Listeners are skilled at detecting native talkers of a language, but can they identify specific non-native language backgrounds? Open-set identification was used to explore this question. Eighty monolingual American English-speaking listeners labeled the language backgrounds of 30 talkers with 5 different native languages (L1s) on the basis of syllableand word-length samples of English. As expe...

Interaction between humans and computers is seldom perfect. Interactive software often includes aspects of user support to reduce the uncertainty and propensity to error experienced by many users. The present paper briefly reviews some of the common strategies for helping users and characterises the ‘second-language problem’ as a special case for support. Since most software packages are writte...

Whether non-native speakers’ on-line processing can be native-like remains a hot issue. Recently many have shown that qualitatively native-like processing is attainable, especially for learners with high proficiency. However, most of the studies recruited learners who had been immersed to the English-speaking country. The current study investigated processing of fillergap dependency and island ...

Recent scholarship claims that bilingualism has a positive effect on the academic achievement of immigrant children. According to this perspective, growing up speaking two languages is beneficial because it stimulates cognitive development and allows immigrants a means of resisting unwanted assimilation. Immigrant children who are fluent bilinguals can use their native-language ability to maint...

This study assessed the relation between non-native subjects' age of learning (AOL) English and the overall degree of perceived foreign accent in their production of English sentences. The 240 native Italian (NI) subjects examined had begun learning English in Canada between the ages of 2 and 23 yr, and had lived in Canada for an average of 32 yr. Native English-speaking listeners used a contin...

conversations contain spontaneous use of routine formulas which lets speaker sinteract with each other to express opinions. gambits, as one of these formulas, act as an opening remark and help speakers to maintain the smooth flow of an everyday conversation. the lack of mastery of using gambits in maintaining the conversation leads to breakdowns in speaking. this paper aimedat comparingthe use ...