balanced bilingual speakers of Basque and Spanish-adults (Experiment 1) and children (Experiment 2)-learnt new concepts by associating two different features to novel objects. Half of the participants completed the learning process in a multilingual context (one feature was described in Basque and the other one in Spanish); while the other half completed the learning phase in a purely monolingual context (both features were described in Spanish). Different measures of learning were taken, as well as direct and indirect indicators of concept consolidation. We found no evidence in favor of the non-mixing method when comparing the results of two groups in either experiment, and thus failed to give scientific support for the educational premise of the one subject-one language rule.

Mixing Languages during Learning? Testing the One Subject—One Language Rule

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

In bilingual communities, mixing languages is avoided in formal schooling: even if two languages are used on a daily basis for teaching, only one language is used to teach each given academic subject. This tenet known as the one subject-one language rule avoids mixing languages in formal schooling because it may hinder learning. The aim of this study was to test the scientific ground of this assumption by investigating the consequences of acquiring new concepts using a method in which two languages are mixed as compared to a purely monolingual method. Native balanced bilingual speakers of Basque and Spanish—adults (Experiment 1) and children (Experiment 2)—learnt new concepts by associating two different features to novel objects. Half of the participants completed the learning process in a multilingual context (one feature was described in Basque and the other one in Spanish); while the other half completed the learning phase in a purely monolingual context (both features were described in Spanish). Different measures of learning were taken, as well as direct and indirect indicators of concept consolidation. We found no evidence in favor of the non-mixing method when comparing the results of two groups in either experiment, and thus failed to give scientific support for the educational premise of the one subject—one language rule. PMID:26107624

An ERP study on initial second language vocabulary learning.

PubMed

Yum, Yen Na; Midgley, Katherine J; Holcomb, Phillip J; Grainger, Jonathan

2014-04-01

This study examined the very initial phases of orthographic and semantic acquisition in monolingual native English speakers learning Chinese words under controlled laboratory conditions. Participants engaged in 10 sessions of vocabulary learning, four of which were used to obtain ERPs. Performance in behavioral tests improved over sessions, and these data were used to define fast and slow learners. Most important is that ERPs in the two groups of learners revealed qualitatively distinct learning patterns. Only fast learners showed a left-lateralized increase in N170 amplitude with training. Furthermore, only fast learners showed an increased N400 amplitude with training, with a distinct anterior distribution. Slow learners, on the other hand, showed a posterior positive effect, with increasingly positive-going waveforms in occipital sites as training progressed. Possible mechanisms underlying these qualitative differences are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Mnemonic Value of Orthography for Vocabulary Learning in Monolinguals and Language Minority English-Speaking College Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miles, Katharine Pace; Ehri, Linnea C.; Lauterbach, Mark D.

2016-01-01

The study examined whether exposure to spellings of new vocabulary words improved monolinguals' and language minority (LM) students' (n = 25) memory for pronunciations, meanings, and spellings of the words. College students who are native English-speaking monolinguals (n = 12) and LM students who learned English as their second language (n = 13)…

Effect of Bilingualism on Lexical Stress Pattern Discrimination in French-Learning Infants

PubMed Central

Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka; Serres, Josette; Höhle, Barbara; Nazzi, Thierry

2012-01-01

Monolingual infants start learning the prosodic properties of their native language around 6 to 9 months of age, a fact marked by the development of preferences for predominant prosodic patterns and a decrease in sensitivity to non-native prosodic properties. The present study evaluates the effects of bilingual acquisition on speech perception by exploring how stress pattern perception may differ in French-learning 10-month-olds raised in bilingual as opposed to monolingual environments. Experiment 1 shows that monolinguals can discriminate stress patterns following a long familiarization to one of two patterns, but not after a short familiarization. In Experiment 2, two subgroups of bilingual infants growing up learning both French and another language (varying across infants) in which stress is used lexically were tested under the more difficult short familiarization condition: one with balanced input, and one receiving more input in the language other than French. Discrimination was clearly found for the other-language-dominant subgroup, establishing heightened sensitivity to stress pattern contrasts in these bilinguals as compared to monolinguals. However, the balanced bilinguals' performance was not better than that of monolinguals, establishing an effect of the relative balance of the language input. This pattern of results is compatible with the proposal that sensitivity to prosodic contrasts is maintained or enhanced in a bilingual population compared to a monolingual population in which these contrasts are non-native, provided that this dimension is used in one of the two languages in acquisition, and that infants receive enough input from that language. PMID:22363500

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…

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…

The effect of grammatical gender on object categorization.

PubMed

Cubelli, Roberto; Paolieri, Daniela; Lotto, Lorella; Job, Remo

2011-03-01

In 3 experiments, we investigated the effect of grammatical gender on object categorization. Participants were asked to judge whether 2 objects, whose names did or did not share grammatical gender, belonged to the same semantic category by pressing a key. Monolingual speakers of English (Experiment 1), Italian (Experiments 1 and 2), and Spanish (Experiments 2 and 3) were tested in their native language. Italian and Spanish participants responded faster to pairs of stimuli sharing the same gender, whereas no difference was observed for English participants. In Experiment 2, the pictures were chosen in such a way that the grammatical gender of the names was opposite in Italian and Spanish. Therefore, the same pair of stimuli gave rise to different patterns depending on the gender congruency of the names in the languages. In Experiment 3, Spanish speakers performed the same task under an articulatory suppression condition, showing no grammatical gender effect. The locus where meaning and gender interact can be located at the level of the lexical representation that specifies syntactic information: Nouns sharing the same grammatical gender activate each other, thus facilitating their processing and speeding up responses, either to semantically related pairs or to semantically unrelated pairs. 2011 APA, all rights reserved

Some cross-linguistic evidence for modulation of implicational universals by language-specific frequency effects in phonological development

PubMed Central

Edwards, Jan; Beckman, Mary E.

2009-01-01

While broad-focus comparisons of consonant inventories across children acquiring different language can suggest that phonological development follows a universal sequence, finer-grained statistical comparisons can reveal systematic differences. This cross-linguistic study of word-initial lingual obstruents examined some effects of language-specific frequencies on consonant mastery. Repetitions of real words were elicited from 2- and 3-year-old children who were monolingual speakers of English, Cantonese, Greek, or Japanese. The repetitions were recorded and transcribed by an adult native speaker for each language. Results found support for both language-universal effects in phonological acquisition and for language-specific influences related to phoneme and phoneme sequence frequency. These results suggest that acquisition patterns that are common across languages arise in two ways. One influence is direct, via the universal constraints imposed by the physiology and physics of speech production and perception, and how these predict which contrasts will be easy and which will be difficult for the child to learn to control. The other influence is indirect, via the way universal principles of ease of perception and production tend to influence the lexicons of many languages through commonly attested sound changes. PMID:19890438

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

Language Learning and Control in Monolinguals and Bilinguals

PubMed Central

Bartolotti, James; Marian, Viorica

2012-01-01

Parallel language activation in bilinguals leads to competition between languages. Experience managing this interference may aid novel language learning by improving the ability to suppress competition from known languages. To investigate the effect of bilingualism on the ability to control native-language interference, monolinguals and bilinguals were taught an artificial language designed to elicit between-language competition. Partial activation of interlingual competitors was assessed with eye-tracking and mouse-tracking during a word recognition task in the novel language. Eye-tracking results showed that monolinguals looked at competitors more than bilinguals, and for a longer duration of time. Mouse-tracking results showed that monolinguals’ mouse-movements were attracted to native-language competitors, while bilinguals overcame competitor interference by increasing activation of target items. Results suggest that bilinguals manage cross-linguistic interference more effectively than monolinguals. We conclude that language interference can affect lexical retrieval, but bilingualism may reduce this interference by facilitating access to a newly-learned language. PMID:22462514

Native and Non-Native Speakers' Brain Responses to Filled Indirect Object Gaps

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jessen, Anna; Festman, Julia; Boxell, Oliver; Felser, Claudia

2017-01-01

We examined native and non-native English speakers' processing of indirect object "wh"-dependencies using a filled-gap paradigm while recording event-related potentials (ERPs). The non-native group was comprised of native German-speaking, proficient non-native speakers of English. Both participant groups showed evidence of linking…

Defining "Native Speaker" in Multilingual Settings: English as a Native Language in Asia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hansen Edwards, Jette G.

2017-01-01

The current study examines how and why speakers of English from multilingual contexts in Asia are identifying as native speakers of English. Eighteen participants from different contexts in Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, and The Philippines, who self-identified as native speakers of English participated in hour-long interviews…

Language Learning and Control in Monolinguals and Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bartolotti, James; Marian, Viorica

2012-01-01

Parallel language activation in bilinguals leads to competition between languages. Experience managing this interference may aid novel language learning by improving the ability to suppress competition from known languages. To investigate the effect of bilingualism on the ability to control native-language interference, monolinguals and bilinguals…

Talker and accent variability effects on spoken word recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nyang, Edna E.; Rogers, Catherine L.; Nishi, Kanae

2003-04-01

A number of studies have shown that words in a list are recognized less accurately in noise and with longer response latencies when they are spoken by multiple talkers, rather than a single talker. These results have been interpreted as support for an exemplar-based model of speech perception, in which it is assumed that detailed information regarding the speaker's voice is preserved in memory and used in recognition, rather than being eliminated via normalization. In the present study, the effects of varying both accent and talker are investigated using lists of words spoken by (a) a single native English speaker, (b) six native English speakers, (c) three native English speakers and three Japanese-accented English speakers. Twelve /hVd/ words were mixed with multi-speaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios (+10, +5, and 0 dB) to create the word lists. Native English-speaking listeners' percent-correct recognition for words produced by native English speakers across the three talker conditions (single talker native, multi-talker native, and multi-talker mixed native and non-native) and three signal-to-noise ratios will be compared to determine whether sources of speaker variability other than voice alone add to the processing demands imposed by simple (i.e., single accent) speaker variability in spoken word recognition.

When one person's mistake is another's standard usage: the effect of foreign accent on syntactic processing.

PubMed

Hanulíková, Adriana; van Alphen, Petra M; van Goch, Merel M; Weber, Andrea

2012-04-01

How do native listeners process grammatical errors that are frequent in non-native speech? We investigated whether the neural correlates of syntactic processing are modulated by speaker identity. ERPs to gender agreement errors in sentences spoken by a native speaker were compared with the same errors spoken by a non-native speaker. In line with previous research, gender violations in native speech resulted in a P600 effect (larger P600 for violations in comparison with correct sentences), but when the same violations were produced by the non-native speaker with a foreign accent, no P600 effect was observed. Control sentences with semantic violations elicited comparable N400 effects for both the native and the non-native speaker, confirming no general integration problem in foreign-accented speech. The results demonstrate that the P600 is modulated by speaker identity, extending our knowledge about the role of speaker's characteristics on neural correlates of speech processing.

Reflecting on Native Speaker Privilege

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berger, Kathleen

2014-01-01

The issues surrounding native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) as teachers (NESTs and NNESTs, respectively) in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) are a current topic of interest. In many contexts, the native speaker of English is viewed as the model teacher, thus putting the NEST into a position of…

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…

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…

Compliment Responses: Comparing American Learners of Japanese, Native Japanese Speakers, and American Native English Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tatsumi, Naofumi

2012-01-01

Previous research shows that American learners of Japanese (AJs) tend to differ from native Japanese speakers in their compliment responses (CRs). Yokota (1986) and Shimizu (2009) have reported that AJs tend to respond more negatively than native Japanese speakers. It has also been reported that AJs' CRs tend to lack the use of avoidance or…

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.

Bilingual Infants Demonstrate Perceptual Flexibility in Phoneme Discrimination but Perceptual Constraint in Face Discrimination

PubMed Central

Singh, Leher; Loh, Darrell; Xiao, Naiqi G.

2017-01-01

Perceptual narrowing is a highly significant development associated with the first year of life. It conventionally refers to an orientation toward nativeness whereby infant's perceptual sensitivities begin to align with the phonetic properties of their native environment. Nativeness effects, such as perceptual narrowing, have been observed in several domains, most notably, in face discrimination within other-race faces and speech discrimination of non-native phonemes. Thus, far, nativeness effects in the face and speech perception have been theoretically linked, but have mostly been investigated independently. An important caveat to nativeness effects is that diversifying experiences, such as bilingualism or multiracial exposure, can lead to a reduction or postponement in attunement to the native environment. The present study was designed to investigate whether bilingualism influences nativeness effects in phonetic and face perception. Eleven-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants were tested on their abilities to discriminate native and non-native speech contrasts as well as own-race and other-race face contrasts. While monolingual infants demonstrated nativeness effects in face and speech perception, bilingual infants demonstrated nativeness effects in the face perception but demonstrated flexibility in speech perception. Results support domain-specific effects of bilingual experience on nativeness effects. PMID:28955278

Loss of regional accent after damage to the speech production network.

PubMed

Berthier, Marcelo L; Dávila, Guadalupe; Moreno-Torres, Ignacio; Beltrán-Corbellini, Álvaro; Santana-Moreno, Daniel; Roé-Vellvé, Núria; Thurnhofer-Hemsi, Karl; Torres-Prioris, María José; Massone, María Ignacia; Ruiz-Cruces, Rafael

2015-01-01

Lesion-symptom mapping studies reveal that selective damage to one or more components of the speech production network can be associated with foreign accent syndrome, changes in regional accent (e.g., from Parisian accent to Alsatian accent), stronger regional accent, or re-emergence of a previously learned and dormant regional accent. Here, we report loss of regional accent after rapidly regressive Broca's aphasia in three Argentinean patients who had suffered unilateral or bilateral focal lesions in components of the speech production network. All patients were monolingual speakers with three different native Spanish accents (Cordobés or central, Guaranítico or northeast, and Bonaerense). Samples of speech production from the patient with native Córdoba accent were compared with previous recordings of his voice, whereas data from the patient with native Guaranítico accent were compared with speech samples from one healthy control matched for age, gender, and native accent. Speech samples from the patient with native Buenos Aires's accent were compared with data obtained from four healthy control subjects with the same accent. Analysis of speech production revealed discrete slowing in speech rate, inappropriate long pauses, and monotonous intonation. Phonemic production remained similar to those of healthy Spanish speakers, but phonetic variants peculiar to each accent (e.g., intervocalic aspiration of /s/ in Córdoba accent) were absent. While basic normal prosodic features of Spanish prosody were preserved, features intrinsic to melody of certain geographical areas (e.g., rising end F0 excursion in declarative sentences intoned with Córdoba accent) were absent. All patients were also unable to produce sentences with different emotional prosody. Brain imaging disclosed focal left hemisphere lesions involving the middle part of the motor cortex, the post-central cortex, the posterior inferior and/or middle frontal cortices, insula, anterior putamen and supplementary motor area. Our findings suggest that lesions affecting the middle part of the left motor cortex and other components of the speech production network disrupt neural processes involved in the production of regional accent features.

Loss of regional accent after damage to the speech production network

PubMed Central

Berthier, Marcelo L.; Dávila, Guadalupe; Moreno-Torres, Ignacio; Beltrán-Corbellini, Álvaro; Santana-Moreno, Daniel; Roé-Vellvé, Núria; Thurnhofer-Hemsi, Karl; Torres-Prioris, María José; Massone, María Ignacia; Ruiz-Cruces, Rafael

2015-01-01

Lesion-symptom mapping studies reveal that selective damage to one or more components of the speech production network can be associated with foreign accent syndrome, changes in regional accent (e.g., from Parisian accent to Alsatian accent), stronger regional accent, or re-emergence of a previously learned and dormant regional accent. Here, we report loss of regional accent after rapidly regressive Broca’s aphasia in three Argentinean patients who had suffered unilateral or bilateral focal lesions in components of the speech production network. All patients were monolingual speakers with three different native Spanish accents (Cordobés or central, Guaranítico or northeast, and Bonaerense). Samples of speech production from the patient with native Córdoba accent were compared with previous recordings of his voice, whereas data from the patient with native Guaranítico accent were compared with speech samples from one healthy control matched for age, gender, and native accent. Speech samples from the patient with native Buenos Aires’s accent were compared with data obtained from four healthy control subjects with the same accent. Analysis of speech production revealed discrete slowing in speech rate, inappropriate long pauses, and monotonous intonation. Phonemic production remained similar to those of healthy Spanish speakers, but phonetic variants peculiar to each accent (e.g., intervocalic aspiration of /s/ in Córdoba accent) were absent. While basic normal prosodic features of Spanish prosody were preserved, features intrinsic to melody of certain geographical areas (e.g., rising end F0 excursion in declarative sentences intoned with Córdoba accent) were absent. All patients were also unable to produce sentences with different emotional prosody. Brain imaging disclosed focal left hemisphere lesions involving the middle part of the motor cortex, the post-central cortex, the posterior inferior and/or middle frontal cortices, insula, anterior putamen and supplementary motor area. Our findings suggest that lesions affecting the middle part of the left motor cortex and other components of the speech production network disrupt neural processes involved in the production of regional accent features. PMID:26594161

The effects of bilingualism on stuttering during late childhood.

PubMed

Howell, P; Davis, S; Williams, R

2009-01-01

To examine stuttering by children speaking an alternative language exclusively (LE) or with English (BIL) and to study onset of stuttering, school performance and recovery rate relative to monolingual speakers who stutter (MONO). Clinical referral sample with supplementary data obtained from speech recordings and interviews. South-East England, 1999-2007. Children aged 8-12 plus who stuttered (monolingual and bilingual) and fluent bilingual controls (FB). Participants' stuttering history, SATS scores, measures of recovery or persistence of stuttering. 69 (21.8%) of 317 children were bilingual. Of 38 children who used a language other than English at home, 36 (94.7%) stuttered in both languages. Fewer LE (15/38, 39.5%) than BIL (23/38, 60.5%) children stuttered at first referral to clinic, but more children in the fluent control sample were LE (28/38, 73.7%) than BIL (10/38, 26.3%). The association between stuttering and bilingual group (LE/BIL) was significant by chi(2) test; BIL speakers have more chance of stuttering than LE speakers. Age at stuttering onset and male/female ratio for LE, BIL and MONO speakers were similar (4 years 9 months, 4 years 10 months and 4 years 3 months, and 4.1:1, 4.75:1 and 4.43:1, respectively). Educational achievement was not affected by bilingualism relative to the MONO and FB groups. The recovery rate for the LE and MONO controls together (55%) was significantly higher by chi(2) test than for the BIL group (25%). BIL children had an increased risk of stuttering and a lower chance of recovery from stuttering than LE and MONO speakers.

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…

Multicultural issues in test interpretation.

PubMed

Langdon, Henriette W; Wiig, Elisabeth H

2009-11-01

Designing the ideal test or series of tests to assess individuals who speak languages other than English is difficult. This article first describes some of the roadblocks-one of which is the lack of identification criteria for language and learning disabilities in monolingual and bilingual populations in most countries of the non-English-speaking world. This lag exists, in part, because access to general education is often limited. The second section describes tests that have been developed in the United States, primarily for Spanish-speaking individuals because they now represent the largest first-language majority in the United States (80% of English-language learners [ELLs] speak Spanish at home). We discuss tests developed for monolingual and bilingual English-Spanish speakers in the United States and divide this coverage into two parts: The first addresses assessment of students' first language (L1) and second language (L2), usually English, with different versions of the same test; the second describes assessment of L1 and L2 using the same version of the test, administered in the two languages. Examples of tests that fit a priori-determined criteria are briefly discussed throughout the article. Suggestions how to develop tests for speakers of languages other than English are also provided. In conclusion, we maintain that there will never be a perfect test or set of tests to adequately assess the communication skills of a bilingual individual. This is not surprising because we have yet to develop an ideal test or set of tests that fits monolingual Anglo speakers perfectly. Tests are tools, and the speech-language pathologist needs to know how to use those tools most effectively and equitably. The goal of this article is to provide such guidance. Thieme Medical Publishers.

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…

The multilingual naming test in Alzheimer's disease: clues to the origin of naming impairments.

PubMed

Ivanova, Iva; Salmon, David P; Gollan, Tamar H

2013-03-01

The current study explored the picture naming performance of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). First, we evaluated the utility of the multilingual naming test (MINT; Gollan et al., 2011), which was designed to assess naming skills in speakers of multiple languages, for detecting naming impairments in monolingual AD and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI). If the MINT were sensitive to linguistic impairment in AD, using it in clinical practice might have advantages over using tests exclusively designed for English monolinguals. We found that the MINT can be used with both monolinguals and bilinguals: A 32-item subset of the MINT is best for distinguishing monolingual patients from controls, while the full MINT is best for assessing degree of bilingualism and language dominance in bilinguals. We then investigated the cognitive mechanisms underlying naming impairment in AD. To this end, we explored which MINT item characteristics best predicted performance differences between monolingual patients and controls. We found that contextual diversity and imageability, but not word frequency (nor words’ number of senses), contributed unique variance to explaining naming impairments in AD. These findings suggest a semantic component to the naming impairment in AD (modulated by names’ semantic richness and network size).

Prosody and Spoken Word Recognition in Early and Late Spanish-English Bilingual Individuals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boutsen, Frank R.; Dvorak, Justin D.; Deweber, Derick D.

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study was conducted to compare the influence of word properties on gated single-word recognition in monolingual and bilingual individuals under conditions of native and nonnative accent and to determine whether word-form prosody facilitates recognition in bilingual individuals. Method: Word recognition was assessed in monolingual and…

Novel word retention in bilingual and monolingual speakers

PubMed Central

Kan, Pui Fong; Sadagopan, Neeraja

2014-01-01

The goal of this research was to examine word retention in bilinguals and monolinguals. Long-term word retention is an essential part of vocabulary learning. Previous studies have documented that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in terms of retrieving newly-exposed words. Yet, little is known about whether or to what extent bilinguals are different from monolinguals in word retention. Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual adults and 30 bilingual adults who speak Spanish as a home language and learned English as a second language during childhood. In a previous study (Kan et al., 2014), the participants were exposed to the target novel words in English, Spanish, and Cantonese. In this current study, word retention was measured a week after the fast mapping task. No exposures were given during the one-week interval. Results showed that bilinguals and monolinguals retain a similar number of words. However, participants produced more words in English than in either Spanish or Cantonese. Correlation analyses revealed that language knowledge plays a role in the relationships between fast mapping and word retention. Specifically, within- and across-language relationships between bilinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in Spanish and English, by contrast, within-language relationships between monolinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in English and across-language relationships between their fast mapping and word retention performance in English and Cantonese. Similarly, bilinguals differed from monolinguals in the relationships among the word retention scores in three languages. Significant correlations were found among bilinguals' retention scores. However, no such correlations were found among monolinguals' retention scores. The overall findings suggest that bilinguals' language experience and language knowledge most likely contribute to how they learn and retain new words. PMID:25324789

Novel word retention in bilingual and monolingual speakers.

PubMed

Kan, Pui Fong; Sadagopan, Neeraja

2014-01-01

The goal of this research was to examine word retention in bilinguals and monolinguals. Long-term word retention is an essential part of vocabulary learning. Previous studies have documented that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in terms of retrieving newly-exposed words. Yet, little is known about whether or to what extent bilinguals are different from monolinguals in word retention. Participants were 30 English-speaking monolingual adults and 30 bilingual adults who speak Spanish as a home language and learned English as a second language during childhood. In a previous study (Kan et al., 2014), the participants were exposed to the target novel words in English, Spanish, and Cantonese. In this current study, word retention was measured a week after the fast mapping task. No exposures were given during the one-week interval. Results showed that bilinguals and monolinguals retain a similar number of words. However, participants produced more words in English than in either Spanish or Cantonese. Correlation analyses revealed that language knowledge plays a role in the relationships between fast mapping and word retention. Specifically, within- and across-language relationships between bilinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in Spanish and English, by contrast, within-language relationships between monolinguals' fast mapping and word retention were found in English and across-language relationships between their fast mapping and word retention performance in English and Cantonese. Similarly, bilinguals differed from monolinguals in the relationships among the word retention scores in three languages. Significant correlations were found among bilinguals' retention scores. However, no such correlations were found among monolinguals' retention scores. The overall findings suggest that bilinguals' language experience and language knowledge most likely contribute to how they learn and retain new words.

Word Stress and Pronunciation Teaching in English as a Lingua Franca Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Christine; Deterding, David

2018-01-01

Traditionally, pronunciation was taught by reference to native-speaker models. However, as speakers around the world increasingly interact in English as a lingua franca (ELF) contexts, there is less focus on native-speaker targets, and there is wide acceptance that achieving intelligibility is crucial while mimicking native-speaker pronunciation…

The Interpretability Hypothesis: Evidence from Wh-Interrogatives in Second Language Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsimpli, Ianthi Maria; Dimitrakopoulou, Maria

2007-01-01

The second language acquisition (SLA) literature reports numerous studies of proficient second language (L2) speakers who diverge significantly from native speakers despite the evidence offered by the L2 input. Recent SLA theories have attempted to account for native speaker/non-native speaker (NS/NNS) divergence by arguing for the dissociation…

Negation in Near-Native French: Variation and Sociolinguistic Competence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Donaldson, Bryan

2017-01-01

This study investigated how adult second language (L2) speakers of French with near-native proficiency realize verbal negation, a well-known sociolinguistic variable in contemporary spoken French. Data included 10 spontaneous informal conversations between near-native speakers of French and native speakers (NSs) closely acquainted with them.…

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"…

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

The influence of visual speech information on the intelligibility of English consonants produced by non-native speakers.

PubMed

Kawase, Saya; Hannah, Beverly; Wang, Yue

2014-09-01

This study examines how visual speech information affects native judgments of the intelligibility of speech sounds produced by non-native (L2) speakers. Native Canadian English perceivers as judges perceived three English phonemic contrasts (/b-v, θ-s, l-ɹ/) produced by native Japanese speakers as well as native Canadian English speakers as controls. These stimuli were presented under audio-visual (AV, with speaker voice and face), audio-only (AO), and visual-only (VO) conditions. The results showed that, across conditions, the overall intelligibility of Japanese productions of the native (Japanese)-like phonemes (/b, s, l/) was significantly higher than the non-Japanese phonemes (/v, θ, ɹ/). In terms of visual effects, the more visually salient non-Japanese phonemes /v, θ/ were perceived as significantly more intelligible when presented in the AV compared to the AO condition, indicating enhanced intelligibility when visual speech information is available. However, the non-Japanese phoneme /ɹ/ was perceived as less intelligible in the AV compared to the AO condition. Further analysis revealed that, unlike the native English productions, the Japanese speakers produced /ɹ/ without visible lip-rounding, indicating that non-native speakers' incorrect articulatory configurations may decrease the degree of intelligibility. These results suggest that visual speech information may either positively or negatively affect L2 speech intelligibility.

The Role of Emergent Bilingualism in the Development of Morphological Awareness in Arabic and Hebrew.

PubMed

Schwartz, Mila; Taha, Haitham; Assad, Hanan; Khamaisi, Ferdos; Eviatar, Zohar

2016-08-01

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of dual language development and cross-linguistic influence on morphological awareness in young bilinguals' first language (L1) and second language (L2). We examined whether (a) the bilingual children (L1/L2 Arabic and L1/L2 Hebrew) precede their monolingual Hebrew- or Arabic-speaking peers in L1 and L2 morphological awareness, and (b) 1 Semitic language (Arabic) has cross-linguistic influence on another Semitic language (Hebrew) in morphological awareness. The study sample comprised 93 six-year-old children. The bilinguals had attended bilingual Hebrew-Arabic kindergartens for 1 academic year and were divided into 2 groups: home language Hebrew (L1) and home language Arabic (L1). These groups were compared to age-matched monolingual Hebrew speakers and monolingual Arabic speakers. We used nonwords similar in structure to familiar words in both target languages, representing 6 inflectional morphological categories. L1 Arabic and L1 Hebrew bilinguals performed significantly better than Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking monolinguals in the respective languages. Differences were not found between the bilingual groups. We found evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from Arabic to Hebrew in 2 categories-bound possessives and dual number-probably because these categories are more salient in Palestinian Spoken Arabic than in Hebrew. We conclude that children with even an initial exposure to L2 reveal acceleration of sensitivity to word structure in both of their languages. We suggest that this is due to the fact that two Semitic languages, Arabic and Hebrew, share a common core of linguistic features, together with favorable contextual factors and instructional factors.

The Home Language Environment of Monolingual and Bilingual Children and Their Language Proficiency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scheele, Anna F.; Leseman, Paul P. M.; Mayo, Aziza Y.

2010-01-01

This study investigated the relationships between home language learning activities and vocabulary in a sample of monolingual native Dutch (n = 58) and bilingual immigrant Moroccan-Dutch (n = 46) and Turkish-Dutch (n = 55) 3-year-olds, speaking Tarifit-Berber, a nonscripted language, and Turkish as their first language (L1), respectively. Despite…

Multiple Grammars: Old Wine in Old Bottles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sorace, Antonella

2014-01-01

Amaral and Roeper (this issue; henceforth A&R) argue that all speakers -- regardless of whether monolingual or bilingual -- have multiple grammars in their mental language representations. They further claim that this simple assumption can explain many things: optionality in second language (L2) language behaviour, multilingualism, language…

Interaction in Bilingual Phonological Acquisition: Evidence from Phonetic Inventories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fabiano-Smith, Leah; Barlow, Jessica A.

2010-01-01

Purpose: To examine how interaction contributes to phonological acquisition in bilingual children in order to determine what constitutes typical development of bilingual speech sound inventories. Method: Twenty-four children, ages 3-4, were included: eight bilingual Spanish-English-speaking children, eight monolingual Spanish speakers, and eight…

Vocabulary Use by Low, Moderate, and High ASL-Proficient Writers Compared to Hearing ESL and Monolingual Speakers.

PubMed

Singleton, Jenny L; Morgan, Dianne; DiGello, Elizabeth; Wiles, Jill; Rivers, Rachel

2004-01-01

The written English vocabulary of 72 deaf elementary school students of various proficiency levels in American Sign Language (ASL) was compared with the performance of 60 hearing English-as-a-second-language (ESL) speakers and 61 hearing monolingual speakers of English, all of similar age. Students were asked to retell "The Tortoise and the Hare" story (previously viewed on video) in a writing activity. Writing samples were later scored for total number of words, use of words known to be highly frequent in children's writing, redundancy in writing, and use of English function words. All deaf writers showed significantly lower use of function words as compared to their hearing peers. Low-ASL-proficient students demonstrated a highly formulaic writing style, drawing mostly on high-frequency words and repetitive use of a limited range of function words. The moderate- and high-ASL-proficient deaf students' writing was not formulaic and incorporated novel, low-frequency vocabulary to communicate their thoughts. The moderate- and high-ASL students' performance revealed a departure from findings one might expect based on previous studies with deaf writers and their vocabulary use. The writing of the deaf writers also differed from the writing of hearing ESL speakers. Implications for deaf education and literacy instruction are discussed, with special attention to the fact that ASL-proficient, deaf second-language learners of English may be approaching English vocabulary acquisition in ways that are different from hearing ESL learners.

Native and Nonnative Interpretation of Pronominal Forms: Evidence from French and Turkish

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schimke, Sarah; Colonna, Saveria

2016-01-01

This study investigates the influence of grammatical role and discourse-level cues on the interpretation of different pronominal forms in native speakers of French, native speakers of Turkish, and Turkish learners of French. In written questionnaires, we found that native speakers of French were influenced by discourse-level cues when interpreting…

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…

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)

Taking It Down: Notetaking Practices of L1 and L2 Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clerehan, Rosemary

1995-01-01

This study examined notes taken by 29 undergraduate native and non-native speakers of English during a lecture on commercial law. It found that native speakers took more detailed notes and more accurately recorded the hierarchical structure and principal elements of the lecture than non-native speakers. (48 references) (MDM)

Assessing Competence in ESL: Reading.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oller, John W., Jr.

Results from research with eye movement photography (EMP) are discussed with a view to defining differences between native-speaker and non-native reading processes. The greatest contrast is in terms of the duration of eye fixations; non-native speakers at the college level require about as much time for a fixation as an average native-speaker at…

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…

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

Bilingual and Monolingual Idiom Processing Is Cut from the Same Cloth: The Role of the L1 in Literal and Figurative Meaning Activation

PubMed Central

Beck, Sara D.; Weber, Andrea

2016-01-01

The present study examines non-native (L2) and native (L1) listeners' access to figurative idiomatic meaning and literal constituent meaning in two cross-modal priming experiments. Proficient German learners of English (L2) and native speakers of American English (L1) responded to English target words preceded by English idioms embedded in non-biasing prime sentences in a lexical decision task. English idioms differed in levels of translatability: Lexical level idioms had word-for-word translation equivalents in German, while post-lexical level idioms had matching idiomatic concepts in German but could not be translated word for word. Target words either related to the figurative meaning of the idiom or related to the literal meaning of the final constituent word of the idiom (e.g., to pull someone's leg, literal target: walk, figurative target: joke). Both L1 and L2 listeners showed facilitatory priming for literally- and figuratively-related target words compared to unrelated control target words, with only marginal differences between the listener groups. No effect of translatability was found; that is, the existence of word-for-word translation equivalents in German neither facilitated nor hindered meaning activation for German L2 listeners. The results are interpreted in the context of L1 and L2 models of idiom processing as well as further relevant translation studies. PMID:27667979

Bilingual and Monolingual Idiom Processing Is Cut from the Same Cloth: The Role of the L1 in Literal and Figurative Meaning Activation.

PubMed

Beck, Sara D; Weber, Andrea

2016-01-01

The present study examines non-native (L2) and native (L1) listeners' access to figurative idiomatic meaning and literal constituent meaning in two cross-modal priming experiments. Proficient German learners of English (L2) and native speakers of American English (L1) responded to English target words preceded by English idioms embedded in non-biasing prime sentences in a lexical decision task. English idioms differed in levels of translatability: Lexical level idioms had word-for-word translation equivalents in German, while post-lexical level idioms had matching idiomatic concepts in German but could not be translated word for word. Target words either related to the figurative meaning of the idiom or related to the literal meaning of the final constituent word of the idiom (e.g., to pull someone's leg, literal target: walk, figurative target: joke). Both L1 and L2 listeners showed facilitatory priming for literally- and figuratively-related target words compared to unrelated control target words, with only marginal differences between the listener groups. No effect of translatability was found; that is, the existence of word-for-word translation equivalents in German neither facilitated nor hindered meaning activation for German L2 listeners. The results are interpreted in the context of L1 and L2 models of idiom processing as well as further relevant translation studies.

Using Stimulated Recall to Investigate Native Speaker Perceptions in Native-Nonnative Speaker Interaction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polio, Charlene; Gass, Susan; Chapin, Laura

2006-01-01

Implicit negative feedback has been shown to facilitate SLA, and the extent to which such feedback is given is related to a variety of task and interlocutor variables. The background of a native speaker (NS), in terms of amount of experience in interactions with nonnative speakers (NNSs), has been shown to affect the quantity of implicit negative…

The Sociophonetic and Acoustic Vowel Dynamics of Michigan's Upper Peninsula English

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rankinen, Wil A.

The present sociophonetic study examines the English variety in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP) based upon a 130-speaker sample from Marquette County. The linguistic variables of interest include seven monophthongs and four diphthongs: 1) front lax, 2) low back, and 3) high back monophthongs and 4) short and 5) long diphthongs. The sample is stratified by the predictor variables of heritage-location, bilingualism, age, sex and class. The aim of the thesis is two fold: 1) to determine the extent of potential substrate effects on a 71-speaker older-aged bilingual and monolingual subset of these UP English speakers focusing on the predictor variables of heritage-location and bilingualism, and 2) to determine the extent of potential exogenous influences on an 85-speaker subset of UP English monolingual speakers by focusing on the predictor variables of heritage-location, age, sex and class. All data were extracted from a reading passage task collected during a sociolinguistic interview and measured instrumentally. The findings of this apparent-time data reveal the presence of lingering effects from substrate sources and developing effects from exogenous sources based upon American and Canadian models of diffusion. The linguistic changes-in-progress from above, led by middle-class females, are taking shape in the speech of UP residents of whom are propagating linguistic phenomena typically associated with varieties of Canadian English (i.e., low-back merger, Canadian shift, and Canadian raising); however, the findings also report resistance of such norms by working-class females. Finally, the data also reveal substrate effects demonstrating cases of dialect leveling and maintenance. As a result, the speech spoken in Michigan's Upper Peninsula can presently be described as a unique variety of English comprised of lingering substrate effects as well as exogenous effects modeled from both American and Canadian English linguistic norms.

The effects of bilingualism on stuttering during late childhood

PubMed Central

Howell, P; Davis, S; Williams, R

2009-01-01

Objectives: To examine stuttering by children speaking an alternative language exclusively (LE) or with English (BIL) and to study onset of stuttering, school performance and recovery rate relative to monolingual speakers who stutter (MONO). Design: Clinical referral sample with supplementary data obtained from speech recordings and interviews. Setting: South-East England, 1999–2007. Participants: Children aged 8–12 plus who stuttered (monolingual and bilingual) and fluent bilingual controls (FB). Main outcome measures: Participants’ stuttering history, SATS scores, measures of recovery or persistence of stuttering. Results: 69 (21.8%) of 317 children were bilingual. Of 38 children who used a language other than English at home, 36 (94.7%) stuttered in both languages. Fewer LE (15/38, 39.5%) than BIL (23/38, 60.5%) children stuttered at first referral to clinic, but more children in the fluent control sample were LE (28/38, 73.7%) than BIL (10/38, 26.3%). The association between stuttering and bilingual group (LE/BIL) was significant by χ2 test; BIL speakers have more chance of stuttering than LE speakers. Age at stuttering onset and male/female ratio for LE, BIL and MONO speakers were similar (4 years 9 months, 4 years 10 months and 4 years 3 months, and 4.1:1, 4.75:1 and 4.43:1, respectively). Educational achievement was not affected by bilingualism relative to the MONO and FB groups. The recovery rate for the LE and MONO controls together (55%) was significantly higher by χ2 test than for the BIL group (25%). Conclusions: BIL children had an increased risk of stuttering and a lower chance of recovery from stuttering than LE and MONO speakers. PMID:18782846

(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…

Acquiring Constraints on Morphosyntactic Variation: Children's Spanish Subject Pronoun Expression

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shin, Naomi Lapidus

2016-01-01

Constraints on linguistic variation are consistent across adult speakers, yielding probabilistic and systematic patterns. Yet, little is known about the development of such patterns during childhood. This study investigates Spanish subject pronoun expression in naturalistic data from 154 monolingual children in Mexico, divided into four age…

Spatial Language and Cognition in Bilingual Minds: Taiwan as a Test Case

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Yen-Ting

2017-01-01

This dissertation investigates the effect of linguistic and nonlinguistic variables on the use of spatial representations in bilingual speakers of Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM) and Mandarin Chinese (MC) as compared to monolinguals. Linguists and psychologists are particularly interested in the factors that influence the selection among such…

Perspectives on the "Silent Period" for Emergent Bilinguals in England

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bligh, Caroline; Drury, Rose

2015-01-01

This article draws together the research findings from two ethnographic studies as a means to problematize the "silent period" as experienced by young bilingual learners in two English speaking early-years settings in England. Most teachers and senior early-years practitioners in England are monolingual English speakers. The children…

Flexible Bilingualism through Multimodal Practices: Studying K-12 Community Languages Online

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nordstrom, Janica

2015-01-01

Community language schools are complementary schools set up and run by minority communities in Australia. They aim to assist in intergenerational language and identity transmission, but previous research has indicated that these schools position their students in monolingual ways that contradicts how bilingual speakers use their language in…

The Impact of a Collaborative Family Involvement Program on Latino Families and Children's Educational Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Donnell, Julie; Kirkner, Sandra L.

2014-01-01

Latino families highly value education and are committed to their children's educational success; however, Latino students often experience educational challenges. Well-designed family involvement programs can encourage Latino families, especially new immigrants or monolingual Spanish-speakers, to increase their involvement resulting in positive…

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…

Developmental and communicative factors affecting VOT production in English and Arabic bilingual and monolingual speakers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Khattab, Ghada

2004-05-01

VOT patterns were investigated in the production of three Lebanese-English bilinguals' aged 5, 7, and 10, six aged-matched monolingual controls from the bilinguals' immediate communities, and the parents of bilinguals and monolinguals. The aim was to examine the extent to which children exposed to two languages acquire separate VOT patterns for each language and to determine the factors that affect such acquisition. Results showed that VOT patterns for each bilingual child differed significantly across the two languages. But while the contrast in English resembled a monolingual-like model, that for Arabic exhibited persisting developmental features; explanations were offered in terms of the relationship between input and complexity of voicing lead production. Evidence was used from developmental changes that were noted for two of the bilingual subjects over a period of 18 months. English code-switches produced by the bilinguals during Arabic sessions exhibited different VOT patterns from those produced during English sessions, which underlined the importance of taking the language context into consideration. Finally, results from monolinguals and bilinguals showed that the short lag categories for the two languages were different despite a degree of overlap. Such findings require finer divisions of the three universal VOT categories to account for language-specific patterns.

The Impact of Early Bilingualism on Face Recognition Processes.

PubMed

Kandel, Sonia; Burfin, Sabine; Méary, David; Ruiz-Tada, Elisa; Costa, Albert; Pascalis, Olivier

2016-01-01

Early linguistic experience has an impact on the way we decode audiovisual speech in face-to-face communication. The present study examined whether differences in visual speech decoding could be linked to a broader difference in face processing. To identify a phoneme we have to do an analysis of the speaker's face to focus on the relevant cues for speech decoding (e.g., locating the mouth with respect to the eyes). Face recognition processes were investigated through two classic effects in face recognition studies: the Other-Race Effect (ORE) and the Inversion Effect. Bilingual and monolingual participants did a face recognition task with Caucasian faces (own race), Chinese faces (other race), and cars that were presented in an Upright or Inverted position. The results revealed that monolinguals exhibited the classic ORE. Bilinguals did not. Overall, bilinguals were slower than monolinguals. These results suggest that bilinguals' face processing abilities differ from monolinguals'. Early exposure to more than one language may lead to a perceptual organization that goes beyond language processing and could extend to face analysis. We hypothesize that these differences could be due to the fact that bilinguals focus on different parts of the face than monolinguals, making them more efficient in other race face processing but slower. However, more studies using eye-tracking techniques are necessary to confirm this explanation.

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…

Sleep duration predicts behavioral and neural differences in adult speech sound learning.

PubMed

Earle, F Sayako; Landi, Nicole; Myers, Emily B

2017-01-01

Sleep is important for memory consolidation and contributes to the formation of new perceptual categories. This study examined sleep as a source of variability in typical learners' ability to form new speech sound categories. We trained monolingual English speakers to identify a set of non-native speech sounds at 8PM, and assessed their ability to identify and discriminate between these sounds immediately after training, and at 8AM on the following day. We tracked sleep duration overnight, and found that light sleep duration predicted gains in identification performance, while total sleep duration predicted gains in discrimination ability. Participants obtained an average of less than 6h of sleep, pointing to the degree of sleep deprivation as a potential factor. Behavioral measures were associated with ERP indexes of neural sensitivity to the learned contrast. These results demonstrate that the relative success in forming new perceptual categories depends on the duration of post-training sleep. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sleep duration predicts behavioral and neural differences in adult speech sound learning

PubMed Central

Earle, F. Sayako; Landi, Nicole; Myers, Emily B.

2016-01-01

Sleep is important for memory consolidation and contributes to the formation of new perceptual categories. This study examined sleep as a source of variability in typical learners’ ability to form new speech sound categories. We trained monolingual English speakers to identify a set of non-native speech sounds at 8PM, and assessed their ability to identify and discriminate between these sounds immediately after training, and at 8AM on the following day. We tracked sleep duration overnight, and found that light sleep duration predicted gains in identification performance, while total sleep duration predicted gains in discrimination ability. Participants obtained an average of less than 6 hours of sleep, pointing to the degree of sleep deprivation as a potential factor. Behavioral measures were associated with ERP indexes of neural sensitivity to the learned contrast. These results demonstrate that the relative success in forming new perceptual categories depends on the duration of post-training sleep. PMID:27793703

The Nationwide Speech Project: A multi-talker multi-dialect speech corpus

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clopper, Cynthia G.; Pisoni, David B.

2004-05-01

Most research on regional phonological variation relies on field recordings of interview speech. Recent research on the perception of dialect variation by naive listeners, however, has relied on read sentence materials in order to control for phonological and lexical content and syntax. The Nationwide Speech Project corpus was designed to obtain a large amount of speech from a number of talkers representing different regional varieties of American English. Five male and five female talkers from each of six different dialect regions in the United States were recorded reading isolated words, sentences, and passages, and in conversations with the experimenter. The talkers ranged in age from 18 and 25 years old and they were all monolingual native speakers of American English. They had lived their entire life in one dialect region and both of their parents were raised in the same region. Results of an acoustic analysis of the vowel spaces of the talkers included in the Nationwide Speech Project will be presented. [Work supported by NIH.

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…

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…

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.

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.

Discourse comprehension in L2: Making sense of what is not explicitly said.

PubMed

Foucart, Alice; Romero-Rivas, Carlos; Gort, Bernharda Lottie; Costa, Albert

2016-12-01

Using ERPs, we tested whether L2 speakers can integrate multiple sources of information (e.g., semantic, pragmatic information) during discourse comprehension. We presented native speakers and L2 speakers with three-sentence scenarios in which the final sentence was highly causally related, intermediately related, or causally unrelated to its context; its interpretation therefore required simple or complex inferences. Native speakers revealed a gradual N400-like effect, larger in the causally unrelated condition than in the highly related condition, and falling in-between in the intermediately related condition, replicating previous results. In the crucial intermediately related condition, L2 speakers behaved like native speakers, however, showing extra processing in a later time-window. Overall, the results show that, when reading, L2 speakers are able to process information from the local context and prior information (e.g., world knowledge) to build global coherence, suggesting that they process different sources of information to make inferences online during discourse comprehension, like native speakers. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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…

Cognitive Representation of Colour in Bilinguals: The Case of Greek Blues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Athanasopoulos, Panos

2009-01-01

A number of recent studies demonstrate that bilinguals with languages that differ in grammatical and lexical categories may shift their cognitive representation of those categories towards that of monolingual speakers of their second language. The current paper extended that investigation to the domain of colour in Greek-English bilinguals with…

Traces of an Early Learned Second Language in Discontinued Bilingualism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sadat, Jasmin; Pureza, Rita; Alario, F.-Xavier

2016-01-01

Can an early learned second language influence speech production after living many years in an exclusively monolingual environment? To address this issue, we investigated the consequences of discontinued early bilingualism in heritage speakers who moved abroad and switched language dominance from the second to the primary learned language. We used…

The Work of Interpreters to Gain Children's Perspectives within Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Theobald, Maryanne

2017-01-01

Working within culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms may present challenges for monolingual researchers wishing to gain children's perspectives. Consequently, children who are not fluent speakers of the dominant language are under-represented in early years' research. When linguistic boundaries exist, one recommended approach is working…

Environmental Considerations: Home and School Comparison of Spanish-English Speakers' Vocalizations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jackson, Carla W.; Callender, Maya F.

2014-01-01

This study examined differences in the quantity of child vocalizations (CVs) between preschool and home environments using the Language Environmental Analysis (LENA). The sample included monolingual English-speaking children (n = 27) and Spanish-English speaking dual language learners (n = 30). A two-way mixed effects analysis of variance with one…

Spanish Subject Personal Pronoun Use by Monolinguals, Bilinguals and Second Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abreu, Laurel

2009-01-01

Various studies analyzing pronominal subject expression in Spanish have found that switch-reference, the relationship between two consecutive subjects, is the factor that most commonly constrains speakers' choice of a null or explicit subject personal pronoun (SPP) (Cameron, 1995; Flores-Ferran, 2002). When the second subject in a sequence differs…

Perspectives on Linguistic Repertoires in Adult Multilinguals: An Epilogue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gorter, Durk

2017-01-01

This article introduces this special issue by declaring that the studies contained here build on the idea that multilinguals, in the sense of learners or speakers that have more than two languages in their linguistic repertoire, are different from bilinguals and monolinguals in various ways. Several authors in the area of third language…

Call It What It Is: Monolingual Education in U.S. Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hinton, Kip Austin

2016-01-01

In the U.S., non-bilingual education designed for English speakers goes by many names--mainstream, regular, normal, English, and others. Drawing from research on discourse, normality, and framing, this conceptual paper examines each of the popular labels for English-medium education in the U.S., and demonstrates their unsuitability. Inspired by…

The Effect of Grammatical Gender on Object Categorization

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cubelli, Roberto; Paolieri, Daniela; Lotto, Lorella; Job, Remo

2011-01-01

In 3 experiments, we investigated the effect of grammatical gender on object categorization. Participants were asked to judge whether 2 objects, whose names did or did not share grammatical gender, belonged to the same semantic category by pressing a key. Monolingual speakers of English (Experiment 1), Italian (Experiments 1 and 2), and Spanish…

Investigating Cantonese Speakers' Language Attitudes in Mainland China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ng, Dana Funywe; Zhao, Juanjuan

2015-01-01

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has often been considered a monolithic, monolingual state but, in fact, it is linguistically and culturally diverse. Despite the size, there is still a lack of sociolinguistic studies on the Han Chinese in the PRC. Therefore, this study focuses on the language attitudes of Cantonese-speaking students in…

The Effect of Exposure on Syntactic Parsing in Spanish-English Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dussias, Paola E.; Sagarra, Nuria

2007-01-01

An eye tracking experiment examined how exposure to a second language (L2) influences sentence parsing in the first language. Forty-four monolingual Spanish speakers, 24 proficient Spanish-English bilinguals with limited immersion experience in the L2 environment and 20 proficient Spanish-English bilinguals with extensive L2 immersion experience…

New Structural Patterns in Moribund Grammar: Case Marking in Heritage German

PubMed Central

Yager, Lisa; Hellmold, Nora; Joo, Hyoun-A; Putnam, Michael T.; Rossi, Eleonora; Stafford, Catherine; Salmons, Joseph

2015-01-01

Research treats divergences between monolingual and heritage grammars in terms of performance—‘L1 attrition,’ e.g., lexical retrieval—or competence—‘incomplete acquisition’, e.g., lack of overt tense markers (e.g., Polinsky, 1995; Sorace, 2004; Montrul, 2008; Schmid, 2010). One classic difference between monolingual and Heritage German is reduction in morphological case in the latter, especially loss of dative marking. Our evidence from several Heritage German varieties suggests that speakers have not merely lost case, but rather developed innovative structures to mark it. More specifically, Heritage German speakers produce dative forms in line with established patterns of Differential Object Marking (Bossong, 1985, 1991; Aissen, 2003), suggesting a reallocated mapping of case. We take this as evidence for innovative reanalysis in heritage grammars (Putnam and Sánchez, 2013). Following Kamp and Reyle (1993) and Wechsler (2011, 2014), the dative adopts a more indexical discourse function, forging a tighter connection between morphosyntax and semantic properties. Moribund grammars deploy linguistic resources in novel ways, a finding which can help move us beyond simple narratives of ‘attrition’ and ‘incomplete acquisition.’ PMID:26635649

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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'…

Attitude towards Azeri Language in Iran: A Large-Scale Survey Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rezaei, Saeed; Latifi, Ashkan; Nematzadeh, Arash

2017-01-01

This survey research investigated the attitude of Iranian Azeri native speakers towards Azeri language. A questionnaire was developed and its reliability was estimated (r = 0.74) through a piloting phase on 54 Azeri native speakers. The participants, for the main phase of this study, were 400 Azeri native speakers with different social and…

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…

Home Language Will Not Take Care of Itself: Vocabulary Knowledge in Trilingual Children in the United Kingdom.

PubMed

Mieszkowska, Karolina; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Kołak, Joanna; Kacprzak, Agnieszka; Wodniecka, Zofia; Haman, Ewa

2017-01-01

Language input is crucial for language acquisition and especially for children's vocabulary size. Bilingual children receive reduced input in each of their languages, compared to monolinguals, and are reported to have smaller vocabularies, at least in one of their languages. Vocabulary acquisition in trilingual children has been largely understudied; only a few case studies have been published so far. Moreover, trilingual language acquisition in children has been rarely contrasted with language outcomes of bilingual and monolingual peers. We present a comparison of trilingual, bilingual, and monolingual children (total of 56 participants, aged 4;5-6;7, matched one-to-one for age, gender, and non-verbal IQ) in regard to their receptive and expressive vocabulary (measured by standardized tests), and relative frequency of input in each language (measured by parental report). The monolingual children were speakers of Polish or English, while the bilinguals and trilinguals were migrant children living in the United Kingdom, speaking English as a majority language and Polish as a home language. The trilinguals had another (third) language at home. For the majority language, English, no differences were found across the three groups, either in the receptive or productive vocabulary. The groups differed, however, in their performance in Polish, the home language. The trilinguals had lower receptive vocabulary than the monolinguals, and lower productive vocabulary compared to the monolinguals. The trilinguals showed similar lexical knowledge to the bilinguals. The bilinguals demonstrated lower scores than the monolinguals, but only in productive vocabulary. The data on reported language input show that input in English in bilingual and trilingual groups is similar, but the bilinguals outscore the trilinguals in relative frequency of Polish input. Overall, the results suggest that in the majority language, multilingual children may develop lexical skills similar to those of their monolingual peers. However, their minority language is weaker: the trilinguals scored lower than the Polish monolinguals on both receptive and expressive vocabulary tests, and the bilinguals showed reduced expressive knowledge but leveled out with the Polish monolinguals on receptive vocabulary. The results should encourage parents of migrant children to support home language(s), if the languages are to be retained in a longer perspective.

Listening with an accent: speech perception in a second language by late bilinguals.

PubMed

Leikin, Mark; Ibrahim, Raphiq; Eviatar, Zohar; Sapir, Shimon

2009-10-01

The goal of the present study was to examine functioning of late bilinguals in their second language. Specifically, we asked how native and non-native Hebrew speaking listeners perceive accented and native-accented Hebrew speech. To achieve this goal we used the gating paradigm to explore the ability of healthy late fluent bilinguals (Russian and Arabic native speakers) to recognize words in L2 (Hebrew) when they were spoken in an accent like their own, a native accent (Hebrew speakers), or another foreign accent (American accent). The data revealed that for Hebrew speakers, there was no effect of accent, whereas for the two bilingual groups (Russian and Arabic native speakers), stimuli with an accent like their own and the native Hebrew accent, required significantly less phonological information than the other foreign accents. The results support the hypothesis that phonological assimilation works in a similar manner in these two different groups.

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.

Bilingualism influences inhibitory control in auditory comprehension

PubMed Central

Blumenfeld, Henrike K.; Marian, Viorica

2013-01-01

Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals at suppressing task-irrelevant information. The present study aimed to identify how processing linguistic ambiguity during auditory comprehension may be associated with inhibitory control. Monolinguals and bilinguals listened to words in their native language (English) and identified them among four pictures while their eye-movements were tracked. Each target picture (e.g., hamper) appeared together with a similar-sounding within-language competitor picture (e.g., hammer) and two neutral pictures. Following each eye-tracking trial, priming probe trials indexed residual activation of target words, and residual inhibition of competitor words. Eye-tracking showed similar within-language competition across groups; priming showed stronger competitor inhibition in monolinguals than in bilinguals, suggesting differences in how inhibitory control was used to resolve within-language competition. Notably, correlation analyses revealed that inhibition performance on a nonlinguistic Stroop task was related to linguistic competition resolution in bilinguals but not in monolinguals. Together, monolingual-bilingual comparisons suggest that cognitive control mechanisms can be shaped by linguistic experience. PMID:21159332

Masking Release for Igbo and English.

PubMed

Ebem, Deborah U; Desloge, Joseph G; Reed, Charlotte M; Braida, Louis D; Uguru, Joy O

2013-09-01

In this research, we explored the effect of noise interruption rate on speech intelligibility. Specifically, we used the Hearing In Noise Test (HINT) procedure with the original HINT stimuli (English) and Igbo stimuli to assess speech reception ability in interrupted noise. For a given noise level, the HINT test provides an estimate of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) required for 50%-correct speech intelligibility. The SNR for 50%-correct intelligibility changes depending upon the interruption rate of the noise. This phenomenon (called Masking Release) has been studied extensively in English but not for Igbo - which is an African tonal language spoken predominantly in South Eastern Nigeria. This experiment explored and compared the phenomenon of Masking Release for (i) native English speakers listening to English, (ii) native Igbo speakers listening to English, and (iii) native Igbo speakers listening to Igbo. Since Igbo is a tonal language and English is a non-tonal language, this allowed us to compare Masking Release patterns on native speakers of tonal and non-tonal languages. Our results for native English speakers listening to English HINT show that the SNR and the masking release are orderly and consistent with other English HINT data for English speakers. Our result for Igbo speakers listening to English HINT sentences show that there is greater variability in results across the different Igbo listeners than across the English listeners. This result likely reflects different levels of ability in the English language across the Igbo listeners. The masking release values in dB are less than for English listeners. Our results for Igbo speakers listening to Igbo show that in general, the SNRs for Igbo sentences are lower than for English/English and Igbo/English. This means that the Igbo listeners could understand 50% of the Igbo sentences at SNRs less than those required for English sentences by either native or non-native listeners. This result can be explained by the fact that the perception of Igbo utterances by Igbo subjects may have been aided by the prediction of tonal and vowel harmony features existent in the Igbo language. In agreement with other studies, our results also show that in a noisy environment listeners are able to perceive their native language better than a second language. The ability of native language speakers to perceive their language better than a second language in a noisy environment may be attributed to the fact that: Native speakers are more familiar with the sounds of their language than second language speakers.One of the features of language is that it is predictable hence even in noise a native speaker may be able to predict a succeeding word that is scarcely audible. These contextual effects are facilitated by familiarity.

Semi-spontaneous oral text production: measurements in clinical practice.

PubMed

Lind, Marianne; Kristoffersen, Kristian Emil; Moen, Inger; Simonsen, Hanne Gram

2009-12-01

Functionally relevant assessment of the language production of speakers with aphasia should include assessment of connected speech production. Despite the ecological validity of everyday conversations, more controlled and monological types of texts may be easier to obtain and analyse in clinical practice. This article discusses some simple measurements for the analysis of semi-spontaneous oral text production by speakers with aphasia. Specifically, the measurements are related to the production of verbs and nouns, and the realization of different sentence types. The proposed measurements should be clinically relevant, easily applicable, and linguistically meaningful. The measurements have been applied to oral descriptions of the 'Cookie Theft' picture by eight monolingual Norwegian speakers, four with an anomic type of aphasia and four without any type of language impairment. Despite individual differences in both the clinical and the non-clinical group, most of the measurements seem to distinguish between speakers with and without aphasia.

Infant sensitivity to speaker and language in learning a second label.

PubMed

Bhagwat, Jui; Casasola, Marianella

2014-02-01

Two experiments examined when monolingual, English-learning 19-month-old infants learn a second object label. Two experimenters sat together. One labeled a novel object with one novel label, whereas the other labeled the same object with a different label in either the same or a different language. Infants were tested on their comprehension of each label immediately following its presentation. Infants mapped the first label at above chance levels, but they did so with the second label only when requested by the speaker who provided it (Experiment 1) or when the second experimenter labeled the object in a different language (Experiment 2). These results show that 19-month-olds learn second object labels but do not readily generalize them across speakers of the same language. The results highlight how speaker and language spoken guide infants' acceptance of second labels, supporting sociopragmatic views of word learning. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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…

Impact of Home Language and Literacy Support on English-Chinese Biliteracy Acquisition among Chinese Heritage Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lu, Chan; Koda, Keiko

2011-01-01

Studies on monolingual children have shown that home language and literacy support is crucial in children's early literacy acquisition. However, such support has not been examined as thoroughly among bilingual children, including heritage speakers. This study investigated the effect of home language and literacy support on important precursors of…

Evaluation Report of the San Marcos Independent School District's Bilingual Education Program.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harrison, Helene W.

The San Marcos Independent School District's Bilingual Education Program for 1972-73 was evaluated in this report. The program consisted of 684 students in grades K-5 in 4 elementary schools. The majority of these students were Mexican American with only 18% monolingual English speakers. The program's objectives were, first, to provide bilingual…

Cross-Language Differences in Informational Masking of Speech by Speech: English versus Mandarin Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Xihong; Yang, Zhigang; Huang, Ying; Chen, Jing; Li, Liang; Daneman, Meredyth; Schneider, Bruce A.

2011-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine why perceived spatial separation provides a greater release from informational masking in Chinese than English when target sentences in each of the languages are masked by other talkers speaking the same language. Method: Monolingual speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese listened to…

Semantic and Conceptual Factors in Spanish-English Bilinguals' Processing of Lexical Categories in Their Two Languages

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gathercole, Virginia C. Mueller; Stadthagen-González, Hans; Pérez-Tattam, Rocío; Yava?, Feryal

2016-01-01

This study examines possible semantic interaction in fully fluent adult simultaneous and early second language (L2) bilinguals. Monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish and English (n = 144) were tested for their understanding of lexical categories that differed in their two languages. Simultaneous bilinguals came from homes in which Spanish…

A Program to Improve Access to Health Care Among Mexican Immigrants in Rural Colorado

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diaz-Perez, Maria de Jesus; Farley, Tillman; Cabanis, Clara Martin

2004-01-01

Migration to the United States from Mexico is increasing every year. Mexican immigrants tend to be poor, uninsured, monolingual Spanish speakers without adequate access to appropriate medical care. As a further barrier, many are also undocumented. This article describes a program developed to improve access to health care among Mexican immigrants…

Research in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching and Learning in New Zealand (2006-2010)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ker, Alastair; Adams, Rebecca; Skyrme, Gillian

2013-01-01

This survey gives an overview of research into language teaching and learning in New Zealand over a five-year period, including the context of that research. The majority of New Zealanders are monolingual English speakers, yet the country faces complex linguistic challenges arising from its bicultural foundations and the multicultural society it…

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 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…

More use almost always a means a smaller frequency effect: Aging, bilingualism, and the weaker links hypothesis

PubMed Central

Gollan, Tamar H.; Montoya, Rosa I.; Cera, Cynthia; Sandoval, Tiffany C.

2008-01-01

The “weaker links” hypothesis proposes that bilinguals are disadvantaged relative to monolinguals on speaking tasks because they divide frequency-of-use between two languages. To test this proposal we contrasted the effects of increased word use associated with monolingualism, language dominance, and increased age on picture naming times. In two experiments, younger and older bilinguals and monolinguals named pictures with high- or low-frequency names in English and (if bilingual) also in Spanish. In Experiment 1, slowing related to bilingualism and language dominance was greater for producing low- than high-frequency names. In Experiment 2, slowing related to aging was greater for producing low-frequency names in the dominant language, but when speaking the nondominant language, increased age attenuated frequency effects and age-related slowing was limited exclusively to high-frequency names. These results challenge competition based accounts of bilingual disadvantages in language production, and illustrate how between-group processing differences may emerge from cognitive mechanisms general to all speakers. PMID:19343088

Exposure to and Use of Electronic Cigarettes: Does Language Matter?

PubMed

Wada, Paul; Lam, Chun Nok; Burner, Elizabeth; Terp, Sophie; Menchine, Michael; Arora, Sanjay

2017-01-01

To determine whether patients who are English proficient become aware of e-cigarettes through different marketing tactics and have dissimilar patterns of use than patients who are non-English speaking. This was a cross-sectional study surveying adult English- and Spanish-speaking patients. ANOVA and chi-squared tests were used to examine differences between groups. A large public, safety-net hospital in Los Angeles County, California. Respondents (N=1899) were predominately Hispanic (78%), foreign-born (68%), and reported Spanish as a primary language (64%). Native English speakers reported the highest use of e-cigarettes (26%), followed by non-native (13%) and non-English speakers (2%) (P<.001). In terms of marketing, native and non-native English speakers were more likely to have friends and family as sources of e-cigarette information (P<.001). Native speakers were more likely to see advertisements for e-cigarettes on storefronts (P=.004) and on billboards (P<.001). Non-English speakers were most likely to learn about e-cigarettes on the news (P<.001) and in advertisements on the television and radio (P=.002). Differences in reasons for use were not significant between the three groups. Native and non-native English speakers become aware of e-cigarettes through different mechanisms and use e-cigarettes at a significantly higher rate than non-English speakers. These results highlight an opportunity for public health programs to concentrate on specific channels of communication that introduce patient populations to e-cigarettes to slow the spread of e-cigarette usage.

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…

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…

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…

Left-lateralized N170 Effects of Visual Expertise in Reading: Evidence from Japanese Syllabic and Logographic Scripts

PubMed Central

Maurer, Urs; Zevin, Jason D.; McCandliss, Bruce D.

2015-01-01

The N170 component of the event-related potential (ERP) reflects experience-dependent neural changes in several forms of visual expertise, including expertise for visual words. Readers skilled in writing systems that link characters to phonemes (i.e., alphabetic writing) typically produce a left-lateralized N170 to visual word forms. This study examined the N170 in three Japanese scripts that link characters to larger phonological units. Participants were monolingual English speakers (EL1) and native Japanese speakers (JL1) who were also proficient in English. ERPs were collected using a 129-channel array, as participants performed a series of experiments viewing words or novel control stimuli in a repetition detection task. The N170 was strongly left-lateralized for all three Japanese scripts (including logographic Kanji characters) in JL1 participants, but bilateral in EL1 participants viewing these same stimuli. This demonstrates that left-lateralization of the N170 is dependent on specific reading expertise and is not limited to alphabetic scripts. Additional contrasts within the moraic Katakana script revealed equivalent N170 responses in JL1 speakers for familiar Katakana words and for Kanji words transcribed into novel Katakana words, suggesting that the N170 expertise effect is driven by script familiarity rather than familiarity with particular visual word forms. Finally, for English words and novel symbol string stimuli, both EL1 and JL1 subjects produced equivalent responses for the novel symbols, and more left-lateralized N170 responses for the English words, indicating that such effects are not limited to the first language. Taken together, these cross-linguistic results suggest that similar neural processes underlie visual expertise for print in very different writing systems. PMID:18370600

Vowel Representations in the Invented Spellings of Spanish-English Bilingual Kindergartners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Raynolds, Laura B.; Uhry, Joanna K.; Brunner, Jessica

2013-01-01

The study compared the invented spelling of vowels in kindergarten native Spanish speaking children with that of English monolinguals. It examined whether, after receiving phonics instruction for short vowels, the spelling of native Spanish-speaking kindergartners would contain phonological errors that were influenced by their first language.…

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 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

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.

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 impact of bilingualism on brain reserve and metabolic connectivity in Alzheimer's dementia

PubMed Central

Perani, Daniela; Farsad, Mohsen; Ballarini, Tommaso; Lubian, Francesca; Malpetti, Maura; Fracchetti, Alessandro; Magnani, Giuseppe; March, Albert; Abutalebi, Jubin

2017-01-01

Cognitive reserve (CR) prevents cognitive decline and delays neurodegeneration. Recent epidemiological evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism may act as CR delaying the onset of dementia by ∼4.5 y. Much controversy surrounds the issue of bilingualism and its putative neuroprotective effects. We studied brain metabolism, a direct index of synaptic function and density, and neural connectivity to shed light on the effects of bilingualism in vivo in Alzheimer’s dementia (AD). Eighty-five patients with probable AD and matched for disease duration (45 German-Italian bilingual speakers and 40 monolingual speakers) were included. Notably, bilingual individuals were on average 5 y older than their monolingual peers. In agreement with our predictions and with models of CR, cerebral hypometabolism was more severe in the group of bilingual individuals with AD. The metabolic connectivity analyses crucially supported the neuroprotective effect of bilingualism by showing an increased connectivity in the executive control and the default mode networks in the bilingual, compared with the monolingual, AD patients. Furthermore, the degree of lifelong bilingualism (i.e., high, moderate, or low use) was significantly correlated to functional modulations in crucial neural networks, suggesting both neural reserve and compensatory mechanisms. These findings indicate that lifelong bilingualism acts as a powerful CR proxy in dementia and exerts neuroprotective effects against neurodegeneration. Delaying the onset of dementia is a top priority of modern societies, and the present in vivo neurobiological evidence should stimulate social programs and interventions to support bilingual or multilingual education and the maintenance of the second language among senior citizens. PMID:28137833

The impact of bilingualism on brain reserve and metabolic connectivity in Alzheimer's dementia.

PubMed

Perani, Daniela; Farsad, Mohsen; Ballarini, Tommaso; Lubian, Francesca; Malpetti, Maura; Fracchetti, Alessandro; Magnani, Giuseppe; March, Albert; Abutalebi, Jubin

2017-02-14

Cognitive reserve (CR) prevents cognitive decline and delays neurodegeneration. Recent epidemiological evidence suggests that lifelong bilingualism may act as CR delaying the onset of dementia by ∼4.5 y. Much controversy surrounds the issue of bilingualism and its putative neuroprotective effects. We studied brain metabolism, a direct index of synaptic function and density, and neural connectivity to shed light on the effects of bilingualism in vivo in Alzheimer's dementia (AD). Eighty-five patients with probable AD and matched for disease duration (45 German-Italian bilingual speakers and 40 monolingual speakers) were included. Notably, bilingual individuals were on average 5 y older than their monolingual peers. In agreement with our predictions and with models of CR, cerebral hypometabolism was more severe in the group of bilingual individuals with AD. The metabolic connectivity analyses crucially supported the neuroprotective effect of bilingualism by showing an increased connectivity in the executive control and the default mode networks in the bilingual, compared with the monolingual, AD patients. Furthermore, the degree of lifelong bilingualism (i.e., high, moderate, or low use) was significantly correlated to functional modulations in crucial neural networks, suggesting both neural reserve and compensatory mechanisms. These findings indicate that lifelong bilingualism acts as a powerful CR proxy in dementia and exerts neuroprotective effects against neurodegeneration. Delaying the onset of dementia is a top priority of modern societies, and the present in vivo neurobiological evidence should stimulate social programs and interventions to support bilingual or multilingual education and the maintenance of the second language among senior citizens.

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…

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…

EFL Teachers' Responses to L2 Writing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Yuh-Fang

This study investigated differences in the product and process of evaluating second language compositions by Taiwanese speakers of English. It examined whether such factors as language background (native English speaker versus native Chinese speaker), academic discipline, and educational background affected raters' scoring outcomes; whether rating…

Mental Lexicon, Working Memory and L2 (English) Vocabulary in Polish Students with and without Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lockiewicz, Marta; Jaskulska, Martyna

2015-01-01

The aim of our study was to examine the relationship between access to the mental lexicon, working memory and knowledge of English (L2) vocabulary. Analyses were undertaken amongst monolingual speakers of Polish (26 with dyslexia, 24 without) who studied English as a second language as part of their compulsory educational programme at school. We…

Orthographic Directionality and Thematic Role Illustration in English and Arabic

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altmann, Lori J. P.; Saleem, Ahmad; Kendall, Diane; Heilman, Kenneth M.; Rothi, Leslie J. Gonzalez

2006-01-01

This study tested the hypotheses that people had a bias for drawing agents on the left of a picture when given a verb stimulus targeting an active or passive event (e.g., "kicked" or "is kicked") and that orthographic directionality would influence the way events were illustrated. Monolingual English speakers, who read and write left-to-right, and…

Final Evaluation Report of the San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District's Bilingual Education Program, 1975-1976.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harrison, Helene W.

Comprised of 27 classrooms from grade levels 1-6, the program was primarily designed to provide bilingual education for pupils with limited English speaking ability. However, due to parental requests, almost 16% monolingual English-speakers were accepted into the program. Of the 717 pupils participating in the program 84.6% were Mexican American.…

Final Evaluation Report of the San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District's Bilingual Education Program, 1974-1975.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harrison, Helene W.

The program is primarily designed to provide bilingual education for pupils, in grades K-6, with limited English-speaking ability. Due to parental requests, approximately 16 percent monolingual English-speakers have been accepted into the program. Of the 529 children enrolled in the program, 89 percent have Spanish surnames. Objectives for the…

First and Second Generation New York City Bilinguals: What Is the Role of Input in Their Collocational Knowledge of English and Spanish?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heidrick, Ingrid T.

2017-01-01

This study compares monolinguals and different kinds of bilinguals with respect to their knowledge of the type of lexical phenomenon known as collocation. Collocations are word combinations that speakers use recurrently, forming the basis of conventionalized lexical patterns that are shared by a linguistic community. Examples of collocations…

Navigating between a Monolingual Utopia and Translingual Realities: Experiences of American Learners of Yorùbá as an Additional Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mori, Junko; Sanuth, Kazeem Ké?hìndé

2018-01-01

Translingualism advocates for the appreciation of multilingual speakers' fluid, flexible, and creative deployment of semiotic resources without regard to the ideological constructs of named languages. While this scholarship has been developed primarily in the contexts of world Englishes, English as a lingua franca, and bilingual education in…

Specificity rates for non-clinical, bilingual, Mexican Americans on three popular performance validity measures.

PubMed

Gasquoine, Philip G; Weimer, Amy A; Amador, Arnoldo

2017-04-01

To measure specificity as failure rates for non-clinical, bilingual, Mexican Americans on three popular performance validity measures: (a) the language format Reliable Digit Span; (b) visual-perceptual format Test of Memory Malingering; and (c) visual-perceptual format Dot Counting, using optimal/suboptimal effort cut scores developed for monolingual, English-speakers. Participants were 61 consecutive referrals, aged between 18 and 65 years, with <16 years of education who were subjectively bilingual (confirmed via formal assessment) and chose the language of assessment, Spanish or English, for the performance validity tests. Failure rates were 38% for Reliable Digit Span, 3% for the Test of Memory Malingering, and 7% for Dot Counting. For Reliable Digit Span, the failure rates for Spanish (46%) and English (31%) languages of administration did not differ significantly. Optimal/suboptimal effort cut scores derived for monolingual English-speakers can be used with Spanish/English bilinguals when using the visual-perceptual format Test of Memory Malingering and Dot Counting. The high failure rate for Reliable Digit Span suggests it should not be used as a performance validity measure with Spanish/English bilinguals, irrespective of the language of test administration, Spanish or English.

Differential use of temporal cues to the /s/-/z/ contrast by native and non-native speakers of English.

PubMed

Flege, J E; Hillenbrand, J

1986-02-01

This study examined the effect of linguistic experience on perception of the English /s/-/z/ contrast in word-final position. The durations of the periodic ("vowel") and aperiodic ("fricative") portions of stimuli, ranging from peas to peace, were varied in a 5 X 5 factorial design. Forced-choice identification judgments were elicited from two groups of native speakers of American English differing in dialect, and from two groups each of native speakers of French, Swedish, and Finnish differing in English-language experience. The results suggested that the non-native subjects used cues established for the perception of phonetic contrasts in their native language to identify fricatives as /s/ or /z/. Lengthening vowel duration increased /z/ judgments in all eight subject groups, although the effect was smaller for native speakers of French than for native speakers of the other languages. Shortening fricative duration, on the other hand, significantly decreased /z/ judgments only by the English and French subjects. It did not influence voicing judgments by the Swedish and Finnish subjects, even those who had lived for a year or more in an English-speaking environment. These findings raise the question of whether adults who learn a foreign language can acquire the ability to integrate multiple acoustic cues to a phonetic contrast which does not exist in their native language.

Identifying a Foreign Accent in an Unfamiliar Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Major, Roy C.

2007-01-01

This study explores the question of whether native and nonnative listeners, some familiar with the language and some not, differ in their accent ratings of native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs). Although a few studies have employed native and nonnative judges to evaluate native and nonnative speech, the present study is perhaps the…

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.

The prevalence of synaesthesia depends on early language learning.

PubMed

Watson, Marcus R; Chromý, Jan; Crawford, Lyle; Eagleman, David M; Enns, James T; Akins, Kathleen A

2017-02-01

According to one theory, synaesthesia develops, or is preserved, because it helps children learn. If so, it should be more common among adults who faced greater childhood learning challenges. In the largest survey of synaesthesia to date, the incidence of synaesthesia was compared among native speakers of languages with transparent (easier) and opaque (more difficult) orthographies. Contrary to our prediction, native speakers of Czech (transparent) were more likely to be synaesthetes than native speakers of English (opaque). However, exploratory analyses suggested that this was because more Czechs learned non-native second languages, which was strongly associated with synaesthesia, consistent with the learning hypothesis. Furthermore, the incidence of synaesthesia among speakers of opaque languages was double that among speakers of transparent languages other than Czech, also consistent with the learning hypothesis. These findings contribute to an emerging understanding of synaesthetic development as a complex and lengthy process with multiple causal influences. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Social outcomes due to the interplay between language competition and ideology struggle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barreira da Silva Rocha, André

2018-02-01

I study the interplay between language competition and ideology struggle in a country where there are two competing languages. Language transition is governed by a three-state model similar to Minett-Wang (2008) and Heinsalu et al. (2014). In this class of models, I further assume that among monolinguals of one of the competing languages there is an ideology struggle between assimilationist individuals who accept to deal with foreign language speakers and nationalist individuals who oppose any form of foreign culture. Ideology transition follows a two-state model as in Abrams-Strogatz (2003). Depending on both ideology and language status, the possible equilibria show that when nationalism is introduced in the language competition model, complete assimilation might take place and one language disappears with the entire population becoming monolingual. On the other hand, when bilingualism emerges, it is associated with a segregated society with a bilingual group surviving in the long run together with an isolated monolingual group entirely composed of nationalist individuals. Another kind of segregation might also emerge in the equilibrium, in which two monolingual groups survive in the long run, one of them entirely composed of nationalists. In the latter case, both linguistic segregation and isolation are the negative social outcomes of ideology struggle.

Cognitive reserve in Parkinson's disease: the effects of welsh-english bilingualism on executive function.

PubMed

Hindle, John V; Martin-Forbes, Pamela A; Bastable, Alexandra J M; Pye, Kirstie L; Martyr, Anthony; Whitaker, Christopher J; Craik, Fergus I M; Bialystok, Ellen; Thomas, Enlli M; Mueller Gathercole, Virginia C; Clare, Linda

2015-01-01

Objective. Bilingualism has been shown to benefit executive function (EF) and delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. This study aims at examining whether a bilingual advantage applies to EF in Parkinson's disease (PD). Method. In a cross-sectional outpatient cohort of monolingual English (n = 57) and bilingual Welsh/English (n = 46) speakers with PD we evaluated the effects of bilingualism compared with monolingualism on performance on EF tasks. In bilinguals we also assessed the effects of the degree of daily usage of each language and the degree of bilingualism. Results. Monolinguals showed an advantage in performance of language tests. There were no differences in performance of EF tests in monolinguals and bilinguals. Those who used Welsh less in daily life had better performance on one test of English vocabulary. The degree of bilingualism correlated with one test of nonverbal reasoning and one of working memory but with no other tests of EF. Discussion. The reasons why the expected benefit in EF in Welsh-English bilinguals with PD was not found require further study. Future studies in PD should include other language pairs, analysis of the effects of the degree of bilingualism, and longitudinal analysis of cognitive decline or dementia together with structural or functional neuroimaging.

Cognitive Reserve in Parkinson's Disease: The Effects of Welsh-English Bilingualism on Executive Function

PubMed Central

Hindle, John V.; Martin-Forbes, Pamela A.; Bastable, Alexandra J. M.; Pye, Kirstie L.; Martyr, Anthony; Whitaker, Christopher J.; Craik, Fergus I. M.; Bialystok, Ellen; Thomas, Enlli M.; Mueller Gathercole, Virginia C.; Clare, Linda

2015-01-01

Objective. Bilingualism has been shown to benefit executive function (EF) and delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. This study aims at examining whether a bilingual advantage applies to EF in Parkinson's disease (PD). Method. In a cross-sectional outpatient cohort of monolingual English (n = 57) and bilingual Welsh/English (n = 46) speakers with PD we evaluated the effects of bilingualism compared with monolingualism on performance on EF tasks. In bilinguals we also assessed the effects of the degree of daily usage of each language and the degree of bilingualism. Results. Monolinguals showed an advantage in performance of language tests. There were no differences in performance of EF tests in monolinguals and bilinguals. Those who used Welsh less in daily life had better performance on one test of English vocabulary. The degree of bilingualism correlated with one test of nonverbal reasoning and one of working memory but with no other tests of EF. Discussion. The reasons why the expected benefit in EF in Welsh-English bilinguals with PD was not found require further study. Future studies in PD should include other language pairs, analysis of the effects of the degree of bilingualism, and longitudinal analysis of cognitive decline or dementia together with structural or functional neuroimaging. PMID:25922786

Neural signatures of second language learning and control.

PubMed

Bartolotti, James; Bradley, Kailyn; Hernandez, Arturo E; Marian, Viorica

2017-04-01

Experience with multiple languages has unique effects on cortical structure and information processing. Differences in gray matter density and patterns of cortical activation are observed in lifelong bilinguals compared to monolinguals as a result of their experience managing interference across languages. Monolinguals who acquire a second language later in life begin to encounter the same type of linguistic interference as bilinguals, but with a different pre-existing language architecture. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the beginning stages of second language acquisition and cross-linguistic interference in monolingual adults. We found that after English monolinguals learned novel Spanish vocabulary, English and Spanish auditory words led to distinct patterns of cortical activation, with greater recruitment of posterior parietal regions in response to English words and of left hippocampus in response to Spanish words. In addition, cross-linguistic interference from English influenced processing of newly-learned Spanish words, decreasing hippocampus activity. Results suggest that monolinguals may rely on different memory systems to process a newly-learned second language, and that the second language system is sensitive to native language interference. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Bilingualism influences inhibitory control in auditory comprehension.

PubMed

Blumenfeld, Henrike K; Marian, Viorica

2011-02-01

Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals at suppressing task-irrelevant information. The present study aimed to identify how processing linguistic ambiguity during auditory comprehension may be associated with inhibitory control. Monolinguals and bilinguals listened to words in their native language (English) and identified them among four pictures while their eye-movements were tracked. Each target picture (e.g., hamper) appeared together with a similar-sounding within-language competitor picture (e.g., hammer) and two neutral pictures. Following each eye-tracking trial, priming probe trials indexed residual activation of target words, and residual inhibition of competitor words. Eye-tracking showed similar within-language competition across groups; priming showed stronger competitor inhibition in monolinguals than in bilinguals, suggesting differences in how inhibitory control was used to resolve within-language competition. Notably, correlation analyses revealed that inhibition performance on a nonlinguistic Stroop task was related to linguistic competition resolution in bilinguals but not in monolinguals. Together, monolingual-bilingual comparisons suggest that cognitive control mechanisms can be shaped by linguistic experience. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Home Language Will Not Take Care of Itself: Vocabulary Knowledge in Trilingual Children in the United Kingdom

PubMed Central

Mieszkowska, Karolina; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Kołak, Joanna; Kacprzak, Agnieszka; Wodniecka, Zofia; Haman, Ewa

2017-01-01

Language input is crucial for language acquisition and especially for children’s vocabulary size. Bilingual children receive reduced input in each of their languages, compared to monolinguals, and are reported to have smaller vocabularies, at least in one of their languages. Vocabulary acquisition in trilingual children has been largely understudied; only a few case studies have been published so far. Moreover, trilingual language acquisition in children has been rarely contrasted with language outcomes of bilingual and monolingual peers. We present a comparison of trilingual, bilingual, and monolingual children (total of 56 participants, aged 4;5–6;7, matched one-to-one for age, gender, and non-verbal IQ) in regard to their receptive and expressive vocabulary (measured by standardized tests), and relative frequency of input in each language (measured by parental report). The monolingual children were speakers of Polish or English, while the bilinguals and trilinguals were migrant children living in the United Kingdom, speaking English as a majority language and Polish as a home language. The trilinguals had another (third) language at home. For the majority language, English, no differences were found across the three groups, either in the receptive or productive vocabulary. The groups differed, however, in their performance in Polish, the home language. The trilinguals had lower receptive vocabulary than the monolinguals, and lower productive vocabulary compared to the monolinguals. The trilinguals showed similar lexical knowledge to the bilinguals. The bilinguals demonstrated lower scores than the monolinguals, but only in productive vocabulary. The data on reported language input show that input in English in bilingual and trilingual groups is similar, but the bilinguals outscore the trilinguals in relative frequency of Polish input. Overall, the results suggest that in the majority language, multilingual children may develop lexical skills similar to those of their monolingual peers. However, their minority language is weaker: the trilinguals scored lower than the Polish monolinguals on both receptive and expressive vocabulary tests, and the bilinguals showed reduced expressive knowledge but leveled out with the Polish monolinguals on receptive vocabulary. The results should encourage parents of migrant children to support home language(s), if the languages are to be retained in a longer perspective. PMID:28848473

Syntactic learning by mere exposure - An ERP study in adult learners

PubMed Central

Mueller, Jutta L; Oberecker, Regine; Friederici, Angela D

2009-01-01

Background Artificial language studies have revealed the remarkable ability of humans to extract syntactic structures from a continuous sound stream by mere exposure. However, it remains unclear whether the processes acquired in such tasks are comparable to those applied during normal language processing. The present study compares the ERPs to auditory processing of simple Italian sentences in native and non-native speakers after brief exposure to Italian sentences of a similar structure. The sentences contained a non-adjacent dependency between an auxiliary and the morphologically marked suffix of the verb. Participants were presented four alternating learning and testing phases. During learning phases only correct sentences were presented while during testing phases 50 percent of the sentences contained a grammatical violation. Results The non-native speakers successfully learned the dependency and displayed an N400-like negativity and a subsequent anteriorily distributed positivity in response to rule violations. The native Italian group showed an N400 followed by a P600 effect. Conclusion The presence of the P600 suggests that native speakers applied a grammatical rule. In contrast, non-native speakers appeared to use a lexical form-based processing strategy. Thus, the processing mechanisms acquired in the language learning task were only partly comparable to those applied by competent native speakers. PMID:19640301

Syntactic learning by mere exposure--an ERP study in adult learners.

PubMed

Mueller, Jutta L; Oberecker, Regine; Friederici, Angela D

2009-07-29

Artificial language studies have revealed the remarkable ability of humans to extract syntactic structures from a continuous sound stream by mere exposure. However, it remains unclear whether the processes acquired in such tasks are comparable to those applied during normal language processing. The present study compares the ERPs to auditory processing of simple Italian sentences in native and non-native speakers after brief exposure to Italian sentences of a similar structure. The sentences contained a non-adjacent dependency between an auxiliary and the morphologically marked suffix of the verb. Participants were presented four alternating learning and testing phases. During learning phases only correct sentences were presented while during testing phases 50 percent of the sentences contained a grammatical violation. The non-native speakers successfully learned the dependency and displayed an N400-like negativity and a subsequent anteriorily distributed positivity in response to rule violations. The native Italian group showed an N400 followed by a P600 effect. The presence of the P600 suggests that native speakers applied a grammatical rule. In contrast, non-native speakers appeared to use a lexical form-based processing strategy. Thus, the processing mechanisms acquired in the language learning task were only partly comparable to those applied by competent native speakers.

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.

Questionnaire design from a cross-cultural perspective: an empirical investigation of Koreans and non-Koreans.

PubMed

Willis, Gordon; Zahnd, Elaine

2007-11-01

A persistent challenge to self-report data across racial, ethnic, or cultural groups is the inherent difficulty of attaining cross-cultural comparability of key measures. The current research study investigated the cross-cultural functioning of health-survey questions presented to four groups: (1) Koreans who were monolingual in Korean; (2) non-Korean native speakers of English; (3) bilingual Koreans interviewed in English, and (4) bilingual Koreans interviewed in Korean. This design allowed us to include those likely to be medically underserved, and to assess both linguistic and cultural barriers to collecting health survey data. A total of 36 cognitive interviews were conducted to identify (a) translation problems; (b) problems of cultural adaptation that impede cross-cultural comparability; and (c) generic problems of questionnaire design that affect all groups. An important category of problems was identified that appeared to result from the interaction of respondent and question characteristics. Such problems can best be assessed through explicit consideration of the socio-cultural backgrounds of survey respondents, as opposed to the more usual focus on details of item translation and wording.

Relative Difficulty of Understanding Foreign Accents as a Marker of Proficiency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lev-Ari, Shiri; van Heugten, Marieke; Peperkamp, Sharon

2017-01-01

Foreign-accented speech is generally harder to understand than native-accented speech. This difficulty is reduced for non-native listeners who share their first language with the non-native speaker. It is currently unclear, however, how non-native listeners deal with foreign-accented speech produced by speakers of a different language. We show…

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 response of the anterior striatum during adult human vocal learning

PubMed Central

Leech, Robert; Iverson, Paul; Wise, Richard J. S.

2014-01-01

Research on mammals predicts that the anterior striatum is a central component of human motor learning. However, because vocalizations in most mammals are innate, much of the neurobiology of human vocal learning has been inferred from studies on songbirds. Essential for song learning is a pathway, the homolog of mammalian cortical-basal ganglia “loops,” which includes the avian striatum. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated adult human vocal learning, a skill that persists throughout life, albeit imperfectly given that late-acquired languages are spoken with an accent. Monolingual adult participants were scanned while repeating novel non-native words. After training on the pronunciation of half the words for 1 wk, participants underwent a second scan. During scanning there was no external feedback on performance. Activity declined sharply in left and right anterior striatum, both within and between scanning sessions, and this change was independent of training and performance. This indicates that adult speakers rapidly adapt to the novel articulatory movements, possibly by using motor sequences from their native speech to approximate those required for the novel speech sounds. Improved accuracy correlated only with activity in motor-sensory perisylvian cortex. We propose that future studies on vocal learning, using different behavioral and pharmacological manipulations, will provide insights into adult striatal plasticity and its potential for modification in both educational and clinical contexts. PMID:24805076

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…

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…

Shibboleth: An Automated Foreign Accent Identification Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frost, Wende

2013-01-01

The speech of non-native (L2) speakers of a language contains phonological rules that differentiate them from native speakers. These phonological rules characterize or distinguish accents in an L2. The Shibboleth program creates combinatorial rule-sets to describe the phonological pattern of these accents and classifies L2 speakers into their…

Effects of tonal language background on tests of temporal sequencing in children.

PubMed

Mukari, Siti Zamratol-Mai S; Yu, Xuan; Ishak, Wan Syafira; Mazlan, Rafidah

2015-01-01

The aims of the present study were to determine the effects of language background on the performance of the pitch pattern sequence test (PPST) and duration pattern sequence test (DPST). As temporal order sequencing may be affected by age and working memory, these factors were also studied. Performance of tonal and non-tonal language speakers on PPST and DPST were compared. Twenty-eight native Mandarin (tonal language) speakers and twenty-nine native Malay (non-tonal language) speakers between seven to nine years old participated in this study. The results revealed that relative to native Malay speakers, native Mandarin speakers demonstrated better scores on the PPST in both humming and verbal labeling responses. However, a similar language effect was not apparent in the DPST. An age effect was only significant in the PPST (verbal labeling). Finally, no significant effect of working memory was found on the PPST and the DPST. These findings suggest that the PPST is affected by tonal language background, and highlight the importance of developing different normative values for tonal and non-tonal language speakers.

Can Bilinguals See It Coming? Word Anticipation in L2 Sentence Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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

2014-01-01

Why is it more difficult to comprehend a 2nd (L2) than a 1st language (L1)? In the present article we investigate whether difficulties during L2 sentence comprehension come from differences in the way L1 and L2 speakers anticipate upcoming words. We recorded the brain activity (event-related potentials) of Spanish monolinguals, French-Spanish late…

Redintegration and the Benefits of Long-Term Knowledge in Verbal Short-Term Memory: An Evaluation of Schweickert's (1993) Multinomial Processing Tree Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thorn, Annabel S. C.; Gathercole, Susan E.; Frankish, Clive R.

2005-01-01

The impact of four long-term knowledge variables on serial recall accuracy was investigated. Serial recall was tested for high and low frequency words and high and low phonotactic frequency nonwords in 2 groups: monolingual English speakers and French-English bilinguals. For both groups the recall advantage for words over nonwords reflected more…

Training Cyber Warriors: What Can Be Learned from Defense Language Training?

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-01-01

other agencies. In addition, the National Cryp- tologic School , Foreign Service Institute, and CIA University, among others, each train students for...They provide a variety of services, including group instruction , distance learning , and one-on-one tutoring. Pipeline-Building Programs The Language...commonly monolingual English speakers,1 (2) the U.S. education system provides limited opportunities for students to learn other languages in

The Exposure Advantage: Early Exposure to a Multilingual Environment Promotes Effective Communication.

PubMed

Fan, Samantha P; Liberman, Zoe; Keysar, Boaz; Kinzler, Katherine D

2015-07-01

Early language exposure is essential to developing a formal language system, but may not be sufficient for communicating effectively. To understand a speaker's intention, one must take the speaker's perspective. Multilingual exposure may promote effective communication by enhancing perspective taking. We tested children on a task that required perspective taking to interpret a speaker's intended meaning. Monolingual children failed to interpret the speaker's meaning dramatically more often than both bilingual children and children who were exposed to a multilingual environment but were not bilingual themselves. Children who were merely exposed to a second language performed as well as bilingual children, despite having lower executive-function scores. Thus, the communicative advantages demonstrated by the bilinguals may be social in origin, and not due to enhanced executive control. For millennia, multilingual exposure has been the norm. Our study shows that such an environment may facilitate the development of perspective-taking tools that are critical for effective communication. © The Author(s) 2015.

Increase in Speech Recognition due to Linguistic Mismatch Between Target and Masker Speech: Monolingual and Simultaneous Bilingual Performance

PubMed Central

Calandruccio, Lauren; Zhou, Haibo

2014-01-01

Purpose To examine whether improved speech recognition during linguistically mismatched target–masker experiments is due to linguistic unfamiliarity of the masker speech or linguistic dissimilarity between the target and masker speech. Method Monolingual English speakers (n = 20) and English–Greek simultaneous bilinguals (n = 20) listened to English sentences in the presence of competing English and Greek speech. Data were analyzed using mixed-effects regression models to determine differences in English recogition performance between the 2 groups and 2 masker conditions. Results Results indicated that English sentence recognition for monolinguals and simultaneous English–Greek bilinguals improved when the masker speech changed from competing English to competing Greek speech. Conclusion The improvement in speech recognition that has been observed for linguistically mismatched target–masker experiments cannot be simply explained by the masker language being linguistically unknown or unfamiliar to the listeners. Listeners can improve their speech recognition in linguistically mismatched target–masker experiments even when the listener is able to obtain meaningful linguistic information from the masker speech. PMID:24167230

Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT).

PubMed

Haman, Ewa; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Hansen, Pernille; Simonsen, Hanne Gram; Chiat, Shula; Bjekić, Jovana; Blažienė, Agnė; Chyl, Katarzyna; Dabašinskienė, Ineta; Engel de Abreu, Pascale; Gagarina, Natalia; Gavarró, Anna; Håkansson, Gisela; Harel, Efrat; Holm, Elisabeth; Kapalková, Svetlana; Kunnari, Sari; Levorato, Chiara; Lindgren, Josefin; Mieszkowska, Karolina; Montes Salarich, Laia; Potgieter, Anneke; Ribu, Ingeborg; Ringblom, Natalia; Rinker, Tanja; Roch, Maja; Slančová, Daniela; Southwood, Frenette; Tedeschi, Roberta; Tuncer, Aylin Müge; Ünal-Logacev, Özlem; Vuksanović, Jasmina; Armon-Lotem, Sharon

2017-01-01

This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.

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…

Don't Underestimate the Benefits of Being Misunderstood.

PubMed

Gibson, Edward; Tan, Caitlin; Futrell, Richard; Mahowald, Kyle; Konieczny, Lars; Hemforth, Barbara; Fedorenko, Evelina

2017-06-01

Being a nonnative speaker of a language poses challenges. Individuals often feel embarrassed by the errors they make when talking in their second language. However, here we report an advantage of being a nonnative speaker: Native speakers give foreign-accented speakers the benefit of the doubt when interpreting their utterances; as a result, apparently implausible utterances are more likely to be interpreted in a plausible way when delivered in a foreign than in a native accent. Across three replicated experiments, we demonstrated that native English speakers are more likely to interpret implausible utterances, such as "the mother gave the candle the daughter," as similar plausible utterances ("the mother gave the candle to the daughter") when the speaker has a foreign accent. This result follows from the general model of language interpretation in a noisy channel, under the hypothesis that listeners assume a higher error rate in foreign-accented than in nonaccented speech.

Phonetic Encoding of Coda Voicing Contrast under Different Focus Conditions in L1 vs. L2 English.

PubMed

Choi, Jiyoun; Kim, Sahayng; Cho, Taehong

2016-01-01

This study investigated how coda voicing contrast in English would be phonetically encoded in the temporal vs. spectral dimension of the preceding vowel (in vowel duration vs. F1/F2) by Korean L2 speakers of English, and how their L2 phonetic encoding pattern would be compared to that of native English speakers. Crucially, these questions were explored by taking into account the phonetics-prosody interface, testing effects of prominence by comparing target segments in three focus conditions (phonological focus, lexical focus, and no focus). Results showed that Korean speakers utilized the temporal dimension (vowel duration) to encode coda voicing contrast, but failed to use the spectral dimension (F1/F2), reflecting their native language experience-i.e., with a more sparsely populated vowel space in Korean, they are less sensitive to small changes in the spectral dimension, and hence fine-grained spectral cues in English are not readily accessible. Results also showed that along the temporal dimension, both the L1 and L2 speakers hyperarticulated coda voicing contrast under prominence (when phonologically or lexically focused), but hypoarticulated it in the non-prominent condition. This indicates that low-level phonetic realization and high-order information structure interact in a communicatively efficient way, regardless of the speakers' native language background. The Korean speakers, however, used the temporal phonetic space differently from the way the native speakers did, especially showing less reduction in the no focus condition. This was also attributable to their native language experience-i.e., the Korean speakers' use of temporal dimension is constrained in a way that is not detrimental to the preservation of coda voicing contrast, given that they failed to add additional cues along the spectral dimension. The results imply that the L2 phonetic system can be more fully illuminated through an investigation of the phonetics-prosody interface in connection with the L2 speakers' native language experience.

Factors affecting the perception of Korean-accented American English

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cho, Kwansun; Harris, John G.; Shrivastav, Rahul

2005-09-01

This experiment examines the relative contribution of two factors, intonation and articulation errors, on the perception of foreign accent in Korean-accented American English. Ten native speakers of Korean and ten native speakers of American English were asked to read ten English sentences. These sentences were then modified using high-quality speech resynthesis techniques [STRAIGHT Kawahara et al., Speech Commun. 27, 187-207 (1999)] to generate four sets of stimuli. In the first two sets of stimuli, the intonation patterns of the Korean speakers and American speakers were switched with one another. The articulatory errors for each speaker were not modified. In the final two sets, the sentences from the Korean and American speakers were resynthesized without any modifications. Fifteen listeners were asked to rate all the stimuli for the degree of foreign accent. Preliminary results show that, for native speakers of American English, articulation errors may play a greater role in the perception of foreign accent than errors in intonation patterns. [Work supported by KAIM.

Language effects in second-language learners: A longitudinal electrophysiological study of spanish classroom learning.

PubMed

Soskey, Laura; Holcomb, Phillip J; Midgley, Katherine J

2016-09-01

How do the neural mechanisms involved in word recognition evolve over the course of word learning in adult learners of a new second language? The current study sought to closely track language effects, which are differences in electrophysiological indices of word processing between one's native and second languages, in beginning university learners over the course of a single semester of learning. Monolingual L1 English-speakers enrolled in introductory Spanish were first trained on a list of 228 Spanish words chosen from the vocabulary to be learned in class. Behavioral data from the training session and the following experimental sessions spaced over the course of the semester showed expected learning effects. In the three laboratory sessions participants read words in three lists (English, Spanish and mixed) while performing a go/no-go lexical decision task in which event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. As observed in previous studies there were ERP language effects with larger N400s to native than second language words. Importantly, this difference declined over the course of L2 learning with N400 amplitude increasing for new second language words. These results suggest that even over a single semester of learning that new second language words are rapidly incorporated into the word recognition system and begin to take on lexical and semantic properties similar to native language words. Moreover, the results suggest that electrophysiological measures can be used as sensitive measures for tracking the acquisition of new linguistic knowledge. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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…

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…

Listening and Note-Taking in Higher Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fahmy, Jane Jackson; Bilton, Linda

A study at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman investigated the listening comprehension problems of students who were non-native speakers of English (NNS), in lectures by native English-speaking professors. Two professors with no previous experience in teaching non-native speakers introduced geology in 4 weeks of lectures. Instances of vocabulary…

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…

An Integrated Approach to ESL Teaching.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

De Luca, Rosemary J.

A University of Waikato (New Zealand) course in English for academic purposes is described. The credit course was originally designed for native English-speaking students to address their academic writing needs. However, based on the idea that the writing tasks of native speakers and non-native speakers are similar and that their writing…

The Role of Native-Language Phonology in the Auditory Word Identification and Visual Word Recognition of Russian-English Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shafiro, Valeriy; Kharkhurin, Anatoliy V.

2009-01-01

Abstract Does native language phonology influence visual word processing in a second language? This question was investigated in two experiments with two groups of Russian-English bilinguals, differing in their English experience, and a monolingual English control group. Experiment 1 tested visual word recognition following semantic…

The Coconstruction of Cross-Cultural Miscommunication: Conflicts in Perception, Negotiation, and Enactment of Participant Role and Status.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tyler, Andrea

1995-01-01

Examines the sources of miscommunication in a videotaped tutoring session involving a native speaker of Korean and a native speaker of English. Analysis revealed an initial nonmutual interpretation of participant role and status, resulting from the Korean tutor's transfer of a Korean conversational routine involving polite speaker modesty to the…

Auditory Training for Experienced and Inexperienced Second-Language Learners: Native French Speakers Learning English Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Iverson, Paul; Pinet, Melanie; Evans, Bronwen G.

2012-01-01

This study examined whether high-variability auditory training on natural speech can benefit experienced second-language English speakers who already are exposed to natural variability in their daily use of English. The subjects were native French speakers who had learned English in school; experienced listeners were tested in England and the less…

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

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 presented in an order that conflicts with the expected order in both their L1 and L2. PMID:25709590

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 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…

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…

Phonetic Influences on English and French Listeners' Assimilation of Mandarin Tones to Native Prosodic Categories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

So, Connie K.; Best, Catherine T.

2014-01-01

This study examined how native speakers of Australian English and French, nontone languages with different lexical stress properties, perceived Mandarin tones in a sentence environment according to their native sentence intonation categories (i-Categories) in connected speech. Results showed that both English and French speakers categorized…

Adult Second Language Learning of Spanish Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cobb, Katherine; Simonet, Miquel

2015-01-01

The present study reports on the findings of a cross-sectional acoustic study of the production of Spanish vowels by three different groups of speakers: 1) native Spanish speakers; 2) native English intermediate learners of Spanish; and 3) native English advanced learners of Spanish. In particular, we examined the production of the five Spanish…

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…

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

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…

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…

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…

To electrify bilingualism: Electrophysiological insights into bilingual metaphor comprehension

PubMed Central

Jankowiak, Katarzyna; Rataj, Karolina; Naskręcki, Ryszard

2017-01-01

Though metaphoric language comprehension has previously been investigated with event-related potentials, little attention has been devoted to extending this research from the monolingual to the bilingual context. In the current study, late proficient unbalanced Polish (L1)–English (L2) bilinguals performed a semantic decision task to novel metaphoric, conventional metaphoric, literal, and anomalous word pairs presented in L1 and L2. The results showed more pronounced P200 amplitudes to L2 than L1, which can be accounted for by differences in the subjective frequency of the native and non-native lexical items. Within the early N400 time window (300–400 ms), L2 word dyads evoked delayed and attenuated amplitudes relative to L1 word pairs, possibly indicating extended lexical search during foreign language processing, and weaker semantic interconnectivity for L2 compared to L1 words within the memory system. The effect of utterance type was observed within the late N400 time window (400–500 ms), with smallest amplitudes evoked by literal, followed by conventional metaphoric, novel metaphoric, and anomalous word dyads. Such findings are interpreted as reflecting more resource intensive cognitive mechanisms governing novel compared to conventional metaphor comprehension in both the native and non-native language. Within the late positivity time window (500–800 ms), Polish novel metaphors evoked reduced amplitudes relative to literal utterances. In English, on the other hand, this effect was observed for both novel and conventional metaphoric word dyads. This finding might indicate continued effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route during novel metaphor comprehension in L1, and during novel and conventional metaphor comprehension in L2. Altogether, the present results point to decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms engaged in non-native and non-dominant language processing, and suggest a decreased sensitivity to the levels of conventionality of metaphoric meanings in late proficient unbalanced bilingual speakers. PMID:28414742

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)…

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 reserved.

Effects of Noise and Proficiency on Intelligibility of Chinese-Accented English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rogers, Catherine L.; Dalby, Jonathan; Nishi, Kanae

2004-01-01

This study compared the intelligibility of native and foreign-accented English speech presented in quiet and mixed with three different levels of background noise. Two native American English speakers and four native Mandarin Chinese speakers for whom English is a second language each read a list of 50 phonetically balanced sentences (Egan, 1948).…

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…

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 Challenge Component predicts that for difficult tasks, language learners will rely on widely-applied prosodic patterns, making them more successful at prosodically marking broad focus than narrow focus. However, for easy tasks, language learners will more successfully mark information structures that have a more direct relationship between focus and accent placement.

On the Englishes Used in Written Business Communications across Cultures: Can Readers Tell the Difference? And Does It Matter?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frank, Jane

A pilot study investigated the varieties of English used in two commercial contexts and the success of speakers from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds in transmitting intended information to listeners from other native language backgrounds. A questionnaire was administered to both native speakers of English (NS) and non-native speakers…

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.…

The Development of Pragmatic Competence and Perception of Requests by American Learners of the Russian Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunn, Valentina Nikolayevna Amelkina

2012-01-01

This study investigates the cross-cultural realization of request patterns. The goal of the study is to compare the realization of requests produced by adult American English speaking learners of Russian (NNS) to that of native speakers of Russian and native speakers of English to identify the similarities and differences between native and…

A preliminary comparison of Cantonese and American-English as taste languages.

PubMed

O'Mahony, M; Tsang, T

1980-05-01

Groups of monolingual American-English speaking Americans of Chinese descent were compared with Cantonese/American-English bilingual Chinese living in America to examine their taste descriptions for a set of aqueous solutions. Cantonese, unlike other languages, did not appear to differ greatly from American-English in its general taste descriptive strategy and depth of vocabulary, although Cantonese speakers had a tendency to use 'glutamic' as a descriptive term for monosodium glutamate.

Use of Modality and Negation in Semantically-Informed Syntactic MT

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-06-01

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE). 422 Baker et al. Modality and Negation in SIMT We produced the full English MN lexicon semi...English sentence pairs, and a bilingual dictionary with 113,911 entries. For our development and test sets, we split the NIST MT-08 test set into two...for combining MT and semantics (termed distillation) to answer the informa- tion needs of monolingual speakers using multilingual sources. Proper

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.

The effects of bilingualism on toddlers’ executive functioning

PubMed Central

Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Blaye, Agnes; Coutya, Julie; Bialystok, Ellen

2015-01-01

Bilingual children have been shown to outperform monolingual children on tasks measuring executive functioning skills. This advantage is usually attributed to bilinguals’ extensive practice in exercising selective attention and cognitive flexibility during language use because both languages are active when one of them is being used. We examined whether this advantage is observed in 24-month-olds who have had much less experience in language production. A battery of executive functioning tasks and the cognitive scale of the Bayley test were administered to 63 monolingual and bilingual children. Native bilingual children performed significantly better than monolingual children on the Stroop task, with no difference between groups on the other tasks, confirming the specificity of bilingual effects to conflict tasks reported in older children. These results demonstrate that bilingual advantages in executive control emerge at an age not previously shown. PMID:21122877

Early second language acquisition: a comparison of the linguistic output of a pre-school child acquiring English as a second language with that of a monolingual peer.

PubMed

Letts, C A

1991-08-01

Two pre-school children were recorded at regular intervals over a 9-month period while playing freely together. One child was acquiring English as a second language, whilst the other was a monolingual English speaker. The sociolinguistic domain was such that the children were likely to be motivated to communicate with each other in English. A variety of quantitative measures were taken from the transcribed data, including measures of utterance type, length, type-token ratios, use of auxiliaries and morphology. The child for whom English was a second language was found to be well able to interact on equal terms with his partner, despite being somewhat less advanced in some aspects of English language development by the end of the sampling period. Whilst he appeared to be consolidating his language skills during this time, his monolingual partner appeared to be developing rapidly. It is hoped that normative longitudinal data of this kind will be of use in the accurate assessment of children from dual language backgrounds, who may be referred for speech and language therapy.

Can non-interactive language input benefit young second-language learners?

PubMed

Au, Terry Kit-Fong; Chan, Winnie Wailan; Cheng, Liao; Siegel, Linda S; Tso, Ricky Van Yip

2015-03-01

To fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible - e.g. for children learning a second language that is not the societal language - audios are commonly used as an affordable substitute. But does such non-interactive input work? Two experiments evaluated the usefulness of audio storybooks in acquiring a more native-like second-language accent. Young children, first- and second-graders in Hong Kong whose native language was Cantonese Chinese, were given take-home listening assignments in a second language, either English or Putonghua Chinese. Accent ratings of the children's story reading revealed measurable benefits of non-interactive input from native speakers. The benefits were far more robust for Putonghua than English. Implications for second-language accent acquisition are discussed.

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.

Orthography affects second language speech: Double letters and geminate production in English.

PubMed

Bassetti, Bene

2017-11-01

Second languages (L2s) are often learned through spoken and written input, and L2 orthographic forms (spellings) can lead to non-native-like pronunciation. The present study investigated whether orthography can lead experienced learners of English L2 to make a phonological contrast in their speech production that does not exist in English. Double consonants represent geminate (long) consonants in Italian but not in English. In Experiment 1, native English speakers and English L2 speakers (Italians) were asked to read aloud English words spelled with a single or double target consonant letter, and consonant duration was compared. The English L2 speakers produced the same consonant as shorter when it was spelled with a single letter, and longer when spelled with a double letter. Spelling did not affect consonant duration in native English speakers. In Experiment 2, effects of orthographic input were investigated by comparing 2 groups of English L2 speakers (Italians) performing a delayed word repetition task with or without orthographic input; the same orthographic effects were found in both groups. These results provide arguably the first evidence that L2 orthographic forms can lead experienced L2 speakers to make a contrast in their L2 production that does not exist in the language. The effect arises because L2 speakers are affected by the interaction between the L2 orthographic form (number of letters), and their native orthography-phonology mappings, whereby double consonant letters represent geminate consonants. These results have important implications for future studies investigating the effects of orthography on native phonology and for L2 phonological development models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

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…

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…

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.

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.

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…

The Influence of Language Anxiety on English Reading and Writing Tasks among Native Hebrew Speakers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Argaman, Osnat; Abu-Rabia, Salim

2002-01-01

Examined the influence of language anxiety as measured by a questionnaire on achievements in English writing and reading comprehension tasks. Subjects were native speakers of Hebrew, aged 12-13 years, learning English as a second language.(Author/VWL)

The effects of cognitive – linguistic variables and language experience on behavioural and kinematic performances in nonword learning

PubMed Central

Sasisekaran, Jayanthi; Weisberg, Sanford

2013-01-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of cognitive – linguistic variables and language experience on behavioral and kinematic measures of nonword learning in young adults. Group 1 consisted of thirteen participants who spoke American English as the first and only language. Group 2 consisted of seven participants with varying levels of proficiency in a second language. Logistic regression of the percent of correct productions revealed short-term memory to be a significant contributor. The bilingual group showed better performance compared to the monolinguals. Linear regression of the kinematic data revealed that the short – term memory variable contributed significantly to movement coordination. Differences were not observed between the bilingual and the monolingual speakers in kinematic performance. Nonword properties including syllable length and complexity influenced both behavioral and kinematic performance. The findings supported the observation that nonword repetition is multiply determined in adults. PMID:22476630

Cognitive advantages and disadvantages in early and late bilinguals.

PubMed

Pelham, Sabra D; Abrams, Lise

2014-03-01

Previous research has documented advantages and disadvantages of early bilinguals, defined as learning a 2nd language by school age and using both languages since that time. Relative to monolinguals, early bilinguals manifest deficits in lexical access but benefits in executive function. We investigated whether becoming bilingual after childhood (late bilinguals) can produce the cognitive advantages and disadvantages typical of early bilinguals. Participants were 30 monolingual English speakers, 30 late English-Spanish bilinguals, and 30 early Spanish-English bilinguals who completed a picture naming task (lexical access) and an attentional network task (executive function). Late and early bilinguals manifested equivalent cognitive effects in both tasks, demonstrating lexical access deficits and executive function benefits. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that cognitive effects associated with bilingualism arise as the result of proficient, habitual use of 2 languages and not of developmental changes associated with becoming bilingual during childhood.

Event-Related Brain Potential Investigation of Preparation for Speech Production in Late Bilinguals

PubMed Central

Wu, Yan Jing; Thierry, Guillaume

2011-01-01

It has been debated how bilinguals select the intended language and prevent interference from the unintended language when speaking. Here, we studied the nature of the mental representations accessed by late fluent bilinguals during a rhyming judgment task relying on covert speech production. We recorded event-related brain potentials in Chinese–English bilinguals and monolingual speakers of English while they indicated whether the names of pictures presented on a screen rhymed.  Whether bilingual participants focussed on rhyming selectively in English or Chinese, we found a significant priming effect of language-specific sound repetition. Surprisingly, however, sound repetitions in Chinese elicited significant priming effects even when the rhyming task was performed in English. This cross-language priming effect was delayed by ∼200  ms as compared to the within-language effect and was asymmetric, since there was no priming effect of sound repetitions in English when participants were asked to make rhyming judgments in Chinese. These results demonstrate that second language production hinders, but does not seal off, activation of the first language, whereas native language production appears immune to competition from the second language. PMID:21687468

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 native speakers in all conditions, while the advanced speakers only differed from the natives in the event+ ser and event+ estar conditions. For the ERPs, the beginning learners did not show any effects in the time-windows under analysis. The advanced speakers showed a pattern similar to that of native speakers: (1) a P600 response to 'object + ser ' violation more central and frontally distributed, and (2) a central-frontal negativity between 500-700 ms for 'event + estar ' violation. Findings for the advanced speakers suggest that behavioral methods commonly used to assess grammatical knowledge in the L2 may be underestimating what L2 speakers have actually learned.

The "Perceptual Wedge Hypothesis" as the Basis for Bilingual Babies' Phonetic Processing Advantage: New insights from fNIRS Brain Imaging

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Petitto, L. A.; Berens, M. S.; Kovelman, I.; Dubins, M. H.; Jasinska, K.; Shalinsky, M.

2012-01-01

In a neuroimaging study focusing on young bilinguals, we explored the brains of bilingual and monolingual babies across two age groups (younger 4-6 months, older 10-12 months), using fNIRS in a new event-related design, as babies processed linguistic phonetic (Native English, Non-Native Hindi) and nonlinguistic Tone stimuli. We found that phonetic…

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.

Polish Basic Course.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

These 15 volumes of the Basic Polish Course, prepared for use in the Defense Language Institute's intensive language program, comprise Lessons 1-124. They are disigned to train native English language speakers to Level 3 proficiency in comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing Polish. (Level 5 is native-speaker fluency.) The phonological…

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…

Let Social Interaction Flourish

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Case, Anny Fritzen

2016-01-01

The author describes lessons learned--through a high school project that grouped English language learners with native speakers to create a video--about ways to foster respectful, productive interaction among English learners and peers who are native speakers. The potential benefits of students who are just learning English interacting socially…

Crosslinguistic Differences in Implicit Language Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leung, Janny H. C.; Williams, John N.

2014-01-01

We report three experiments that explore the effect of prior linguistic knowledge on implicit language learning. Native speakers of English from the United Kingdom and native speakers of Cantonese from Hong Kong participated in experiments that involved different learning materials. In Experiment 1, both participant groups showed evidence of…

Turkish Basic Course.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

These 14 volumes of the Defense Language Institute's basic course in Turkish consist of 112 lesson units designed to train native English language speakers to Level 3 proficiency in comprehending, speaking, reading, and writing Turkish. (Native-speaker fluency is Level 5.) An introduction to the sound system, vowel harmony, and syllable division…

How does a bilingual environment affect the results in children with cochlear implants compared to monolingual-matched children? An Italian follow-up study.

PubMed

Forli, Francesca; Giuntini, Giada; Ciabotti, Annalisa; Bruschini, Luca; Löfkvist, Ulrika; Berrettini, Stefano

2018-02-01

To compare the results after cochlear implantation achieved by monolingual and bilingual deaf children implanted at our Institution, with the aim of understanding if there are any differences between the two groups and if there is a correlation between the outcomes and some patients' variables. The study group was composed by 14 bilingual deaf children and the control group by the same number of monolingual children implanted at our Institution. The control group was obtained by matching to each bilingual child a monolingual one with a similar clinical history regarding age at hearing loss diagnosis, age at first hearing-aids fitting and age at CI procedure. Children received a speech perception and linguistic development evaluation through specific structured tests. The linguistic competence of the patients both in mainstream and native language was determined by the Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM). We did not find any statistically significant differences between bilingual and monolingual children in speech perception outcomes. Nevertheless, we obtained different results concerning language skills: bilingual implanted children scored lower at structured language tests, even if the difference was not statistically relevant. Bilingual children scored significantly lower than monolingual ones at the SOLOM scale for linguistic competence. The results reported in the present study show better language skills after cochlear implant in Italian monolingual cases than in bilingual ones. This seems to be related to the condition of bilingualism in Italy, mainly related to immigration, and frequently associated with low socio-economic levels, poor competence in the mainstream language and poor social integration, with a suboptimal exposure to the mainstream language and difficulties in following the rehabilitative program. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

On the Development of Speech Resources for the Mixtec Language

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

The Mixtec language is one of the main native languages in Mexico. In general, due to urbanization, discrimination, and limited attempts to promote the culture, the native languages are disappearing. Most of the information available about the Mixtec language is in written form as in dictionaries which, although including examples about how to pronounce the Mixtec words, are not as reliable as listening to the correct pronunciation from a native speaker. Formal acoustic resources, as speech corpora, are almost non-existent for the Mixtec, and no speech technologies are known to have been developed for it. This paper presents the development of the following resources for the Mixtec language: (1) a speech database of traditional narratives of the Mixtec culture spoken by a native speaker (labelled at the phonetic and orthographic levels by means of spectral analysis) and (2) a native speaker-adaptive automatic speech recognition (ASR) system (trained with the speech database) integrated with a Mixtec-to-Spanish/Spanish-to-Mixtec text translator. The speech database, although small and limited to a single variant, was reliable enough to build the multiuser speech application which presented a mean recognition/translation performance up to 94.36% in experiments with non-native speakers (the target users). PMID:23710134

Accent on communication: the impact of regional and foreign accent on comprehension in adults with aphasia.

PubMed

Bruce, Carolyn; To, Cinn-Teng; Newton, Caroline

2012-01-01

This study explored whether an unfamiliar non-native accent, differing in both segmental and prosodic features was more difficult for individuals with aphasia to understand than an unfamiliar native accent, which differed in segmental features only. Comprehension, which was determined by accuracy judgments on true/false sentences, and speed of response were assessed in the following three conditions: a familiar Southern Standard British English (SSBE) accent, an unfamiliar native Grimsby accent, and an unfamiliar non-native Chinese accent. Thirty-four English speaking adults (17 people with and 17 people without aphasia) served as listeners for this study. All listeners made significantly more errors in the unfamiliar non-native accent, although this difficulty was more marked for those with aphasia. While there was no affect of speaker accent on the response times of listeners with aphasia, listeners without aphasia were significantly slower with the unfamiliar non-native accent. The results indicate that non-native accented speech affects comprehension even on simple tasks in ideal listening conditions. The findings suggest that speaker accent, especially accents varying in both segmental and prosodic features, can be a barrier to successful interactions between non-native accented speakers and native listeners, particularly those with aphasia.

Second Language Processing in Reading and Translation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lim, Jung Hyun

2011-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the processing mechanisms of non-native English speakers at both the sentence level and the morphological level, addressing the issue of whether adult second language (L2) learners qualitatively differ from native speakers in processing linguistic input. Using psycholinguistic on-line techniques…

Using Instant Messaging for Collaborative Learning: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sotillo, Susana M.

2006-01-01

As recent second language acquisition (SLA) studies have shown, the negotiation of linguistic items such as vocabulary, verb tenses, and grammar rules with different types of interlocutors--native speakers (NSs) and advanced non-native speakers (NNSs) of English--seems to facilitate second language development among students. Findings from…

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…

Navigating Native-Speaker Ideologies as FSL Teacher

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wernicke, Meike

2017-01-01

Although a well-established domain of research in English language teaching, native-speaker ideologies have received little attention in French language education. This article reports on a study that examined the salience of "authentic French" in the identity construction of French as a second language (FSL) teachers in English-speaking…

Strategic English Writing for Academic Purposes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Grace Hui Chin

2017-01-01

Writing is one of the four abilities in English Learning. Many students need to write their theses and dissertations in English in order to achieve their academic degrees. English writing is in fact an access of international and intercultural communication with native-speakers and non-native speakers, in academic fields. After reading abundant…

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…

Comprehension in NS-NNS Conversation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nikko, Tuija

A study of interlanguage comprehension, part of a larger project by the Gothenburg research group, investigated the telephone conversations between advanced learners and native speakers of Swedish. In four of the eight conversations, the non-native speakers called the public library to get information on how to borrow books; in the other four the…

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…

Romanian Basic Course.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

The "Romanian Basic Course," consisting of 89 lesson units in eight volumes, is designed to train native English language speakers to Level 3 proficiency in comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing Romanian (based on a 1-5 scale in which Level 5 is native speaker proficiency). Volume 1, which introduces basic sentences in dialog form with…

Korean Basic Course.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

These 11 volumes of the Korean Basic Course comprise 112 lesson units designed to train native English language speakers to Level 3 proficiency in comprehension and speaking and Level 2 proficiency in reading and writing Korean. (Level 5 on this scale is native-speaker level.) Intended for classroom use in the Defense Language Institute intensive…

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…

Left Dislocation in Near-Native French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Donaldson, Bryan

2011-01-01

The present study is concerned with the upper limits of SLA--specifically, mastery of the syntax-discourse interface in successful endstate learners of second-language (L2) French (near-native speakers). Left dislocation (LD) is a syntactic means of structuring spoken French discourse by marking topic. Its use requires speakers to coordinate…

Comprehension Process of Second Language Indirect Requests.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Takahashi, Satomi; Roitblat, Herbert L.

1994-01-01

Examines the comprehension of English conventional indirect requests by native English speakers and Japanese learners of English. Subjects read stories inducing either a conventional or a literal interpretation of a priming sentence. Results suggest that both native and nonnative speakers process both meanings of an ambiguous conventional request.…

Interlanguage Phonology: Acquisition of Timing Control in Japanese.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Toda, Takako

1994-01-01

Studies the acquisition of timing control by Australians enrolled in first-year Japanese. Instrumental techniques are used to observe segment duration and pitch patterns in the speech production of learners and native speakers. Results indicate the learners can control timing, but their phonetic realization differs from that of native speakers.…

Clitic pronouns reveal the time course of processing gender and number in a second language

PubMed Central

Rossi, Eleonora; Kroll, Judith F.; Dussias, Paola E.

2014-01-01

This study investigates grammatical gender and number processing marked on clitic pronouns in native Spanish speakers and in late English-Spanish bilinguals using ERPs. Spanish clitic pronouns were chosen as a critical grammatical structure which is absent in English, and which encodes both grammatical gender and number. Number, but not grammatical gender, is present in English, making this structure a prime one to investigate second language processing. Results reveal a P600 effect in native speakers for violations of both gender and number. Late but relatively proficient English-Spanish bilinguals show a P600 effect only for number violations occurring at the clitic pronoun, but not for gender violations. However a post-hoc analysis reveals that a subset of highly proficient late bilinguals does reveal sensitivity to violations of grammatical gender marked on clitic pronouns. Taken together these results suggest that native-like processing is possible for highly proficient late second language learners for grammatical features that are not present in the speakers' native language, even when those features are encoded on a grammatical morpheme which itself is absent in the speakers' native language. PMID:25036762

Intelligibility of foreign-accented speech: Effects of listening condition, listener age, and listener hearing status

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ferguson, Sarah Hargus

2005-09-01

It is well known that, for listeners with normal hearing, speech produced by non-native speakers of the listener's first language is less intelligible than speech produced by native speakers. Intelligibility is well correlated with listener's ratings of talker comprehensibility and accentedness, which have been shown to be related to several talker factors, including age of second language acquisition and level of similarity between the talker's native and second language phoneme inventories. Relatively few studies have focused on factors extrinsic to the talker. The current project explored the effects of listener and environmental factors on the intelligibility of foreign-accented speech. Specifically, monosyllabic English words previously recorded from two talkers, one a native speaker of American English and the other a native speaker of Spanish, were presented to three groups of listeners (young listeners with normal hearing, elderly listeners with normal hearing, and elderly listeners with hearing impairment; n=20 each) in three different listening conditions (undistorted words in quiet, undistorted words in 12-talker babble, and filtered words in quiet). Data analysis will focus on interactions between talker accent, listener age, listener hearing status, and listening condition. [Project supported by American Speech-Language-Hearing Association AARC Award.

A Cross-Language Study of Acoustic Predictors of Speech Intelligibility in Individuals With Parkinson's Disease

PubMed Central

Choi, Yaelin

2017-01-01

Purpose The present study aimed to compare acoustic models of speech intelligibility in individuals with the same disease (Parkinson's disease [PD]) and presumably similar underlying neuropathologies but with different native languages (American English [AE] and Korean). Method A total of 48 speakers from the 4 speaker groups (AE speakers with PD, Korean speakers with PD, healthy English speakers, and healthy Korean speakers) were asked to read a paragraph in their native languages. Four acoustic variables were analyzed: acoustic vowel space, voice onset time contrast scores, normalized pairwise variability index, and articulation rate. Speech intelligibility scores were obtained from scaled estimates of sentences extracted from the paragraph. Results The findings indicated that the multiple regression models of speech intelligibility were different in Korean and AE, even with the same set of predictor variables and with speakers matched on speech intelligibility across languages. Analysis of the descriptive data for the acoustic variables showed the expected compression of the vowel space in speakers with PD in both languages, lower normalized pairwise variability index scores in Korean compared with AE, and no differences within or across language in articulation rate. Conclusions The results indicate that the basis of an intelligibility deficit in dysarthria is likely to depend on the native language of the speaker and listener. Additional research is required to explore other potential predictor variables, as well as additional language comparisons to pursue cross-linguistic considerations in classification and diagnosis of dysarthria types. PMID:28821018

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

Lexical constraints in second language learning: Evidence on grammatical gender in German*

PubMed Central

BOBB, SUSAN C.; KROLL, JUDITH F.; JACKSON, CARRIE N.

2015-01-01

The present study asked whether or not the apparent insensitivity of second language (L2) learners to grammatical gender violations reflects an inability to use grammatical information during L2 lexical processing. Native German speakers and English speakers with intermediate to advanced L2 proficiency in German performed a translation-recognition task. On critical trials, an incorrect translation was presented that either matched or mismatched the grammatical gender of the correct translation. Results show interference for native German speakers in conditions in which the incorrect translation matched the gender of the correct translation. Native English speakers, regardless of German proficiency, were insensitive to the gender mismatch. In contrast, these same participants were correctly able to assign gender to critical items. These findings suggest a dissociation between explicit knowledge and the ability to use that information under speeded processing conditions and demonstrate the difficulty of L2 gender processing at the lexical level. PMID:26346327

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.

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…

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'…

Using Telephone Conversations to Develop Awareness of Pragmatic Skills: An Activity-Theory-Driven Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xia, Saihua

2009-01-01

This paper investigates ESL learners' awareness of pragmatic skills utilizing an activity-theory driven approach to perform an inquiry task into problem-solving service call conversations (PSSCs) between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers of English (NNSs). Eight high-intermediate ESL learners, from five different language backgrounds,…

Black Teachers of English in South Korea

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Charles, Quanisha D.

2017-01-01

This study used narrative inquiry as a methodological tool and Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a lens to examine how the term native English speaker (NES) is socially constructed when subscribed by Black teachers of English (BTE) in South Korea. In addition to examining how Black teachers of English interpret the term native English speaker, this…

The Resolution of Visual Noise in Word Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pae, Hye K.; Lee, Yong-Won

2015-01-01

This study examined lexical processing in English by native speakers of Korean and Chinese, compared to that of native speakers of English, using normal, alternated, and inverse fonts. Sixty four adult students participated in a lexical decision task. The findings demonstrated similarities and differences in accuracy and latency among the three L1…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 Listener: No Longer the Silent Partner in Reduced Intelligibility

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zielinski, Beth W.

2008-01-01

In this study I investigate the impact of different characteristics of the L2 speech signal on the intelligibility of L2 speakers of English to native listeners. Three native listeners were observed and questioned as they orthographically transcribed utterances taken from connected conversational speech produced by three L2 speakers from different…

Theoretical Implications of Contemporary Brain Science for Japanese EFL Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clayton, John Lloyd

2015-01-01

Recent advances in brain science show that adult native Japanese speakers utilize a different balance of language processing routes in the brain as compared to native English speakers. Biologically this represents the remarkable flexibility of the human brain to adapt universal human cognitive processes to fit the specific needs of linguistic and…

Multiple Levels of Cultural Bias in TESOL Course Books

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sherman, John Eric

2010-01-01

This study investigates the biased treatment of non-native characters in model dialogues in current Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) course books. Although a plethora of studies have been conducted on gender bias in course books, speaker bias, or labelled "nativism" here, has been largely ignored. This research addresses…

Topic Appropriateness in Cross-Cultural Social Conversations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hinkel, Eli

A group of university students consisting of native speakers of Chinese (n=63), Japanese (n=33), Korean (n=21), Indonesian (n=20), and Arabic (n=13) with relatively extensive exposure to the American university environment and a control group of 20 native English-speakers were asked to rank the social appropriateness of 104 conversation topics.…

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…

Predictive Validity and Accuracy of Oral Reading Fluency for English Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vanderwood, Michael L.; Tung, Catherine Y.; Checca, C. Jason

2014-01-01

The predictive validity and accuracy of an oral reading fluency (ORF) measure for a statewide assessment in English language arts was examined for second-grade native English speakers (NESs) and English learners (ELs) with varying levels of English proficiency. In addition to comparing ELs with native English speakers, the impact of English…

The “Perceptual Wedge” hypothesis as the basis for bilingual babies’ phonetic processing advantage: New insights from fNIRS brain imaging

PubMed Central

Petitto, L. A.; Berens, M. S.; Kovelman, I.; Dubins, M. H.; Jasinska, K.; Shalinsky, M.

2011-01-01

In a neuroimaging study focusing on young bilinguals, we explored the brains of bilingual and monolingual babies across two age groups (younger 4–6 months, older 10–12 months), using fNIRS in a new event-related design, as babies processed linguistic phonetic (Native English, Non-Native Hindi) and nonlinguistic Tone stimuli. We found that phonetic processing in bilingual and monolingual babies is accomplished with the same language-specific brain areas classically observed in adults, including the left superior temporal gyrus (associated with phonetic processing) and the left inferior frontal cortex (associated with the search and retrieval of information about meanings, and syntactic and phonological patterning), with intriguing developmental timing differences: left superior temporal gyrus activation was observed early and remained stably active over time, while left inferior frontal cortex showed greater increase in neural activation in older babies notably at the precise age when babies’ enter the universal first-word milestone, thus revealing a first-time focal brain correlate that may mediate a universal behavioral milestone in early human language acquisition. A difference was observed in the older bilingual babies’ resilient neural and behavioral sensitivity to Non-Native phonetic contrasts at a time when monolingual babies can no longer make such discriminations. We advance the “Perceptual Wedge Hypothesis”as one possible explanation for how exposure to greater than one language may alter neural and language processing in ways that we suggest are advantageous to language users. The brains of bilinguals and multilinguals may provide the most powerful window into the full neural “extent and variability” that our human species’ language processing brain areas could potentially achieve. PMID:21724244

Language dominance shapes non-linguistic rhythmic grouping in bilinguals.

PubMed

Molnar, Monika; Carreiras, Manuel; Gervain, Judit

2016-07-01

To what degree non-linguistic auditory rhythm perception is governed by universal biases (e.g., Iambic-Trochaic Law; Hayes, 1995) or shaped by native language experience is debated. It has been proposed that rhythmic regularities in spoken language, such as phrasal prosody affect the grouping abilities of monolinguals (e.g., Iversen, Patel, & Ohgushi, 2008). Here, we assessed the non-linguistic tone grouping biases of Spanish monolinguals, and three groups of Basque-Spanish bilinguals with different levels of Basque experience. It is usually assumed in the literature that Basque and Spanish have different phrasal prosodies and even linguistic rhythms. To confirm this, first, we quantified Basque and Spanish phrasal prosody (Experiment 1a) and duration patterns used in the classification of languages into rhythm classes (Experiment 1b). The acoustic measurements revealed that regularities in phrasal prosody systematically differ across Basque and Spanish; by contrast, the rhythms of the two languages are only minimally dissimilar. In Experiment 2, participants' non-linguistic rhythm preferences were assessed in response to non-linguistic tones alternating in either intensity (Intensity condition) or in duration (Duration condition). In the Intensity condition, all groups showed a trochaic grouping bias, as predicted by the Iambic-Trochaic Law. In the Duration Condition the Spanish monolingual and the most Basque-dominant bilingual group exhibited opposite grouping preferences in line with the phrasal prosodies of their native/dominant languages, trochaic in Basque, iambic in Spanish. The two other bilingual groups showed no significant biases, however. Overall, results indicate that duration-based grouping mechanisms are biased toward the phrasal prosody of the native and dominant language; also, the presence of an L2 in the environment interacts with the auditory biases. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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.

Bilingualism modulates infants' selective attention to the mouth of a talking face.

PubMed

Pons, Ferran; Bosch, Laura; Lewkowicz, David J

2015-04-01

Infants growing up in bilingual environments succeed at learning two languages. What adaptive processes enable them to master the more complex nature of bilingual input? One possibility is that bilingual infants take greater advantage of the redundancy of the audiovisual speech that they usually experience during social interactions. Thus, we investigated whether bilingual infants' need to keep languages apart increases their attention to the mouth as a source of redundant and reliable speech cues. We measured selective attention to talking faces in 4-, 8-, and 12-month-old Catalan and Spanish monolingual and bilingual infants. Monolinguals looked more at the eyes than the mouth at 4 months and more at the mouth than the eyes at 8 months in response to both native and nonnative speech, but they looked more at the mouth than the eyes at 12 months only in response to nonnative speech. In contrast, bilinguals looked equally at the eyes and mouth at 4 months, more at the mouth than the eyes at 8 months, and more at the mouth than the eyes at 12 months, and these patterns of responses were found for both native and nonnative speech at all ages. Thus, to support their dual-language acquisition processes, bilingual infants exploit the greater perceptual salience of redundant audiovisual speech cues at an earlier age and for a longer time than monolingual infants. © The Author(s) 2015.

Comparing behavioral discrimination and learning abilities in monolinguals, bilinguals and multilinguals.

PubMed

Tremblay, Marie-Claude; Sabourin, Laura

2012-11-01

The aim of the experiment was to determine whether language learning experience contributes to the development of enhanced speech perception abilities. Monolinguals, bilinguals and multilinguals were compared in their ability to discriminate a non-native contrast behaviorally using an AX task. The experiment was based on a "pre-test-training-post-test" design and performance was tested before and after receiving training on the voiceless aspirated dental/retroflex stop contrast. At post-test, participants were also tested on their ability to transfer training to a similar contrast (i.e., voiceless unaspirated dental/retroflex stop contrast). While no group differences were found at pre-test, analyses of the trained-on contrast at post-test revealed that multilinguals were more accurate than monolinguals and that both the multilingual and bilingual groups were more accurate than a control group that received no training. The results of the experiment not only suggest that multilinguals and bilinguals have enhanced speech perception abilities compared to monolinguals, but they also indicate that bi-/multilingualism helps develop superior learning abilities. This provides support for the idea that learning more than one language has positive effects on the cognitive development of an individual (e.g., Bialystok et al., 2004).

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 rights reserved.

Phonetic Encoding of Coda Voicing Contrast under Different Focus Conditions in L1 vs. L2 English

PubMed Central

Choi, Jiyoun; Kim, Sahayng; Cho, Taehong

2016-01-01

This study investigated how coda voicing contrast in English would be phonetically encoded in the temporal vs. spectral dimension of the preceding vowel (in vowel duration vs. F1/F2) by Korean L2 speakers of English, and how their L2 phonetic encoding pattern would be compared to that of native English speakers. Crucially, these questions were explored by taking into account the phonetics-prosody interface, testing effects of prominence by comparing target segments in three focus conditions (phonological focus, lexical focus, and no focus). Results showed that Korean speakers utilized the temporal dimension (vowel duration) to encode coda voicing contrast, but failed to use the spectral dimension (F1/F2), reflecting their native language experience—i.e., with a more sparsely populated vowel space in Korean, they are less sensitive to small changes in the spectral dimension, and hence fine-grained spectral cues in English are not readily accessible. Results also showed that along the temporal dimension, both the L1 and L2 speakers hyperarticulated coda voicing contrast under prominence (when phonologically or lexically focused), but hypoarticulated it in the non-prominent condition. This indicates that low-level phonetic realization and high-order information structure interact in a communicatively efficient way, regardless of the speakers’ native language background. The Korean speakers, however, used the temporal phonetic space differently from the way the native speakers did, especially showing less reduction in the no focus condition. This was also attributable to their native language experience—i.e., the Korean speakers’ use of temporal dimension is constrained in a way that is not detrimental to the preservation of coda voicing contrast, given that they failed to add additional cues along the spectral dimension. The results imply that the L2 phonetic system can be more fully illuminated through an investigation of the phonetics-prosody interface in connection with the L2 speakers’ native language experience. PMID:27242571

The effects of phonological awareness of Zulu-speaking children learning to spell in English: a study of cross-language transfer.

PubMed

De Sousa, Diana Soares; Greenop, Kirston; Fry, Jessica

2010-12-01

Emergent bilingual Zulu-English speaking children in South Africa have spoken but no written proficiency in Zulu (L1), yet are required to learn to spell English (L2) via English-only literacy instruction. Little research exists on emergent bilingual's phonological awareness (PA) and spelling development, with no L1 formal literacy instruction. Thus, whether PA in a L1 impacts on literacy acquisition in the L2 remains unclear. Performance on monolingual PA, monolingual and emergent bilingual spelling was compared. In addition, PA and spelling in emergent bilingual Zulu-English speakers was explored to ascertain cross-language transfer relationships. Thirty emergent bilingual Zulu-English and thirty monolingual English children in grade 2 participated. Emergent bilinguals were assessed on Zulu PA, Zulu and English spelling skills. Monolinguals were assessed on English PA and English spelling skills. Emergent bilinguals had more Zulu PA levels related to spelling English tasks than to spelling Zulu tasks, and both Zulu PA and Zulu spelling were positively related to English spelling tasks. Significant differences were found between L1 Zulu and English phoneme and rime PA levels, and L1 English and L2 English spelling tasks. Findings support the language-universal hypothesis that L1 PA is related to spelling across languages in emergent bilinguals. In emergent bilinguals, both Zulu spoken proficiency and English-only literacy instruction influences the underlying repertoire of PA skills used to spell within the L1 and the L2. Rime and phoneme PA and spelling skills in Zulu/English rely on language-specific orthographic knowledge.

Processing Coordinate Subject-Verb Agreement in L1 and L2 Greek

PubMed Central

Kaltsa, Maria; Tsimpli, Ianthi M.; Marinis, Theodoros; Stavrou, Melita

2016-01-01

The present study examines the processing of subject-verb (SV) number agreement with coordinate subjects in pre-verbal and post-verbal positions in Greek. Greek is a language with morphological number marked on nominal and verbal elements. Coordinate SV agreement, however, is special in Greek as it is sensitive to the coordinate subject's position: when pre-verbal, the verb is marked for plural while when post-verbal the verb can be in the singular. We conducted two experiments, an acceptability judgment task with adult monolinguals as a pre-study (Experiment 1) and a self-paced reading task as the main study (Experiment 2) in order to obtain acceptance as well as processing data. Forty adult monolingual speakers of Greek participated in Experiment 1 and a hundred and forty one in Experiment 2. Seventy one children participated in Experiment 2: 30 Albanian-Greek sequential bilingual children and 41 Greek monolingual children aged 10–12 years. The adult data in Experiment 1 establish the difference in acceptability between singular VPs in SV and VS constructions reaffirming our hypothesis. Meanwhile, the adult data in Experiment 2 show that plural verbs accelerate processing regardless of subject position. The child online data show that sequential bilingual children have longer reading times (RTs) compared to the age-matched monolingual control group. However, both child groups follow a similar processing pattern in both pre-verbal and post-verbal constructions showing longer RTs immediately after a singular verb when the subject was pre-verbal indicating a grammaticality effect. In the post-verbal coordinate subject sentences, both child groups showed longer RTs on the first subject following the plural verb due to the temporary number mismatch between the verb and the first subject. This effect was resolved in monolingual children but was still present at the end of the sentence for bilingual children indicating difficulties to reanalyze and integrate information. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that (a) 10–12 year-old sequential bilingual children are sensitive to number agreement in SV coordinate constructions parsing sentences in the same way as monolingual children even though their vocabulary abilities are lower than that of age-matched monolingual peers and (b) bilinguals are slower in processing overall. PMID:27242577

Predictors and Outcomes of Early vs. Later English Language Proficiency Among English Language Learners

PubMed Central

Halle, Tamara; Hair, Elizabeth; Wandner, Laura; McNamara, Michelle; Chien, Nina

2011-01-01

The development of English language learners (ELLs) was explored from kindergarten through eighth grade within a nationally representative sample of first-time kindergartners (N = 19,890). Growth curve analyses indicated that, compared to native English speakers, ELLs were rated by teachers more favorably on approaches to learning, self control, and externalizing behaviors in kindergarten and generally continued to grow in a positive direction on these social/behavioral outcomes at a steeper rate compared to their native English-speaking peers, holding other factors constant. Differences in reading and math achievement between ELLs and native English speakers varied based on the grade at which English proficiency is attained. Specifically, ELLs who were proficient in English by kindergarten entry kept pace with native English speakers in both reading and math initially and over time; ELLs who were proficient by first grade had modest gaps in reading and math achievement compared to native English speakers that closed narrowly or persisted over time; and ELLs who were not proficient by first grade had the largest initial gaps in reading and math achievement compared to native speakers but the gap narrowed over time in reading and grew over time in math. Among those whose home language is not English, acquiring English proficiency by kindergarten entry was associated with better cognitive and behavioral outcomes through eighth grade compared to taking longer to achieve proficiency. Multinomial regression analyses indicated that child, family, and school characteristics predict achieving English proficiency by kindergarten entry compared to achieving proficiency later. Results are discussed in terms of policies and practices that can support ELL children’s growth and development. PMID:22389551

Effects of stress typicality during speeded grammatical classification.

PubMed

Arciuli, Joanne; Cupples, Linda

2003-01-01

The experiments reported here were designed to investigate the influence of stress typicality during speeded grammatical classification of disyllabic English words by native and non-native speakers. Trochaic nouns and iambic gram verbs were considered to be typically stressed, whereas iambic nouns and trochaic verbs were considered to be atypically stressed. Experiments 1a and 2a showed that while native speakers classified typically stressed words individual more quickly and more accurately than atypically stressed words during differences reading, there were no overall effects during classification of spoken stimuli. However, a subgroup of native speakers with high error rates did show a significant effect during classification of spoken stimuli. Experiments 1b and 2b showed that non-native speakers classified typically stressed words more quickly and more accurately than atypically stressed words during reading. Typically stressed words were classified more accurately than atypically stressed words when the stimuli were spoken. Importantly, there was a significant relationship between error rates, vocabulary size and the size of the stress typicality effect in each experiment. We conclude that participants use information about lexical stress to help them distinguish between disyllabic nouns and verbs during speeded grammatical classification. This is especially so for individuals with a limited vocabulary who lack other knowledge (e.g., semantic knowledge) about the differences between these grammatical categories.

Perception and analysis of Spanish accents in English speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chism, Cori; Lass, Norman

2002-05-01

The purpose of the present study was to determine what relates most closely to the degree of perceived foreign accent in the English speech of native Spanish speakers: intonation, vowel length, stress, voice onset time (VOT), or segmental accuracy. Nineteen native English speaking listeners rated speech samples from 7 native English speakers and 15 native Spanish speakers for comprehensibility and degree of foreign accent. The speech samples were analyzed spectrographically and perceptually to obtain numerical values for each variable. Correlation coefficients were computed to determine the relationship beween these values and the average foreign accent scores. Results showed that the average foreign accent scores were statistically significantly correlated with three variables: the length of stressed vowels (r=-0.48, p=0.05), voice onset time (r =-0.62, p=0.01), and segmental accuracy (r=0.92, p=0.001). Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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…

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…

Optimal Diphthongs: An OT Analysis of the Acquisition of Spanish Diphthongs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Krause, Alice

2013-01-01

This dissertation investigates the acquisition of Spanish diphthongs by adult native speakers of English. The following research questions will be addressed: 1) How do adult native speakers of English pronounce sequences of two vowels in their L2 Spanish at different levels of acquisition? 2) Can OT learnability models, specifically the GLA,…

Going Beyond Standard English: An Instructional Module for Improving International Business Communication.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jarvis, Scott; Stephens, Robert

It is proposed that because (1) adult learners of English as a Second Language face great challenges in communicating with native English speakers; and (2) native English-speakers can learn strategies to compensate for some of these difficulties, there is a need for instruction in these strategies and skills for Americans in international…

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)

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…

Becoming Bilingual in the Amigos Two-Way Immersion Program. Research Report 3.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cazabon, Mary T.; Nicoladis, Elena; Lambert, Wallace E.

The design and effectiveness of the Amigos program, a two-way Spanish-English bilingual immersion program in Cambridge (Massachusetts) are described. In the program, half the instruction is in English, half in Spanish from kindergarten through eighth grade. Half the students are native Spanish-speakers and half are native English-speakers. The…

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…

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…

Can Non-Interactive Language Input Benefit Young Second-Language Learners?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Au, Terry Kit-fong; Chan, Winnie Wailan; Cheng, Liao; Siegel, Linda S.; Tso, Ricky Van Yip

2015-01-01

To fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible--e.g. for children learning a second language that is not the societal language--audios are commonly used as an affordable substitute. But does such non-interactive input…

On the Applicability of Cultural Scripts in Teaching L2 Compliments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karimnia, Amin; Afghari, Akbar

2010-01-01

In this study, Natural Semantic Metalanguage (henceforth NSM) was used to carry out a comparative analysis. The compliment response behavior of native Persian speakers was compared with that of Native American English speakers to see if it can provide evidence for applicability of NSM model which is claimed to be universal. The descriptive…

Suppression and Working Memory in Auditory Comprehension of L2 Narratives: Evidence from Cross-Modal Priming

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Shiyu; Ma, Zheng

2016-01-01

Using a cross-modal priming task, the present study explores whether Chinese-English bilinguals process goal related information during auditory comprehension of English narratives like native speakers. Results indicate that English native speakers adopted both mechanisms of suppression and enhancement to modulate the activation of goals and keep…

A Rasch-Based Validation of the Vocabulary Size Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beglar, David

2010-01-01

The primary purpose of this study was to provide preliminary validity evidence for a 140-item form of the Vocabulary Size Test, which is designed to measure written receptive knowledge of the first 14,000 words of English. Nineteen native speakers of English and 178 native speakers of Japanese participated in the study. Analyses based on the Rasch…

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…

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…

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)

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…

Effects of Phonetic Similarity in the Identification of Mandarin Tones

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Bin; Shao, Jing; Bao, Mingzhen

2017-01-01

Tonal languages differ in how they use phonetic correlates, e.g. average pitch height and pitch direction, for tonal contrasts. Thus, native speakers of a tonal language may need to adjust their attention to familiar or unfamiliar phonetic cues when perceiving non-native tones. On the other hand, speakers of a non-tonal language may need to…

What Does Low Proficiency in Literacy Really Mean? Adult Skills in Focus #2

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

OECD Publishing, 2016

2016-01-01

In designing policies and programmes targeting populations with poor literacy skills, it is important to take into account differences in the level of these skills within and among these populations. For example, native speakers of the mainstream language may require different language-development training than non-native speakers; and most adults…

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…

"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…

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…

Temporal Analysis of English and Spanish Narratives.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

de Johnson, Teresa H.; O'Connell, Daniel C.

In order to ascertain the effect of different demands on cognitive processes as reflected in speech rate, pause and hesitation phenomena, 90 young men, 45 native speakers of English (U.S.A.) and 45 native speakers of Spanish (Mexico), were asked to retell a story presented in one of three ways: (1) film plus narration; (2) film only; (3) narration…

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…

Perceptual prothesis in native Spanish speakers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Theodore, Rachel M.; Schmidt, Anna M.

2003-04-01

Previous research suggests a perceptual bias exists for native phonotactics [D. Massaro and M. Cohen, Percept. Psychophys. 34, 338-348 (1983)] such that listeners report nonexistent segments when listening to stimuli that violate native phonotactics [E. Dupoux, K. Kakehi, Y. Hirose, C. Pallier, and J. Mehler, J. Exp. Psychol.: Human Percept. Perform. 25, 1568-1578 (1999)]. This study investigated how native-language experience affects second language processing, focusing on how native Spanish speakers perceive the English clusters /st/, /sp/, and /sk/, which represent phonotactically illegal forms in Spanish. To preserve native phonotactics, Spanish speakers often produce prothetic vowels before English words beginning with /s/ clusters. Is the influence of native phonotactics also present in the perception of illegal clusters? A stimuli continuum ranging from no vowel (e.g., ``sku'') to a full vowel (e.g., ``esku'') before the cluster was used. Four final vowel contexts were used for each cluster, resulting in 12 sCV and 12 VsCV nonword endpoints. English and Spanish listeners were asked to discriminate between pairs differing in vowel duration and to identify the presence or absence of a vowel before the cluster. Results will be discussed in terms of implications for theories of second language speech perception.

Processing ser and estar to locate objects and events

PubMed Central

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

2016-01-01

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 native speakers in all conditions, while the advanced speakers only differed from the natives in the event+ser and event+estar conditions. For the ERPs, the beginning learners did not show any effects in the time-windows under analysis. The advanced speakers showed a pattern similar to that of native speakers: (1) a P600 response to ‘object + ser’ violation more central and frontally distributed, and (2) a central-frontal negativity between 500–700 ms for ‘event + estar’ violation. Findings for the advanced speakers suggest that behavioral methods commonly used to assess grammatical knowledge in the L2 may be underestimating what L2 speakers have actually learned. PMID:28663605

The impact of language co-activation on L1 and L2 speech fluency.

PubMed

Bergmann, Christopher; Sprenger, Simone A; Schmid, Monika S

2015-10-01

Fluent speech depends on the availability of well-established linguistic knowledge and routines for speech planning and articulation. A lack of speech fluency in late second-language (L2) learners may point to a deficiency of these representations, due to incomplete acquisition. Experiments on bilingual language processing have shown, however, that there are strong reasons to believe that multilingual speakers experience co-activation of the languages they speak. We have studied to what degree language co-activation affects fluency in the speech of bilinguals, comparing a monolingual German control group with two bilingual groups: 1) first-language (L1) attriters, who have fully acquired German before emigrating to an L2 English environment, and 2) immersed L2 learners of German (L1: English). We have analysed the temporal fluency and the incidence of disfluency markers (pauses, repetitions and self-corrections) in spontaneous film retellings. Our findings show that learners to speak more slowly than controls and attriters. Also, on each count, the speech of at least one of the bilingual groups contains more disfluency markers than the retellings of the control group. Generally speaking, both bilingual groups-learners and attriters-are equally (dis)fluent and significantly more disfluent than the monolingual speakers. Given that the L1 attriters are unaffected by incomplete acquisition, we interpret these findings as evidence for language competition during speech production. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Suggesting a new European language policy.

PubMed

Nelde, Peter H

2004-01-01

Conflict is the most intriguing aspect of contact linguistics. Throughout history ever since the Tower of Babel was left unfinished, contacts between speakers of different languages have unavoidably resulted in conflicts between speakers of those languages. Without any doubt, the European Union (EU)--above all after the decision to enlarge the community--has accepted the multidisciplinary symbolic function of language and culture as a basis for European political unification. Accordingly, European Union policy makers have had to analyze conflicts caused by monolingualism and multilingualism, all aspects of contact linguistics. Can these conflicts be solved, minimized or neutralized by strategies of language planning, language policies and language politics? Initial results of European language policy strategies permit at least a cautious measure of optimism and open broad perspectives for the future of a New Multilingualism which will be discussed in our contribution.

Early neurophysiological indices of second language morphosyntax learning

PubMed Central

Hanna, Jeff; Shtyrov, Yury; Williams, John; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2016-01-01

Humans show variable degrees of success in acquiring a second language (L2). In many cases, morphological and syntactic knowledge remain deficient, although some learners succeed in reaching nativelike levels, even if they begin acquiring their L2 relatively late. In this study, we use psycholinguistic, online language proficiency tests and a neurophysiological index of syntactic processing, the syntactic mismatch negativity (sMMN) to local agreement violations, to compare behavioural and neurophysiological markers of grammar processing between native speakers (NS) of English and non-native speakers (NNS). Variable grammar proficiency was measured by psycholinguistic tests. When NS heard ungrammatical word sequences lacking agreement between subject and verb (e.g. *we kicks), the MMN was enhanced compared with syntactically legal sentences (e.g. he kicks). More proficient NNS also showed this difference, but less proficient NNS did not. The main cortical sources of the MMN responses were localised in bilateral superior temporal areas, where, crucially, source strength of grammar-related neuronal activity correlated significantly with grammatical proficiency of individual L2 speakers as revealed by the psycholinguistic tests. As our results show similar, early MMN indices to morpho-syntactic agreement violations among both native speakers and non-native speakers with high grammar proficiency, they appear consistent with the use of similar brain mechanisms for at least certain aspects of L1 and L2 grammars. PMID:26752451

Early neurophysiological indices of second language morphosyntax learning.

PubMed

Hanna, Jeff; Shtyrov, Yury; Williams, John; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2016-02-01

Humans show variable degrees of success in acquiring a second language (L2). In many cases, morphological and syntactic knowledge remain deficient, although some learners succeed in reaching nativelike levels, even if they begin acquiring their L2 relatively late. In this study, we use psycholinguistic, online language proficiency tests and a neurophysiological index of syntactic processing, the syntactic mismatch negativity (sMMN) to local agreement violations, to compare behavioural and neurophysiological markers of grammar processing between native speakers (NS) of English and non-native speakers (NNS). Variable grammar proficiency was measured by psycholinguistic tests. When NS heard ungrammatical word sequences lacking agreement between subject and verb (e.g. *we kicks), the MMN was enhanced compared with syntactically legal sentences (e.g. he kicks). More proficient NNS also showed this difference, but less proficient NNS did not. The main cortical sources of the MMN responses were localised in bilateral superior temporal areas, where, crucially, source strength of grammar-related neuronal activity correlated significantly with grammatical proficiency of individual L2 speakers as revealed by the psycholinguistic tests. As our results show similar, early MMN indices to morpho-syntactic agreement violations among both native speakers and non-native speakers with high grammar proficiency, they appear consistent with the use of similar brain mechanisms for at least certain aspects of L1 and L2 grammars. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

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 relationships emerged differed for learners and native speakers, our results call for further research examining individual differences in dependency resolution in both populations. PMID:27148152

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 relationships emerged differed for learners and native speakers, our results call for further research examining individual differences in dependency resolution in both populations.

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…

A Conversation Analytic Study on Teaching Moments Observed in Free Conversations between Japanese and American Friends

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nagai, Ayako

2011-01-01

Utilizing the methodology of Conversation Analysis (CA), this study examines teaching moments observed in free conversations by pairs of Japanese and American friends. CA's detailed turn-by-turn analysis reveals that teaching of vocabulary, idioms, and culture occurs when native speakers orient to the non-nativeness of the other speakers.…

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…

The Impact of Task Structure on the Use of Vague Expressions by EFL Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Parvaresh, Vahid; Ahmadian, Mohammad Javad

2016-01-01

The present study sets out to examine whether and how task structure affects the number and type of vague expressions used by a group of higher intermediate EFL learners. The participants were 50 Iranian EFL learners from 6 intact classes, all native speakers of Persian with limited opportunity to communicate with native speakers of English, and…

Cracking the Code of Press Headlines: From Difficulty to Opportunity for the Foreign Language Learner

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

White, Michael

2011-01-01

While press materials, are widely used both as an ESP materials resource and as a research source by ESP practitioners, press headlines in English confront the Non Native Speaker (NNS) and to some extent the Native Speaker (NS) with a notorious paradox: headlines are crafted to raise communication potential and yet, rather than communicate, they…

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…

Teaching Formulaic Sequences in the Classroom: Effects on Spoken Fluency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McGuire, Michael; Larson-Hall, Jenifer

2017-01-01

Formulaic sequences (FS) are frequently used by native speakers and have been found to help non-native speakers sound more fluent as well. We hypothesized that explicitly teaching FS to classroom ESL learners would increase the use of such language, which could further result in increased second language (L2) fluency. We report on a 5-week study…

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)…

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…

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…

Pragmatic Difficulties in the Production of the Speech Act of Apology by Iraqi EFL Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Al-Ghazalli, Mehdi Falih; Al-Shammary, Mohanad A. Amert

2014-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pragmatic difficulties encountered by Iraqi EFL university students in producing the speech act of apology. Although the act of apology is easy to recognize or use by native speakers of English, non-native speakers generally encounter difficulties in discriminating one speech act from another. The…

Pausing Preceding and Following "Que" in the Production of Native Speakers of French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Genc, Bilal; Mavasoglu, Mustafa; Bada, Erdogan

2011-01-01

Pausing strategies in read and spontaneous speech have been of significant interest for researchers since in literature it was observed that read speech and spontaneous speech pausing patterns do display some considerable differences. This, at least, is the case in the English language as it was produced by native speakers. As to what may be the…

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.…

Gender Related Differences in Using Intensive Adverbs in Turkish

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Önem, Engin E.

2017-01-01

This study aims to find out whether there is a gender based difference between male and female native speakers of Turkish in using intensive adverbs in Turkish. To achieve this, 182 voluntary native speakers of Turkish (89 female/93 male) with age ranging from 18 to 22 were asked to complete a photo description task. The task required choosing one…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

Metadiscourse Repertoire of L1 Mandarin Undergraduates Writing in English: A Cross-Contextual, Cross-Disciplinary Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Ting; Wharton, Sue

2012-01-01

This article presents a qualitative, comparative study of metadiscourse in the academic writing of two groups of undergraduate students working in two different disciplines. The groups of students were: 1) Native speakers of Mandarin studying in China through the medium of English; 2) Native speakers of Mandarin studying in the UK through the…

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…

ELF on a Mushroom: The Overnight Growth in English as a Lingua Franca

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sowden, Colin

2012-01-01

In an effort to curtail native-speaker dominance of global English, and in recognition of the growing role of the language among non-native speakers from different first-language backgrounds, some academics have been urging the teaching of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Although at first this proposal seems to offer a plausible alternative to…

"At Your Earliest Convenience:" A Study of Written Student Requests to Faculty.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hartford, Beverly S.; Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen

A study analyzed electronic-mail requests from college students (n=34 native speakers of English/NSs, 65 non-native speakers/NNSs) to faculty, randomly gathered over the period of a year. The requests were analyzed for the affective response they produced both on the faculty recipient and on a non-recipient faculty member, and for linguistic forms…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Native-Speaker/Non-Native-Speaker Discourse in the MOO: Topic Negotiation and Initiation in a Synchronous Text-Based Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schwienhorst, Klaus

2004-01-01

A number of researchers in computer-mediated communication have pointed towards its potential to stimulate learner participation and engagement in the classroom. However, in many cases only anecdotal reports were provided. In addition, it is unclear whether the pedagogical set-up or the technology involved is responsible for changes in learner…

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

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

Age and input effects in the acquisition of mood in Heritage Portuguese.

PubMed

Flores, Cristina; Santos, Ana Lúcia; Jesus, Alice; Marques, Rui

2017-07-01

The present study analyzes the effect of age and amount of input in the acquisition of European Portuguese as a heritage language. An elicited production task centred on mood choice in complement clauses was applied to a group of fifty bilingual children (six- to sixteen-year-olds) who are acquiring Portuguese as a minority language in a German dominant environment. The results show a significant effect of the age at testing and the amount of input in the acquisition of the subjunctive. In general, acquisition is delayed with respect to monolinguals, even though higher convergence with the monolingual grammar is observed after twelve years of age. Results also reveal that children with more exposure to the heritage language at home show faster acquisition than children from mixed households: the eight- to nine-year-old age boundary seems relevant for those speakers with more exposure, and the twelve- to thirteen-year-old age boundary for those with less exposure.

The effects of bilingual growth on toddlers’ executive function

PubMed Central

Crivello, Cristina; Kuzyk, Olivia; Rodrigues, Monyka; Friend, Margaret; Zesiger, Pascal; Poulin-Dubois, Diane

2015-01-01

The mastery of two languages provides bilingual speakers with cognitive benefits over monolinguals, particularly on cognitive flexibility and selective attention. However, extant research is limited to comparisons between monolinguals and bilinguals at a single point in time. This study investigated whether growth in bilingual proficiency, as shown by an increased number of translation equivalents (TEs) over a 7-month period, improves executive function. We hypothesized that bilingual toddlers with a larger increase of TEs would have more practice in switching across lexical systems, boosting executive function abilities. Expressive vocabulary and TEs were assessed at 24 and 31 months of age. A battery of tasks, including conflict, delay, and working memory tasks, was administered at 31 months. As expected, we observed a task-specific advantage in inhibitory control in bilinguals. More important, within the bilingual group, larger increases in the number of TEs predicted better performance on conflict tasks but not on delay tasks. This unique longitudinal design confirms the relation between executive function and early bilingualism. PMID:26402219

Bilingual Listeners' Perception of Temporally Manipulated English Passages

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shi, Lu-Feng; Farooq, Nadia

2012-01-01

Purpose: The current study measured, objectively and subjectively, how changes in speech rate affect recognition of English passages in bilingual listeners. Method: Ten native monolingual, 20 English-dominant bilingual, and 20 non-English-dominant bilingual listeners repeated target words in English passages at five speech rates (unprocessed, two…

Cultural Pluralism in Japan: A Sociolinguistic Outline.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Honna, Nobuyuki

1980-01-01

Addressing the common misconception that Japan is a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural, and monolingual society, this article focuses on several areas of sociolinguistic concern. It discusses: (1) the bimodalism of the Japanese deaf population between Japanese Sign Language as native language and Japanese Spoken Language as acquired second language; (2)…

Auditory perceptual simulation: Simulating speech rates or accents?

PubMed

Zhou, Peiyun; Christianson, Kiel

2016-07-01

When readers engage in Auditory Perceptual Simulation (APS) during silent reading, they mentally simulate characteristics of voices attributed to a particular speaker or a character depicted in the text. Previous research found that auditory perceptual simulation of a faster native English speaker during silent reading led to shorter reading times that auditory perceptual simulation of a slower non-native English speaker. Yet, it was uncertain whether this difference was triggered by the different speech rates of the speakers, or by the difficulty of simulating an unfamiliar accent. The current study investigates this question by comparing faster Indian-English speech and slower American-English speech in the auditory perceptual simulation paradigm. Analyses of reading times of individual words and the full sentence reveal that the auditory perceptual simulation effect again modulated reading rate, and auditory perceptual simulation of the faster Indian-English speech led to faster reading rates compared to auditory perceptual simulation of the slower American-English speech. The comparison between this experiment and the data from Zhou and Christianson (2016) demonstrate further that the "speakers'" speech rates, rather than the difficulty of simulating a non-native accent, is the primary mechanism underlying auditory perceptual simulation effects. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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

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.

Processing changes when listening to foreign-accented speech

PubMed Central

Romero-Rivas, Carlos; Martin, Clara D.; Costa, Albert

2015-01-01

This study investigates the mechanisms responsible for fast changes in processing foreign-accented speech. Event Related brain Potentials (ERPs) were obtained while native speakers of Spanish listened to native and foreign-accented speakers of Spanish. We observed a less positive P200 component for foreign-accented speech relative to native speech comprehension. This suggests that the extraction of spectral information and other important acoustic features was hampered during foreign-accented speech comprehension. However, the amplitude of the N400 component for foreign-accented speech comprehension decreased across the experiment, suggesting the use of a higher level, lexical mechanism. Furthermore, during native speech comprehension, semantic violations in the critical words elicited an N400 effect followed by a late positivity. During foreign-accented speech comprehension, semantic violations only elicited an N400 effect. Overall, our results suggest that, despite a lack of improvement in phonetic discrimination, native listeners experience changes at lexical-semantic levels of processing after brief exposure to foreign-accented speech. Moreover, these results suggest that lexical access, semantic integration and linguistic re-analysis processes are permeable to external factors, such as the accent of the speaker. PMID:25859209

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

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.

Distributing the Future Evenly: English as the Lingua Franca in the Saudi Arabian Higher Education Sector

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Onsman, Andrys

2012-01-01

The dichotomous interpretation of the assumed growth and normalisation of English as the lingua franca (ELF) of the international academy is most often polarised into a marginalisation of non-native speakers by the hegemony of native speakers on the one hand and the empowerment and upward mobility created by its potential to afford access to the…

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…

The Pragmatics of Requests and Refusals in Multilingual Settings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stavans, Anat; Webman Shafran, Ronit

2018-01-01

This study investigated the mode of directness of requests and refusals and the background variables that explain this production in two trilingual populations in Israel (i.e. native speakers of Arabic for whom English is an L3, and Hebrew, an L2, and native speakers of Hebrew for whom English is an L2 and another language is their L3). Data were…

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…

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…

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.…

Opening up to Native Speaker Norms: The Use of /?/ in the Speech of Canadian French Immersion Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nadasdi, Terry; Vickerman, Alison

2017-01-01

Our study examines the extent to which French immersion students use lax /?/ in the same linguistic context as native speakers of Canadian French. Our results show that the lax variant is vanishingly rare in the speech of immersion students and is used by only a small minority of individuals. This is interpreted as a limitation of French immersion…

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…

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…

Managing Discourse in Intercultural Business Email Interactions: A Case Study of a British and Italian Business Transaction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Incelli, Ersilia

2013-01-01

This paper investigates native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) interaction in the workplace in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Based on empirical data from a 10-month email exchange between a medium-sized British company and a small-sized Italian company, the general aim of this study is to explore the nature of the intercultural…

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…

Motor excitability during visual perception of known and unknown spoken languages.

PubMed

Swaminathan, Swathi; MacSweeney, Mairéad; Boyles, Rowan; Waters, Dafydd; Watkins, Kate E; Möttönen, Riikka

2013-07-01

It is possible to comprehend speech and discriminate languages by viewing a speaker's articulatory movements. Transcranial magnetic stimulation studies have shown that viewing speech enhances excitability in the articulatory motor cortex. Here, we investigated the specificity of this enhanced motor excitability in native and non-native speakers of English. Both groups were able to discriminate between speech movements related to a known (i.e., English) and unknown (i.e., Hebrew) language. The motor excitability was higher during observation of a known language than an unknown language or non-speech mouth movements, suggesting that motor resonance is enhanced specifically during observation of mouth movements that convey linguistic information. Surprisingly, however, the excitability was equally high during observation of a static face. Moreover, the motor excitability did not differ between native and non-native speakers. These findings suggest that the articulatory motor cortex processes several kinds of visual cues during speech communication. Crown Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Invariant principles of speech motor control that are not language-specific.

PubMed

Chakraborty, Rahul

2012-12-01

Bilingual speakers must learn to modify their speech motor control mechanism based on the linguistic parameters and rules specified by the target language. This study examines if there are aspects of speech motor control which remain invariant regardless of the first (L1) and second (L2) language targets. Based on the age of academic exposure and proficiency in L2, 21 Bengali-English bilingual participants were classified into high (n = 11) and low (n = 10) L2 (English) proficiency groups. Using the Optotrak 3020 motion sensitive camera system, the lips and jaw movements were recorded while participants produced Bengali (L1) and English (L2) sentences. Based on kinematic analyses of the lip and jaw movements, two different variability measures (i.e., lip aperture and lower lip/jaw complex) were computed for English and Bengali sentences. Analyses demonstrated that the two groups of bilingual speakers produced lip aperture complexes (a higher order synergy) that were more consistent in co-ordination than were the lower lip/jaw complexes (a lower order synergy). Similar findings were reported earlier in monolingual English speakers by Smith and Zelaznik. Thus, this hierarchical organization may be viewed as a fundamental principle of speech motor control, since it is maintained even in bilingual speakers.

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…

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…

Mitigating U.S. Undergraduates' Attitudes toward International Teaching Assistants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kang, Okim; Rubin, Donald; Lindemann, Stephanie

2015-01-01

Intelligibility problems between native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English are often attributed to some perceived inadequacy of the NNSs. This emphasis on the NNSs' role in successful communication is highly problematic, given that intelligibility is a negotiated process between speaker and listener. In some cases, NSs have…

Confusing similar words: ERP correlates of lexical-semantic processing in first language attrition and late second language acquisition.

PubMed

Kasparian, Kristina; Steinhauer, Karsten

2016-12-01

First language (L1) attrition is a socio-linguistic circumstance where second language (L2) learning coincides with changes in exposure and use of the native-L1. Attriters often report experiencing a decline in automaticity or proficiency in their L1 after a prolonged period in the L2 environment, while their L2 proficiency continues to strengthen. Investigating the neurocognitive correlates of attrition alongside those of late L2 acquisition addresses the question of whether the brain mechanisms underlying both L1 and L2 processing are strongly determined by proficiency, irrespective of whether the language was acquired from birth or in adulthood. Using event-related-potentials (ERPs), we examined lexical-semantic processing in Italian L1 attriters, compared to adult Italian L2 learners and to Italian monolingual native speakers. We contrasted the processing of classical lexical-semantic violations (Mismatch condition) with sentences that were equally semantically implausible but arguably trickier, as the target-noun was "swapped" with an orthographic neighbor that differed only in its final vowel and gender-marking morpheme (e.g., cappello (hat) vs. cappella (chapel)). Our aim was to determine whether sentences with such "confusable nouns" (Swap condition) would be processed as semantically correct by late L2 learners and L1 attriters, especially for those individuals with lower Italian proficiency scores. We found that lower-proficiency Italian speakers did not show significant N400 effects for Swap violations relative to correct sentences, regardless of whether Italian was the L1 or the L2. Crucially, N400 response profiles followed a continuum of "nativelikeness" predicted by Italian proficiency scores - high-proficiency attriters and high-proficiency Italian learners were indistinguishable from native controls, whereas attriters and L2 learners in the lower-proficiency range showed significantly reduced N400 effects for "Swap" errors. Importantly, attriters and late L2 learners did not differ in their N400 responses when they belonged to the same proficiency subgroup. Attriters also showed an enhanced P600 response to both kinds of lexical-semantic anomalies, which we discuss as reflecting increased conflict-monitoring and conscious "second thought" processes specifically in attriters. Our findings provide some of the first ERP evidence of attrition effects, and are compatible with accounts of ongoing neuroplasticity for language in adulthood. Proficiency, rather than age-of-acquisition, seems to be the key factor in modulating certain neurocognitive responses, not only within L2 learners but also in L1 attriters. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Perceptual Learning of Time-Compressed Speech: More than Rapid Adaptation

PubMed Central

Banai, Karen; Lavner, Yizhar

2012-01-01

Background Time-compressed speech, a form of rapidly presented speech, is harder to comprehend than natural speech, especially for non-native speakers. Although it is possible to adapt to time-compressed speech after a brief exposure, it is not known whether additional perceptual learning occurs with further practice. Here, we ask whether multiday training on time-compressed speech yields more learning than that observed during the initial adaptation phase and whether the pattern of generalization following successful learning is different than that observed with initial adaptation only. Methodology/Principal Findings Two groups of non-native Hebrew speakers were tested on five different conditions of time-compressed speech identification in two assessments conducted 10–14 days apart. Between those assessments, one group of listeners received five practice sessions on one of the time-compressed conditions. Between the two assessments, trained listeners improved significantly more than untrained listeners on the trained condition. Furthermore, the trained group generalized its learning to two untrained conditions in which different talkers presented the trained speech materials. In addition, when the performance of the non-native speakers was compared to that of a group of naïve native Hebrew speakers, performance of the trained group was equivalent to that of the native speakers on all conditions on which learning occurred, whereas performance of the untrained non-native listeners was substantially poorer. Conclusions/Significance Multiday training on time-compressed speech results in significantly more perceptual learning than brief adaptation. Compared to previous studies of adaptation, the training induced learning is more stimulus specific. Taken together, the perceptual learning of time-compressed speech appears to progress from an initial, rapid adaptation phase to a subsequent prolonged and more stimulus specific phase. These findings are consistent with the predictions of the Reverse Hierarchy Theory of perceptual learning and suggest constraints on the use of perceptual-learning regimens during second language acquisition. PMID:23056592

Speech Discrimination in 11-Month-Old Bilingual and Monolingual Infants: A Magnetoencephalography Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferjan Ramírez, Naja; Ramírez, Rey R.; Clarke, Maggie; Taulu, Samu; Kuhl, Patricia K.

2017-01-01

Language experience shapes infants' abilities to process speech sounds, with universal phonetic discrimination abilities narrowing in the second half of the first year. Brain measures reveal a corresponding change in neural discrimination as the infant brain becomes selectively sensitive to its native language(s). Whether and how bilingual…

Bilingualised Dictionaries: How Learners Really Use Them.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laufer, Batia; Kimmel, Michal

1997-01-01

Seventy native Hebrew-speaking English-as-a-Second-Language students participated in a study that investigated what part of an entry second-language learners read when they look up an unfamiliar word in a bilingualised dictionary: the monolingual, the bilingual, or both. Results suggest the bilingualised dictionary is very effective because it is…

Dictionnaires du francais langue etrangere (Dictionaries for French as a Second Language).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gross, Gaston; Ibrahim, Amr

1981-01-01

Examines the purposes served by native language dictionaries as an introduction to the review of three monolingual French dictionaries for foreigners. Devotes particular attention to the most recent, the "Dictionnaire du francais langue etrangere", published by Larousse. Stresses the characteristics that are considered desirable for this type of…

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…

Error Analysis of Students Essays: A Case of First Year Students of the University of Health and Allied Sciences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Amoakohene, Benjamin

2017-01-01

Writing is considered as a daunting task in second language learning. It is argued by most scholars that this challenge is not only limited to second language speakers of English but even to those who speak English as their first language. Thus, the ability to communicate effectively in English by both native and non-native speakers requires…

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…

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…

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…

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…

A Japanese version of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: translation and equivalence assessment.

PubMed

Mimura, Chizu; Griffiths, Peter

2007-05-01

A Japanese version of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) was developed through the forward-backward translation procedure. Married couples consisting of a native English speaker and a native Japanese speaker acted as translators to enhance the representativeness of language in the target population. Multiple translations were produced, and a panel of reviewers identified problems in conceptual and semantic equivalence between the original scale and the translated version. The Japanese version was altered accordingly with reference to alternate Japanese forms from the original English to Japanese translations. The altered translation was again retranslated into English, and problematic differences were checked. This forward-backward process was repeated until satisfactory agreement had been attained. The RSES was administered to 222 native English speakers, and the developed Japanese version (RSES-J) was administered to 1320 native Japanese speakers. Factor analysis revealed nearly identical factor structure and structural coefficients of the items between two sets of data. Target rotation confirmed the factorial agreement of the two scales in different cultural groups. High Cronbach's alpha coefficients supported the reliability of test scores on both versions. The equivalence between the RSES and the RSES-J was supported in this study. It is suggested that the RSES and the RSES-J are potential tools for comparative cross-cultural studies.

Development of a Mandarin-English Bilingual Speech Recognition System for Real World Music Retrieval

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Qingqing; Pan, Jielin; Lin, Yang; Shao, Jian; Yan, Yonghong

In recent decades, there has been a great deal of research into the problem of bilingual speech recognition-to develop a recognizer that can handle inter- and intra-sentential language switching between two languages. This paper presents our recent work on the development of a grammar-constrained, Mandarin-English bilingual Speech Recognition System (MESRS) for real world music retrieval. Two of the main difficult issues in handling the bilingual speech recognition systems for real world applications are tackled in this paper. One is to balance the performance and the complexity of the bilingual speech recognition system; the other is to effectively deal with the matrix language accents in embedded language**. In order to process the intra-sentential language switching and reduce the amount of data required to robustly estimate statistical models, a compact single set of bilingual acoustic models derived by phone set merging and clustering is developed instead of using two separate monolingual models for each language. In our study, a novel Two-pass phone clustering method based on Confusion Matrix (TCM) is presented and compared with the log-likelihood measure method. Experiments testify that TCM can achieve better performance. Since potential system users' native language is Mandarin which is regarded as a matrix language in our application, their pronunciations of English as the embedded language usually contain Mandarin accents. In order to deal with the matrix language accents in embedded language, different non-native adaptation approaches are investigated. Experiments show that model retraining method outperforms the other common adaptation methods such as Maximum A Posteriori (MAP). With the effective incorporation of approaches on phone clustering and non-native adaptation, the Phrase Error Rate (PER) of MESRS for English utterances was reduced by 24.47% relatively compared to the baseline monolingual English system while the PER on Mandarin utterances was comparable to that of the baseline monolingual Mandarin system. The performance for bilingual utterances achieved 22.37% relative PER reduction.

The effects of late acquisition of L2 and the consequences of immigration on L1 for semantic and morpho-syntactic language aspects.

PubMed

Scherag, André; Demuth, Lisa; Rösler, Frank; Neville, Helen J; Röder, Brigitte

2004-10-01

It has been hypothesized that some aspects of a second language (L2) might be learned easier than others if a language is learned late. On the other hand, non-use might result in a loss of language skills in one's native, i.e. one's first language (L1) (language attrition). To study which, if any, aspects of language are affected by either late acquisition or non-use, long-term German immigrants to the US and English native speakers who are long-term immigrants to Germany as well as two additional control groups of native German speakers were tested with an auditory semantic and morpho-syntactic priming paradigm. German adjectives correctly or incorrectly inflected for gender and semantically associated or not associated with the target noun served as primes. Participants made a lexical decision on the target word. All groups of native German speakers gained from semantically and morpho-syntactically congruent primes. Evidence for language attrition was neither found for semantic nor morpho-syntactic priming effects in the German immigrants. In contrast, English native speakers did not gain from a morpho-syntactic congruent prime, whereas semantic priming effects were similar as for the remaining groups. The present data suggest that the full acquisition of at least some syntactic functions may be restricted to limited periods in life while semantic and morpho-syntactic functions seem to be relatively inured to loss due to non-use.

The effect of simultaneous text on the recall of noise-degraded speech.

PubMed

Grossman, Irina; Rajan, Ramesh

2017-05-01

Written and spoken language utilize the same processing system, enabling text to modulate speech processing. We investigated how simultaneously presented text affected speech recall in babble noise using a retrospective recall task. Participants were presented with text-speech sentence pairs in multitalker babble noise and then prompted to recall what they heard or what they read. In Experiment 1, sentence pairs were either congruent or incongruent and they were presented in silence or at 1 of 4 noise levels. Audio and Visual control groups were also tested with sentences presented in only 1 modality. Congruent text facilitated accurate recall of degraded speech; incongruent text had no effect. Text and speech were seldom confused for each other. A consideration of the effects of the language background found that monolingual English speakers outperformed early multilinguals at recalling degraded speech; however the effects of text on speech processing were analogous. Experiment 2 considered if the benefit provided by matching text was maintained when the congruency of the text and speech becomes more ambiguous because of the addition of partially mismatching text-speech sentence pairs that differed only on their final keyword and because of the use of low signal-to-noise ratios. The experiment focused on monolingual English speakers; the results showed that even though participants commonly confused text-for-speech during incongruent text-speech pairings, these confusions could not fully account for the benefit provided by matching text. Thus, we uniquely demonstrate that congruent text benefits the recall of noise-degraded speech. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

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

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…

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…

Participatory Legitimacy in ESL Practice and the Use of Coping Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yeh, Ling-Miao

2014-01-01

This study looked at ESL adult speakers' use of coping strategies in their conversations with native speakers in the United States, as a counter-discourse. More specifically, the discursive negotiation strategies used by 6 ESL adult speakers of varied ethnicities and linguistic backgrounds were analyzed, both inside and outside ESL classrooms. The…

Second- and Foreign-Language Variation in Tense Backshifting in Indirect Reported Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Charkova, Krassimira D.; Halliday, Laura J.

2011-01-01

This study examined how English learners in second-language (SL) and foreign-language (FL) contexts employ tense backshifting in indirect reported speech. Participants included 35 international students in the United States, 37 Bulgarian speakers of English, 38 Bosnian speakers of English, and 41 native English speakers. The instrument involved…

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)

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,…

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.

Sociological effects on vocal aging: Age related F0 effects in two languages

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nagao, Kyoko

2005-04-01

Listeners can estimate the age of a speaker fairly accurately from their speech (Ptacek and Sander, 1966). It is generally considered that this perception is based on physiologically determined aspects of the speech. However, the degree to which it is due to conventional sociolinguistic aspects of speech is unknown. The current study examines the degree to which fundamental frequency (F0) changes due to advanced aging across two language groups of speakers. It also examines the degree to which the speakers associate these changes with aging in a voice disguising task. Thirty native speakers each of English and Japanese, taken from three age groups, read a target phrase embedded in a carrier sentence in their native language. Each speaker also read the sentence pretending to be 20-years younger or 20-years older than their own age. Preliminary analysis of eighteen Japanese speakers indicates that the mean and maximum F0 values increase when the speakers pretended to be younger than when they pretended to be older. Some previous studies on age perception, however, suggested that F0 has minor effects on listeners' age estimation. The acoustic results will also be discussed in conjunction with the results of the listeners' age estimation of the speakers.

Effects of lips and hands on auditory learning of second-language speech sounds.

PubMed

Hirata, Yukari; Kelly, Spencer D

2010-04-01

Previous research has found that auditory training helps native English speakers to perceive phonemic vowel length contrasts in Japanese, but their performance did not reach native levels after training. Given that multimodal information, such as lip movement and hand gesture, influences many aspects of native language processing, the authors examined whether multimodal input helps to improve native English speakers' ability to perceive Japanese vowel length contrasts. Sixty native English speakers participated in 1 of 4 types of training: (a) audio-only; (b) audio-mouth; (c) audio-hands; and (d) audio-mouth-hands. Before and after training, participants were given phoneme perception tests that measured their ability to identify short and long vowels in Japanese (e.g., /kato/ vs. /kato/). Although all 4 groups improved from pre- to posttest (replicating previous research), the participants in the audio-mouth condition improved more than those in the audio-only condition, whereas the 2 conditions involving hand gestures did not. Seeing lip movements during training significantly helps learners to perceive difficult second-language phonemic contrasts, but seeing hand gestures does not. The authors discuss possible benefits and limitations of using multimodal information in second-language phoneme learning.

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.

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…

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…

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…