Second language acquisition research often compares non-native acquirers (L2ers) with other learner populations. Such cross-population comparisons include: (i) child native language (L1) acquisition~child L2 acquisition (e.g. Gavruseva 2000; Weerman et al. 2003); (ii) child L2~adult L2 (e.g. Cancino et al. 1978; McDonald 2000; Montrul 2002; Weerman et al. 2003) and (iii) child L1~adult L2 (Canc...

This study investigates ultimate attainment of patterns of segmentation and temporal structuring of events in L2 speakers. The participant group consists of 35 L1 Spanish – L2 Swedish adult bilinguals living in Sweden, with ages of L2 acquisition ranging from 1 to 19 years. Fifteen native speakers of Swedish and 15 native speakers of Spanish were engaged as controls. The participants provided o...

Using a structural equation modeling approach, this study investigates the relationships between second language (L2) oral proficiency and interest in learning target (L2 interest), presence of potential mediating variables (i.e. perceived importance speaking, out-of-class contact with L2 resources). It also examines if interactive noninteractive function differently model. Data were collected ...

PURPOSE Two studies were conducted to investigate the effects of classroom noise on attention and speech perception in native Spanish-speaking second graders learning English as their second language (L2) as compared to English-only-speaking (EO) peers. METHOD Study 1 measured children's on-task behavior during instructional activities with and without soundfield amplification. Study 2 measur...

Slobin’s thinking-for-speaking (TFS) hypothesis suggests that speakers are habitually attuned to aspects of an event that are readily codable in the language while they are formulating speech. This TFS process varies considerably cross-linguistically and can be observed in all forms of production and reception including listening for understanding or mental imagery. This study explored whether ...

This study investigates whether the learning of prosodic cues to word boundaries in speech segmentation is more difficult if the native and second/foreign languages (L1 and L2) have similar (though non-identical) prosodies than if they have markedly different prosodies (Prosodic-Learning Interference Hypothesis). It does so by comparing French, Korean, and English listeners' use of fundamental-...

The present study investigates prosodic variation as realized by L2 speakers of varying pronunciation ability in comparison with native speakers of English. The results demonstrate the distribution of the rising contours on both the phonological (ToBI frequencies) and phonetic (values for six parameters of the F0 curve) levels. The rising contours and pitch accents have a wider distribution in ...

The purpose of this experiment was to explore whether listening positions (close or distant location from the sound source) in the classroom, and classroom reverberation, influence students' score on a test for second-language (L2) listening comprehension (i.e., comprehension of English in Swedish speaking participants). The listening comprehension test administered was part of a standardized n...

The major goal of this study was to investigate which phonetic strategies we may actually use when speaking to L2 speakers of our mother tongue (L1). The results showed that speech rate in general was slower and that the vowel formants were closer to target values, in L2 directed speech compared to L1 directed speech in Norwegian. These properties of L2 directed speech correspond to previous fi...