PURPOSE The purpose of this article is to share what we have learned from a series of 4 scientific studies about preventing reading failure through early intervention with native Spanish-speaking students who are struggling readers. The goal is to provide guidance to practitioners about effective practices for working with native Spanish-speaking children who are struggling to become readers us...

This paper presents a method for identifying non-English speech, with the aim of supporting an automated speech proficiency scoring system for non-native speakers. The method uses a popular technique from the language identification domain, a single phone recognizer followed by multiple languagedependent language models. This method determines the language of a speech sample based on the phonot...

Ten female native speakers of American English (NS) and ten Japanese females who speak English as a second language (NNS) were recorded reading a text containing emphatically-assertive tag questions. Evidence was sought to determine whether or not native speakers can correctly identify these utterances as produced by native or non-native speakers on the basis of intonation alone. The tag questi...

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are expanding the scope of online distance learning in the creation of a cross-country global learning environment. For learners worldwide, MOOCs offer a wealth of online learning resources. However, such a diversified environment makes the learning process complicated and challenging. To achieve their objectives, learners need to adapt regulation strategies ...

The current study explores how native and non-native speakers cope with simultaneous articulatory and acoustic distortion in speech perception. The articulatory distortion was generated by asking a speaker to articulate target speech as fast as possible (fast speech). The acoustic distortion was created by dividing speech signals into small segments with equal time duration (e.g., 50 ms) from t...

This paper provides the results of an acoustic study of Korean laryngeal stop production by eight adult native speakers each of Mandarin Chinese, American English, Seoul Korean, and Latin American Spanish. Three measurements were taken: f0 (fundamental frequency), VOT (Voice Onset Time), and H1-H2 (the relative amplitude of the first versus the second harmonic of the voice source). The data ind...

This study examines the coda voicing effect in English on production of preceding vowel by comparing L1 and L2 speech. Particular attention is paid to how coda voicing contrast is encoded in temporal vs. spectral dimensions, how the effect interacts with information structure (with varying focus types), and how the use of information structure differs in L1 vs. L2. Both English (native) and Kor...

Both the perception and production of speech sounds in a non-native language can be challenging to adult second language learners due to long-time experience with their native language. Numerous studies have investigated how the ability to perceive and produce speech sounds can be modified during adulthood. This study explores whether production training using ultrasound as visual feedback can ...

Learning foreign speech contrasts involves creating new representations of sound categories in memory. This formation of new memory representations is likely to involve changes in neural networks as reflected by oscillatory brain activity. To explore this, we conducted time-frequency analyses of electro-encephalography (EEG) data recorded in a passive auditory oddball paradigm using Thai langua...