37,261,953 papers found

In this fMRI study, we examined the cerebral processing associated with second language (L2) reading in different writing systems in late L2 learners. To examine the impacts of cross-linguistic differences between the first language (L1) and L2 on learning to read in L2, we employed a bidirectional approach and compare…

This is a report from the 5th academic meeting of the Japan Society for Medical English Education held at Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare on August 3rd and 4th of 2002. It also includes a course description of our English courses, their problems and some suggestions for improvement. First, I report several paper…

This study investigated associations between socioeconomic status (SES), input quality, and bilingual lexical skills of children raised in Maltese-dominant homes. Children aged 3;04-3;08 ( = 38) and their primary caregivers were categorised as low, medium, or high SES. Children's lexical skills were assessed…

Current research shows that listeners are generally accurate at estimating speakers' age from their speech. This study investigates the effect of speaker first language and the role played by such speaker characteristics as fundamental frequency and speech rate. In this study English and Japanese first language speaker…

Watching English-spoken films with subtitles is becoming increasingly popular throughout the world. One reason for this trend is the assumption that perceptual learning of the sounds of a foreign language, English, will improve perception skills in non-English speakers. Yet, solid proof for this is scarce. In order to…

This study explores the intellectual and personal development of English Language students in study abroad programs, with an emphasis on the benefits of immersion in the target country. Thirty students from the University "Ukshin Hoti" Prizren, enrolled in graduate and undergraduate studies abroad, were interviewed and…

Nonnative listeners are generally not as good as native listeners in perceptually restoring degraded speech and understand what was being said. The current study investigates how nonnative listeners of English (namely, native Japanese speakers who learned English as a second language) perceptually restore temporally di…

PURPOSE: To investigate masking release for speech maskers for linguistically and phonetically close (English and Dutch) and distant (English and Mandarin) language pairs. METHOD: Thirty-two monolingual speakers of English with normal audiometric thresholds participated in the study. Data are reported for an English s…

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of speaking rate changes on the perception of English stop consonants by four groups of subjects: English and Spanish monolinguals, 'early' Spanish/English bilinguals who learned English in childhood, and 'late' bilinguals who learned English in adulthood. Subjects identif…

BACKGROUND: Quality and accessibility of care for patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) can be limited if they cannot communicate in the same language as their health care provider. STUDY OBJECTIVES: We aimed to determine if children whose parents speak a primary language other than English have a longe…

The current study investigated whether bilingualism affects the processing of sub-lexical representations specifying the sound structure of words. Spanish-English bilinguals, Mandarin-English bilinguals, and English-only monolinguals repeated English tongue twisters. Twister materials had word or nonword targets (thus…

The present study investigated cross-language influences in the processing of binomial expressions (), from a first language (L1) to a second language (L2) and from L2 to L1. Two groups of unbalanced bilinguals (Chinese/L1-English/L2 and English/L1-Chinese/L2) and a control group of English monolinguals performed a vis…

PURPOSE: The acceptable noise level (ANL) measure has gained much research/clinical interest in recent years. The present study examined how the characteristics of the speech signal and the babble used in the measure may affect the ANL in listeners with different native languages. METHOD: Fifteen English monolingual,…

Four experiments examined the effects of language characteristics on voice identification. In Experiment 1, monolingual English listeners identified bilinguals' voices much better when they spoke English than when they spoke German. The opposite outcome was found in Experiment 2, in which the listeners were monolingual…

Monolingual French speakers employ a syllable-based procedure in speech segmentation; monolingual English speakers use a stress-based segmentation procedure and do not use the syllable-based procedure. In the present study French-English bilinguals participated in segmentation experiments with English and French materi…

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 sp…

PURPOSE: This study evaluated the extent to which the language of intervention, the child's development in Spanish, and the effects of English vocabulary, use, proficiency, and exposure predict differences in the rates of acquisition of English in Latino children with specific language impairment (SLI). METHOD: In thi…

In the midst of globalization, English is regarded as an international language, or Lingua Franca, but learning it as a second language (L2) remains still difficult to speakers of other languages. This is true especially for the speakers of languages distantly related to English such as Japanese. In this sense, explori…

English learning buoyancy is a proactive and adaptable capacity that allows academic growth. However, the relationship between buoyancy, burnout, engagement, and achievement in English learning remains complex and underexplored. Grounded in the control-value theory of achievement emotions and the situated expectancy-va…

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) perception abilities in quiet and noise of native Japanese listeners who acquired English late in life and lived in the United States. The study addressed two primary questions: (1) whether native Japanese listeners who de…