The study investigated the phonological awareness abilities of Cantonese-speaking pre-schoolers with cochlear implants. Participants were 15 Cantonese-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) aged 3.08-6.10, chronological-age-matched with 15 children with normal hearing. Each participant performed 10 tasks evaluating different levels of phonological awareness abilities and phonological kn...

Despite its direct relevance to second/foreign language learning, quality of life has been a neglected area within Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research. The present study sought to investigate the relationship between quality of life factors and speaking skill as one of the most challenging parts of L2 learning. To this end, an adapted version of life quality questionnaire originally devi...

In this study we evaluate the ability of a state-of-the-art speechto-speech machine translation system, Skype Translator, to preserve the communicative effectiveness of its input speech. Specifically, we elicited Spanish spoken responses from 24 native speakers of Spanish in the following two scenarios: academic speaking (in the context of 6 questions from a standardized assessment of academic ...

Over the course of a decade, digital storytelling (DST) has earned growing amount attention as strong instructional resource that grabbed interest scholars. Digital emerged promising pedagogical approach could help moderate usefulness media in classroom. Myriad studies have demonstrated positive effects on students’ language skills; however, these rarely include ESL students and their realistic...

PURPOSE To determine if respiratory and laryngeal function during spontaneous speaking were different for teachers with voice disorders compared with teachers without voice problems. METHOD Eighteen teachers, 9 with and 9 without voice disorders, were included in this study. Respiratory function was measured with magnetometry, and laryngeal function was measured with electroglottography durin...

Among the most innovative features of the TOEFL® Internet-based test (TOEFL iBT) are the addition of a speaking measure and a revised writing measure consisting of two writing tasks. The speaking and writing measures include both independent and integrated tasks. Independent tasks require test takers to talk or write about their personal opinions or experiences. Integrated tasks require the use...