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Recent studies suggest that benefiting early from both a cochlear implant (CI) and exposure to cued speech (CS, support system for the perception of oral language) positively impacts deaf children's speech perception, speech intelligibility, and reading. This study aims to show how: 1/CS-based speech perception ("cue reading"), and speech intelligibility might also constitute precise measures for determining the impact of CI and CS on deaf students' literary performance; 2/print exposure might also be a predictive factor in this equation. We conducted regression analyses to examine the impact of these three variables in two experiments conducted on Grade 2-3 deaf children and Grade 6-9 deaf adolescents. Results indicate print exposure significantly contributes to literacy skills across experiments, with additional contributions from cue reading and speech intelligibility in older students. The predictive aspect of the print exposure, cue reading, and speech intelligibility variables will be discussed, as will the consequences for educational and pedagogical practices.

To examine speaker role models (SRMs) in second language acquisition (SLA), this study explored the sociolinguistic "English as a lingua franca" (ELF) perspective targeting international intelligibility. Thus, it examined the way ELF learners align with self-selected English speakers and anonymous (audio-recorded) English speakers as potential SRMs. The researchers asked the participants, 57 Iranian English majors, "Who do you want to sound like in English and why?" and analyzed their answers in the context of their SRMs and envisioned selves in imagined communities (ICs). The study's findings revealed that most participants had SRMs with three sets of characteristics--high English language proficiency and intelligibility, likeable personal attributes, and notable professional accomplishments. To explore anonymous English speakers in particular as potential SRMs, the researchers asked participants to rate anonymous speakers' intelligibility and likeability. The findings established that, based on the sound of their voices alone, anonymous audiorecorded speakers were less likely to be selected as SRMs. Further, the study found no significant difference between anonymous native and nonnative speakers, celebrities and others, for whom accent intelligibility and likeability increased but did not determine the likelihood of selecting them as their SRMs. Based on its findings, this study draws implications for language and teacher education and offers classroom applications with specific activities.

Educators of International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) have been overlooked, erroneously. As teacher educators, their work is exponentially important to North American universities. A multiple case study examined three ITA Educators' ideologies, involving data from two interviews -one being a stimulated recall using classroom observations fieldnotes, syllabi, assignments, and feedback left on students' work. Through qualitative content analysis, two incompatible ideologies were found being implemented in sections of one class: one orienting learners to undergraduate classrooms, and the other towards passing mandatory language testing. Cynicism was found to characterize two instructors' pedagogies. Findings highlight the ethical complexities of language teaching and assessment. ITA training programs must address foundational issues and examine how ITA Educators are supported. This novel study provides a baseline for future work on ITA Educators, and contributes to literature on language teachers' ideologies. Future work should elucidate how ITA Educators' identities and external ideologies impact ITAs' learning trajectories.

Native English speakers' accents are generally regarded as ideal models of English accents. However, in real-world communication, where English is used as a lingua franca for intercultural communication among people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, English users inevitably encounter a wide variety of accents. This paper presents part of a broader study that explores the attitudes of Thai students and teachers toward native speaker accents, Asian accents, and their own accents (i.e., Thai accents). Specifically, we focus on the attitudes of 123 Thai students attending a public secondary school in Thailand. We collected data through an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews and analyzed it using descriptive statistics and thematic coding. Our findings indicate that American accents were overwhelmingly viewed as the most favorable and served as the standard for pronunciation. While Asian English accents were generally perceived as intelligible and acceptable, some participants expressed negative attitudes toward their own Thai accents, considering them to be deficient. These findings highlight the importance of raising awareness about the diversity of English accents in both English language teaching and policy.

This study examines the effect of native "vs." non-native prosody instruction on developing interpreter trainees' speech comprehensibility in English as a foreign language (EFL) using a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design. Twenty-three groups of 28 interpreter trainees at a University in Iran (six different branches) took part in the study, all groups receiving the same amount of instruction (9 hours over 3 weeks). Three control groups listened to/viewed authentic audio recordings and movies in English, discussed their contents, and completed a variety of speaking tasks but received no specific prosody instruction. Twenty experimental groups spent part of the instruction time on theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises with, English prosody by thirteen nonnative instructors, and seven native instructors. Three experts evaluated the comprehensibility of the trainees in elicited speech samples collected during the pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest, and subsequently presented in random order. The findings revealed that the experimental groups gained between 1 and 2 points on the 0 to 10 comprehensibility scale, and lost little in the delayed posttest; however, hardly any changes were observed in the control groups. We conclude that native and non-native English instructors' prosody teaching were equally effective in enhancing EFL students' speech comprehensibility.

Issues of intelligibility may arise amongst English learners when acquiring new words and phrases in North American academic settings, perhaps in part due to limited linguistic data available to the learner for understanding language use patterns. To this end, this paper examines the effects of Data-Driven Learning for Pronunciation (DDLfP) on lexical stress and prominence in the US academic context. 65 L2 English learners in North American universities completed a diagnostic and pretest with listening and speaking items before completing four online lessons and a posttest on academic words and formulas (i.e., multi-word sequences). Experimental group participants (n = 40) practiced using an audio corpus of highly proficient L2 speakers while comparison group participants (n = 25) were given teacher-created pronunciation materials. Logistic regression results indicated that the group who used the corpus significantly increased their recognition of prominence in academic formulas. In the spoken tasks, both groups improved in their lexical stress pronunciation, but only the DDLfP learners improved their production of prominence in academic formulas. Learners reported that they valued DDLfP efforts for pronunciation learning across contexts and speakers. Findings have implications for teachers of L2 pronunciation and support the use of corpora for language teaching and learning.

Purpose: Aging increases risk for hearing loss, cognitive decline, and social isolation; however, the nature of their interconnection remains unclear. This study examined the interplay between age-related hearing loss, cognitive decline, and social isolation in adults by testing the ability to understand speech in background noise, a challenge frequently reported by many older adults. Method: We analyzed data collected from 128 adults (20-79 years of age, M[subscript age] = 51 years) recruited as part of the Aging Brain Cohort at the University of South Carolina repository. The participants underwent testing for hearing, cognition, and social interaction, which included pure-tone audiometry, a words-in-noise (WIN) test, a hearing questionnaire (Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale [SSQ12]), a social questionnaire (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System-57 Social), and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. We used a single pure-tone average (PTA) threshold value and a single WIN threshold value for each participant because there were no differences on average between the left and right ears. Results: Poorer hearing was significantly associated with cognitive decline, through both PTA and WIN thresholds, with a stronger association observed for WIN threshold. Adults with poorer hearing also exhibited greater social isolation, as evidenced by their WIN threshold and SSQ12 score, although not through PTA. This connection was more pronounced with the WIN threshold than with the SSQ12 score. Cognition was not related to social isolation, suggesting that social isolation is affected more by the ability to understand words in noise than by cognition in a nondemented population. Conclusions: Understanding speech in challenging auditory environments rather than mere threshold detection is strongly linked to social isolation and cognitive decline. Thus, inclusion of a word-recognition-in-noise test and a social isolation survey in clinical settings is warranted.

Background: Perceptual measures such as speech intelligibility are known to be biased, variant and subjective, to which an automatic approach has been seen as a more reliable alternative. On the other hand, automatic approaches tend to lack explainability, an aspect that can prevent the widespread usage of these technologies clinically. Aims: In the present work, we aim to study the relationship between four perceptual parameters and speech intelligibility by automatically modelling the behaviour of six perceptual judges, in the context of head and neck cancer. From this evaluation we want to assess the different levels of relevance of each parameter as well as the different judge profiles that arise, both perceptually and automatically. Methods and Procedures: Based on a passage reading task from the Carcinologic Speech Severity Index (C2SI) corpus, six expert listeners assessed the voice quality, resonance, prosody and phonemic distortions, as well as the speech intelligibility of patients treated for oral or oropharyngeal cancer. A statistical analysis and an ensemble of automatic systems, one per judge, were devised, where speech intelligibility is predicted as a function of the four aforementioned perceptual parameters of voice quality, resonance, prosody and phonemic distortions. Outcomes and Results: The results suggest that we can automatically predict speech intelligibility as a function of the four aforementioned perceptual parameters, achieving a high correlation of 0.775 (Spearman's [rho]). Furthermore, different judge profiles were found perceptually that were successfully modelled automatically. Conclusions and Implications: The four investigated perceptual parameters influence the global rating of speech intelligibility, showing that different judge profiles emerge. The proposed automatic approach displayed a more uniform profile across all judges, displaying a more reliable, unbiased and objective prediction. The system also adds an extra layer of interpretability, since speech intelligibility is regressed as a direct function of the individual prediction of the four perceptual parameters, an improvement over more black box approaches.

Purpose: The aim of this research note is to introduce a new appraisal form, the Classroom Communication and Collaboration (C3) Appraisal, designed to evaluate communication and collaboration within classroom settings. Method: A comprehensive synthesis of the key skills from a broad range of publications on successful communication and collaboration in the classroom was conducted. The resulting appraisal comprises 39 items across six scales: crafting clear messages, appropriateness of communication exchange, active listening, pragmatics and discourse, communication breakdown, and collaboration. To demonstrate its application, an exemplar usage of the C3 Appraisal involving a hearing child and a child with hearing loss engaged in a collaborative learning task is presented. Results: The C3 Appraisal allowed for the quality and successfulness of the collaborative learning task between the two children to be assessed and quantified across the six scales. Conclusions: These findings highlight the utility of the C3 Appraisal as a valuable tool for evaluating communication and collaboration in classroom environments. Next steps are to test the reliability and validity of the C3 Appraisal on a large data set.

This paper extends the use of Generalizability Theory to the measurement of extemporaneous L2 speech through the lens of speech perception. Using six datasets of previous studies, it reports on "G studies"--a method of breaking down measurement variance--and "D studies"--a predictive study of the impact on reliability when modifying the number of raters, items, or other facets that assist the field in adopting measurement designs that include comprehensibility, accentedness, and intelligibility. When data from a single audio sample per learner were subjected to D-studies, we find that both semantic differential and rubric scales for comprehensibility were reliable at the 0.90 level with about 15 trained raters or 50 untrained crowdsourced raters. In order to offer generalizable and dependable evaluations, empirically informed recommendations are given, including considerations for the number of speech samples rated, or the granularity of the scales for various assessment and research purposes.

This paper examined whether a younger starting age of formal instruction on a foreign language is beneficial in expanding circle countries. An experimental study was designed to examine to what extent the five varieties of English language teachers are intelligible to Japanese- (JSLs) and Korean-speaking language learners (KSLs), who have different starting ages of formal English education. First, 132 JSLs and 214 KSLs participated in a listening test where the accents of audio stimuli were varied. The results showed significant differences in the listening test scores between the two groups of learners and among the five varieties of English. It was found that KSLs who started learning English language at an early onset demonstrated proficient listening performance. These findings provide support for the premise that "younger is better" in development and persistence of L2 sound identification. At the same time, both JSLs and KSLs demonstrated sensitivity to input varieties of English. This highlights the importance of exposing students in the classroom to various English accents that may encounter in real-world situations.

Purpose: In this study, we examined the utility of vowel intelligibility testing for assessing the impact of dysarthria on speech characteristics in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). We tested the sensitivity and specificity of overall vowel identification, as well as that of vowel-specific identification, to dysarthria presence and severity. We additionally examined the relationship between vowel intelligibility and sentence intelligibility. Method: Twenty-three people with ALS and 22 age- and sex-matched control speakers produced sentences from the Speech Intelligibility Test (SIT), as well as 10 American English monophthongs in /h/--vowel--/d/ words for the vowel intelligibility test (VIT). Data for SIT and VIT scores came from 135 listeners. Diagnostic accuracy of VIT measures was evaluated using the area under the curve of receiver operator characteristics. We then examined differences between control speakers, speakers with mild dysarthria, and speakers with severe dysarthria in their relationship between SIT and VIT scores. Results: The results suggest that the overall vowel intelligibility score showed high sensitivity and specificity in differentiating between speakers with and without dysarthria, even those with milder symptoms. In addition, single-vowel identification scores showed at least acceptable group differentiation between the mild and severe dysarthria groups, though fewer single vowels were acceptable discriminators between the control group and the group with mild dysarthria. Identification accuracy of /I/ in particular showed excellent discrimination across all groups. Examination of the relationship between SIT and VIT scores suggests a severity-specific relationship. Speakers with SIT scores above 70% generally had higher SIT than VIT scores, whereas speakers with SIT below 70% generally had higher VIT than SIT scores. Discussion: Vowel intelligibility testing can detect speech impairments in speakers with mild dysarthria and residual articulatory function in speakers with severe dysarthria. Vowel intelligibility testing may, therefore, be a useful addition to intelligibility testing for individuals with dysarthria.

This paper compares the speaking scores generated by two online systems that are designed to automatically grade student speech and provide personalized speaking feedback in an EFL context. The first system, "Speech Assessment for Moodle" ("SAM"), is an open-source solution developed by the author that makes use of Google's speech recognition engine to transcribe speech into text which is then automatically scored using a phoneme-based algorithm. "SAM" is designed as a custom quiz type for "Moodle," a widely adopted open-source course management system. The second auto-scoring system, "EnglishCentral," is a popular proprietary language learning solution which utilizes a trained intelligibility model to automatically score speech. Results of this study indicated a positive correlation between the speaking scores generated by both systems, meaning students who scored higher on the "SAM" speaking tasks also tended to score higher on the "EnglishCentral" speaking tasks and vice versa. In addition to comparing the scores generated from these two systems against each other, students' computer-scored speaking scores were compared to human-generated scores from small-group face-to-face speaking tasks. The results indicated that students who received higher scores with the online computer-graded speaking tasks tended to score higher on the human-graded small-group speaking tasks and vice versa.

Purpose: Amplitude modulations (AMs) are important for speech intelligibility, and deficits in speech intelligibility are a leading source of impairment in childhood listening difficulties (LiD). The present study aimed to explore the relationships between AM perception and speech-in-noise (SiN) comprehension in children and to determine whether deficits in AM processing contribute to childhood LiD. Evoked responses were used to parse the neural origins of AM processing. Method: Forty-one children with LiD and 44 typically developing children, ages 8-16 years, participated in the study. Behavioral AM depth thresholds were measured at 4 and 40 Hz. SiN tasks included the Listening in Spatialized Noise-Sentences Test (LiSN-S) and a coordinate response measure (CRM)- based task. Evoked responses were obtained during an AM change detection task using alternations between 4 and 40 Hz, including the N1 of the acoustic change complex, auditory steady-state response (ASSR), P300, and a late positive response (late potential [LP]). Maturational effects were explored via age correlations. Results: Age correlated with 4-Hz AM thresholds, CRM separated talker scores, and N1 amplitude. Age-normed LiSN-S scores obtained without spatial or talker cues correlated with age-corrected 4-Hz AM thresholds and area under the LP curve. CRM separated talker scores correlated with AM thresholds and area under the LP curve. Most behavioral measures of AM perception correlated with the signal-to-noise ratio and phase coherence of the 40-Hz ASSR. AM change response time also correlated with area under the LP curve. Children with LiD exhibited deficits with respect to 4-Hz thresholds, AM change accuracy, and area under the LP curve. Conclusions: The observed relationships between AM perception and SiN performance extend the evidence that modulation perception is important for understanding SiN in childhood. In line with this finding, children with LiD demonstrated poorer performance on some measures of AM perception, but their evoked responses implicated a primarily cognitive deficit.

This paper reports on a mixed-methods study delving into EFL students' experiences and perspectives on a text-based pedagogical chatbot. Utilizing chatbot-mediated interaction, a questionnaire survey, and focus group discussions, the study centers around the cognitive and affective domains of learning in relation to the chatbot's affordances and limitations. Additionally, it investigates potential associations between L2 proficiency and perceptions on the chatbot. The sample (n = 143) consisted of undergraduate students from a Saudi university who engaged in guided and self-initiated interactions with the chatbot. By and large, the findings point to positive experiences concerning the chatbot's intelligibility and comprehension. In terms of the interaction, the chatbot is perceived as supportive of L2 practice and writing development, interest-provoking, enhancing motivation, and alleviating writing anxiety. Contrastingly, certain demotivating factors are reported regarding the chatbot's interactional and instructional abilities, including the lack of extended conversations, sensitivity to inaccurate language forms, and sporadic irrelevant responses. Moreover, the Mann-Whitney U test reveals that L2 proficiency does not affect overall views on the chatbot-mediated interaction, except for the aspect of usefulness for L2 practice, which has significantly more positive views from high-intermediate students. Pedagogical implications pertinent to the integration of chatbots in L2 learning are discussed.

Analysis of linguistic abilities that are concurrently impaired in individuals with language deficits allows identification of a shared underlying mechanism. If any two linguistic abilities are mediated by the same underlying mechanism, then both abilities will be absent if this mechanism is broken. Clustering techniques automatically arrange these abilities according to their co-occurrence and therefore group together abilities mediated by the same mechanism. This study builds upon the discovery of three distinct mechanisms of language comprehension in 31,845 autistic individuals1. The current clustering analysis of a more diverse group of individuals with language impairments resulted in the three mechanisms identical to those found previously: (1) the most-basic command-language-comprehension-mechanism; (2) the intermediate modifier-language-comprehension-mechanism mediating comprehension of color, size, and number modifiers; and (3) the most-advanced syntactic-language-comprehension-mechanism. This discovery calls for mapping of the three empirically-defined language-comprehension-mechanisms in the context of cognitive neuroscience, which is the main goal of this study.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to describe changes in speech intelligibility and interrater and intrarater reliability of naive listeners' ratings of words produced by young children diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) over a period of motor-based intervention (dynamic temporal and tactile cueing [DTTC]). Method: A total of 120 naive listeners (i.e., listeners without experience listening to children with speech and/or language impairments; age range: 18--45 years) orthographically transcribed single-word productions by five children (age range: 2;6-3;11 [years;months]) across three time points over an intervention period (baseline, post-treatment, maintenance). Changes in intelligibility and interrater and intrarater reliability were examined within and across time points. Results: Speech intelligibility significantly increased in children with CAS over the course of treatment, and these gains were also maintained at 6 weeks posttreatment. There was poor-to-fair consistency "between" listeners (interrater reliability) and excellent consistency within listeners (intrarater reliability) in ratings of speech intelligibility within and across time points. Conclusions: Motor-based intervention increases speech intelligibility following a period of DTTC treatment. Variability among naive listeners of speech intelligibility was also present, with intrarater reliability (within listeners) yielding greater consistency than interrater reliability (between listeners). The implications for including naive listeners as raters of speech intelligibility for research and clinical purposes are discussed.

Although international students often report satisfaction with their studies and view Canada as being tolerant and multicultural, increasing anti-Asian sentiment triggered by the global pandemic has highlighted the importance of exploring whether international students, especially from South and East Asia, experience discrimination. This study examines how university students perceive the speech characteristics (accentedness, comprehensibility), status attributes (e.g. competent, intelligent), and solidarity traits (e.g. pleasant, attractive) of international students from Europe, China, and South Asia along with their interest in participating in academic activities with international students. Eighty university students in Canada evaluated short speech samples from six fellow students from Mandarin Chinese, European (Romanian, German), and South Asian (Urdu) backgrounds, with the voices presented with an image matching or mismatching the speaker's ethnic features. Results showed that the Chinese and South Asian students were rated as more accented and less comprehensible than the European students. They were also viewed less favorably in status and solidarity and received lower academic engagement ratings. Students whose speech was easier to understand received higher status, solidarity, and academic engagement ratings. The findings are discussed in relation to various ways in which universities can reduce prejudicial and discriminatory behaviors toward international students.

This study investigated the extent to which racialisation shapes EFL learners' conceptualizations of the 'native speaker' construct through an experimental design. Three hundred and fourteen university students studying at English-medium universities in Turkey were invited to take an online matched guise test. They were assigned to either the control group or the experimental group randomly. The participants in the control group were presented with photos of women in their late 20s, accompanied by 30-second speech samples recorded by White, Midwestern American women. In the experimental group, the same speech samples were accompanied by photos of similarly-aged women from racially minoritized backgrounds. The participants responded to 14 statements about each speaker on a five-point Likert scale. The statements were created based on the various qualities commonly referred to in the literature when defining 'native English speakers.' They referred to both linguistic factors such as fluency, intelligibility, age of language acquisition, intuitions about grammar, etc., and non-linguistic factors such as citizenship of an Anglophone country, birthplace, etc. The results revealed that the participants rated the speakers in the control group (White speakers) as significantly more 'native' than some speakers of colour. The discussion includes implications for teacher education and employment.

Despite the importance of identifying children with developmental language delay, no accurate screening instruments are available for 3-year-olds. The aim of the present study is to compare the accuracy of the General Language Screen (GLS), focusing on receptive and expressive language and intelligibility with the accuracy of the VTO Language Screening Instrument (VTO-LSI)-3-year, focusing on expressive language and intelligibility. We hypothesize that the GLS is more accurate in identifying children with language delay, because it also assesses receptive language. Ninety-seven 3-year-old children were included based on their language screening score at the age of 2. At the age of 3, children were assessed with the VTO-LSI-3-year and the GLS. Diagnostic tests were used as reference tests. The GLS was better than the VTO-LSI-3-year in identifying children with language delay. Receiver operating characteristic analysis of the discriminative power showed higher areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the GLS. Moreover, the GLS was better in detecting receptive language concerns. Given these results the GLS may serve as a reliable screening tool, especially for children with receptive problems. Because receptive language problems are persistent, early diagnosis and intervention is very important for these children.

This essay begins with the story of Vincent Lloyd who recounts a disturbing experience he had while teaching a course to a group of students of color. What does pedagogical uptake under conditions of systemic oppression require of educators? In the first section, I explore philosopher Nancy Potter's (Nancy Potter. "Giving Uptake". "Social Theory and Practice" 26/3 (2000) 479-508; Nancy Potter. "The Virtue of Defiance and Psychiatric Engagement" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)) work on uptake, whose focus on the mental health field is important because she acknowledges power imbalances. Nevertheless, her understanding of uptake may be insufficient for considering such classroom cases that introduced this essay. The second section shifts the focus of uptake from a psychological approach to a more epistemic understanding of uptake that underscores credibility and intelligibility. Uptake as credibility and intelligibility reveals the everyday patterns of uptake failure that marginalized knowers experience in the socio-epistemic world, described in section three. A recent turn in the scholarship of epistemic injustice towards epistemic agency and resistance is taken up in the subsequent section and applied to the conceptualization of uptake. In the concluding section, I begin to explore how these insights contribute to a notion of pedagogical uptake under conditions of systemic oppression.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) commonly results in the inability to produce natural speech, making speech-generating devices (SGDs) important. Historically, synthetic voices generated by SGDs were neither unique, nor age- or dialect-appropriate, which depersonalized SGD use. Voices generated by SGDs can now be customized via voice banking and should ideally sound uniquely like the individual's natural speech, be intelligible, and elicit positive reactions from communication partners. This large-scale 2 x 2 mixed between- and within-participants design examined perceptions of 831 adult listeners regarding custom synthetic voices created for two individuals diagnosed with ALS via two synthesis systems in common clinical use (waveform concatenation and statistical parametric synthesis). The study explored relationships among synthesis system, dysarthria severity, synthetic speech intelligibility, naturalness, and preferences, and also provided a preliminary examination of attitudes regarding the custom synthetic voices. Synthetic voices generated via statistical parametric synthesis trained on deep neural networks were more intelligible, natural, and preferred than voices produced via waveform concatenation, and were associated with more positive attitudes. The custom synthetic voice created from moderately dysarthric speech was more intelligible than the voice created from mildly dysarthric speech. Clinical implications and factors that may have contributed to the relative intelligibilities are discussed.

Purpose: Talkers adapt their speech according to the demands of their listeners and the communicative context, enhancing the properties of the signal (pitch, intensity) and/or properties of the code (enhancement of phonemic contrasts). This study asked how mothers adapt their child-directed speech (CDS) in ways that might serve the immediate goals of increasing intelligibility, as well as long-term goals of supporting speech and language development in their children. Method: Mothers (N = 28) participated in a real-time interactive speech production/perception paradigm, in which mothers instructed their young (3- to 5-year-old) children, or an adult listener, to select the picture corresponding to a target word. The task was performed at low and high levels (56 vs. 75 dB SPL) of background noise to examine the Lombard effects of decreased audibility on speech production. Results: Acoustic-phonetic analyses of CDS and adult-directed speech (ADS) productions of target words and carrier phrase (e.g., "Find pig") revealed that mothers significantly enhanced the mean pitch, pitch variability, and intensity of target words in CDS, particularly at higher background noise levels and for younger children. Mothers produce CDS with a higher signal-to-noise ratio than ADS. However, limited evidence was found for phonetic enhancement of the segmental properties of speech. Although increased category separation was found in the voice onset time of stop consonants, decreased vowel category separation (an anti-enhancement effect) was observed in CDS. Conclusions: Mothers readily enhance the suprasegmental signal properties of their speech in CDS, but not the acoustic-phonetic properties of phonemes. This study fails to provide evidence of phonetic enhancement in preschool children in a dyadic communication task under noisy listening conditions.

This article examines the prevalence of white privilege and supremacy in the context of English education in Thailand by presenting an auto-ethnographic exploration of the raciolinguistic experiences of a Filipino English language teacher. It explores the macro, meso, and micro levels contributing to the prevalence of monolingual ideologies and injustices encountered by non-white and non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) in the country. We argue that since the field of English education has the potential to serve as a locus of inequality while simultaneously providing an opportunity to contest the white privilege and native English speaker-teachers' (NESTs) hegemony, cultivating linguistic and cultural diversity and equality is a way to challenge and resist the monolithic view of English, giving equality and justice to all English language teachers, regardless of their race and nationality. Facilitating transformative endeavours can be achieved by promoting critical and reflective approaches to policy, pedagogy, and teaching practices, highlighting the importance of intelligibility in cross-cultural and multilingual interactions.

Research on intelligibility in international encounters has long focused on issues of pronunciation to the detriment of factors such as linguistic co-text and extralinguistic context, which are comparatively well-studied variables in intelligibility research concerning L1 listeners. This paper seeks to expand the scope of international intelligibility research in this respect by reporting on a large-scale study involving 423 nonnative listeners at different proficiency levels, who transcribed words spoken with another nonnative accent under four conditions that varied in the availability of syntactic, semantic, and schematic cues. The results suggest that co-text and context as well as listening proficiency are crucial variables that ought to receive greater attention in research on international intelligibility. The pedagogical implications of these findings are addressed as well.

The expansion of the English language produced by non-native speakers has, in recent decades, been discussed by applied linguists from various theoretical perspectives. The discussion has highlighted evidence showing that the multiplicity and diversity of English uses have given rise to an acceleration in the rate of inter-variety contacts where pronunciation, as it is claimed, is the principle factor in international intelligibility. Further, it has been demonstrated that difficulty in intelligibility increases with the typological distance between interlocutors' first languages, referring to the distinct way that English pronunciation is strongly shaped by the phonetics of speakers' first language. Consequently, a careful examination of the typological distance between speakers' L1 and the target language--English--is compelling for the underpinning of the teaching and learning of pronunciation. Unfortunately, in English language teaching pedagogy, variations in pronunciation may be neglected in favor of other factors. In addition, pronunciation teaching experts stress that the study of pronunciation should be developed by locally-based educators, researchers, and authorities who are exposed to the relevant socio-cultural context, rather than being dominated by native speaker scholars based in Anglophone countries. Thai English pronunciation is considered to be one of the minor accents in World Englishes, and some local English language educators in Thailand may have insufficient in-depth knowledge of the linguistic characteristics of this accent. Presented here is a systematic review of Thai-accented English phonology, analyzed and synthesized via a review of relevant literature: the characteristics of Thai-accented English are clearly displayed, providing a reference for future researchers aiming to explore further Thai-accented English. The review can also be applied to other L1-influenced Englishes in the Southeast Asian region which possess similar phonological and phonetic characteristics.

Second language (L2) international students are frequently blamed for miscommunication and even stigmatized and marginalized due to the way they sound. However, little is known about how their accent contributes to the L2 lived experience at foreign universities. Taking a mixed methods phenomenological approach, survey (N = 306) and semi-structured interviews with participants from East Asian countries (N = 5), this study reveals that their personal journey as foreign-accented speakers can be traced through a four-stage process: (a) surprise, (b) anticlimax, (c) learning to survive, and (d) feeling empowered. The first two themes are a period wherein participants experience high levels of stress and anxiety because of having to fit into new learning environments. The last two themes refer to a stage where they developed the ability to survive with increasing self-confidence. Practical implications for improving the campus climate for all L2 students are discussed.

Recently, chatbot interactions have been used for oral communication practice in the field of foreign language education. Some existing studies have highlighted the use of chatbots in relation to specific L2 skills, yet unfortunately, the user experience component of chatbot interaction has not been empirically researched. This study investigates the effect of chatbot-human interaction with the chatbot Replika on L2 speaking performance and speaking anxiety. The participants in the current study were 90 EFL students from a state university in Turkey. They used the application Replika for twelve weeks practicing targeted subjects outside the class. Each student was assessed with the L2 speaking anxiety scale both before and after the intervention. Also, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to collect their perceptions of using chatbots for L2 speaking practice. The interactions with the chatbot were screen taped for a randomly chosen speaking task: Well-being. The findings reveal that there were negative perceptions and attitudes toward the chatbot interaction. Students reported facing difficulties in being understood precisely, which might have contributed to higher anxiety in L2 speaking. Notably, student performance with Replika was significantly better than their face-to-face peer interactions. Overall, the results show that although chatbot interaction is a novel way to provide speaking practice for students, the actual interaction with a chatbot might not be a reliable way to lessen their anxiety with L2 speaking.

The present systematic review examines Glenn Fulcher's contributions, works, philosophy, and research in language testing and assessment. The data includes his published articles, book chapters, books and interviews (except the one in this special issue) relevant to language testing and assessment from 1987 to March 2022. This study is conducted in two stages: From the sources, Ali Panahi and Hassan Mohebbi derived 127 commonly used main themes, 43 statistical and instrumental concepts, and 14 domains to create a framework for the analysis. We discovered that his research interests were wide-ranging. However, there was a focus on assessing speaking, rating scale design, validity, language assessment literacy and pedagogy, and the broader understanding of the role of assessment from a philosophical and societal perspective. Our analysis provides an overall understanding of the main themes, key concepts and major implications of Glenn Fulcher's work. In the second stage of the study, Glenn presents his personal discussion and reflection of this systematic review.

The practice of second language (L2) speech perception has traditionally relied on equal-interval perceptual scales and novice listeners' (NLs) impressionistic judgments of constructs such as accentedness and comprehensibility (Munro & Derwing, 2011). However, issues have surfaced with respect to how well NLs can use these scales, whether they use the entire scale, and how valid/reliable their ratings are. This study draws inspiration from the work of Glenn Fulcher in the area of L2 speech assessment, specifically on construct validity and scale design (1993; 2003). The current study explores similar issues from the lens of the speech perception practice, relying on scale transformation methods and multi-faceted Rasch measurement to examine the overall question of an ideal equal-interval scale length. Speech ratings of L2 accentedness and comprehensibility were originally collected from 56 NLs on 9-point bipolar Likert scales. Statistical transformations from 9-point to 7- and 5-point scales were compared through several indices (i.e., listener consistency, listener severity, scalar point discrimination, and scale usage) across four common speech tasks (i.e., read-aloud, spontaneous speech, elicited imitation, and picture description) (see Thomson & Derwing, 2015). With every statistical scale length reduction across four tasks, listeners' consistency improved, their levels of severity slightly decreased, and their scalar usage became more precise. Implications for L2 speech perception research suggest that the shorter 5-point perceptual scale shows potential in increasing the reliability and validity of scoring, while more appropriately distinguishing among speaker ability levels.

Speaking anxiety is a form of foreign language anxiety which may reduce students' willingness to communicate orally. Despite accent being one of the most salient aspects of speech, there has been little research to date on the relationship between non-native accent and speaking anxiety. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine English learners' perceptions and beliefs about accent, and also to explore the concept of accent anxiety, that is, speaking anxiety arising due to concern about one's non-native accent. An anonymous online questionnaire was distributed to English students in a French university. The questionnaire sought to gauge the students' attitudes both towards speaking and accent and gathered qualitative responses about the students' experiences of accent anxiety and their coping strategies. A thematic analysis was then carried out on the 54 responses. It was found that the majority of the students did not believe attaining a native-sounding accent was essential to language learning and felt that comprehensibility should be the primary objective. However, many of these students nonetheless considered it a personal goal to sound more native-like. Furthermore, most of the students had at some point in their learning felt embarrassed or worried about their accents, with the two primary causes being fear of negative evaluation from their peers and fear of future communication issues. It was concluded that concern over how non-native accents sound is a potential source of speaking anxiety for learners of English. As these students highlighted the classroom as being the main location where this anxiety arises, the study concludes with some suggestions for educators as well as ideas for future research directions.

Intelligibility is a critically important aspect for effective oral communication. This study explored salient (important) pronunciation errors and their relative roles in the intelligibility of nonnative speech based on listener judgments. Speech samples, collected from speakers with a Turkish as a native language (L1) background, were presented to listener groups in two consecutive sub-studies. In expert listening sessions, listeners with an academic background in pronunciation research and teaching (N=3) detected salient pronunciation errors via a thinking aloud protocol. During the intelligibility research, native listeners (N=33) transcribed the target words with salient pronunciation errors presented either as individual words isolated from their contexts or in longer utterances. The intelligibility scores were calculated and analyzed to investigate the role of salient pronunciation errors on speakers' intelligibility in English. The findings indicated that mispronunciations of segmentals and incorrect stress placement were the most common error types as detected by expert listeners. Negative transfer was found to be an important factor in such salient errors. According to the results of the intelligibility research, pronunciation errors affected speakers' intelligibility to a certain extent. Segmental errors were the main causes of reduced intelligibility. Moreover, mispronunciations of two sounds that were seen in most error sites, /[schwa]/ and /[theta]/, seemed to make speech more accented while not seriously affecting intelligibility. Also, errors in strong syllables had a more detrimental effect on intelligibility compared to those in weak syllables.

Research has focused almost exclusively on International Teaching Assistants'(ITA) experiences as instructors, overlooking the ITA training class. This has led to the marginalization of Pre-Service ITAs in the literature. The locus of potentially important learning, a descriptive, multiple case study examined the investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015) of three Pre-Service ITA's in their ITA training class over one semester at a large US university. Data included ITA's weekly journals, individual interviews/stimulated recalls, class assignments, and field notes from classroom observations. Findings are presented as portraits of real, multifaceted ITA's, then from cross-case analyses. Participants experienced the same course very differently, impacted most prominently by their ITA educators' teaching approach, their exposure to teaching role models, and their home department structures. Recognizing the incredible diversity ITA's represent, pedagogical implications suggest an "intense exposure experience" or teaching-training focused pedagogy be implemented--instead of test-centric pedagogies, situating ITA's learning within un-simulated spaces with real undergraduates. [Note: The page range (175-192) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range is 175-198.]

During dialogue, people reach mutual comprehension through the production of feedback markers such as "yeah" or "okay." The purpose of the current study was to determine if mental load affects feedback production, as there is currently no consensus as to how mental load constrains the way in which dialogue partners reach mutual comprehension. In two experiments, pairs of participants interacted in order to complete a collaborative puzzle game. We manipulated the amount of mental load experienced by each participant by giving them a series of digits to memorize (or no digits) before the beginning of the game. In Experiment 1, the participants were given no information about their partner's mental load. In Experiment 2, each participant was told whether their partner had received digits to memorize. We found that although some results were identical in both experiments (directors produced more words, longer utterances, and fewer feedback markers than matchers), the effect of mental load was different in both experiments. Indeed, whereas in Experiment 1, mental load mainly affected the number of words and speech turns produced, in Experiment 2, participants who had to follow the instructions of their partner and were under low mental load produced more feedback markers when their partner was under high mental load. Taken together, these results help disentangle the contribution of experienced and perceived mental load on collaboration in dialogue. They also highlight the importance of being explicitly aware of each other's mental load in interpersonal coordination.

Speaking with a foreign accent has often been thought to carry several disadvantages. Here, we probe a potential social "advantage" of non-native compared to native speakers using spoken utterances that either obey or violate the pragmatic principle of Informativeness. In Experiment 1, we show that listeners form different impressions of native and non-native speakers with identical pragmatic behavior: in a context in which omitting information could be deceptive, people rated underinformative speakers more negatively on trustworthiness and interpersonal appeal compared to informative speakers, but this tendency was mitigated for speakers with foreign accents. Furthermore, this mitigating effect was strongest for less proficient non-native speakers who were presumably not fully responsible for their linguistic choices. In Experiment 2, social lenience for non-native speakers emerged even in a non-deceptive context. Contrary to previous studies, there was no consistent global bias against non-native speakers in either experiment, despite their lower intelligibility. Thus the fact that non-native speakers have imperfect control of the linguistic signal affects pragmatic inferences and social evaluation in ways that can lead to surprising social benefits.

Canada's growing population of international students brings ethnolinguistic diversity and socioeconomic benefits to their host communities. However, students often experience social exclusion and lack of belonging, reporting little communication with local community members for many cultural, ethnic, and religious reasons. The present study, conducted in Montreal, investigated the role of international students' second language speech in local community members' perception of the social roles that students can assume in a host society (e.g., friend, neighbour, colleague). Four English- and French-speaking international students' recordings were presented to 38 francophones, all non-student residents of Montreal, who evaluated the students' comprehensibility and accentedness and assessed how acceptable these students were in various social roles (e.g., friend, neighbour, colleague) in two languages (French vs. English) and in two situations (making a request vs. making a potentially controversial statement). The students' ratings were greater when they spoke French than English (regardless of speech content) and when they requested help than when they expressed a controversial statement (regardless of language). Social ratings were generally associated with comprehensibility, not accentedness, where more comprehensible speech was linked to greater perceived acceptability. Findings highlight the importance of sociolinguistic context and language in local residents' judgments of international students' social roles.

Scholars have argued for the inclusion of different spoken varieties of English in high-stakes listening tests to better represent the global use of English. However, doing so may introduce additional construct-irrelevant variance due to accent familiarity and the shared first language (L1) advantage, which could threaten test fairness. However, it is unclear to what extent accent familiarity and a shared L1 are related to or conflated with each other. The present study investigates the relationship between accent familiarity, a shared L1, and comprehensibility. Results from descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U test based on 302 second language (L2) English listeners' responses to an online questionnaire suggested that a shared L1 meant high accent familiarity, but not vice versa. A path analysis revealed a complex relationship between accent familiarity, a shared L1, and comprehensibility. While a shared L1 had a direct effect on accent familiarity, and accent familiarity had a direct effect on comprehensibility, a shared L1 did not predict comprehensibility when accent familiarity was controlled for. These results disentangle accent familiarity from a shared L1. Researchers should consider both constructs when investigating fairness in relation to World Englishes for listening assessment.

The global spread of English nowadays has led to a shifted role in the use of English as an international lingua franca in expanding-circle contexts like Thailand. The purpose of this study was therefore to examine Thai university students' attitudes towards their own Thai-English accent, in addition to how the notion of standard language ideology in Thailand plays an influential role in their English accent attitudes. The research further explores the perspectives of the students regarding their acceptability of Thai-English accent by adopting a mixed-method approach using both questionnaire and interview as research instruments. The findings reveal a controversial perspective in the attitudes of the students towards their own Thai-English accent. While most participants show a positive attitude towards their own Thai-English accent as they reported that the Thai English accent is good as long as one can be understood, some of them still attempt to sound as native-like as possible because they think that Thai-English accent is unintelligible. This finding calls for a reconsideration in pronunciation teaching in universities in Thailand in order to address these emerging practical and communicative requirements inspired by English diversity where non-mainstream Englishes are now gaining acceptance.

Dominant processes of economic and cultural globalization have accelerated the use of English as a medium of instruction and precipitated diverse, yet intersected global student mobility, which have resulted in varied forms and uses of English in academic contexts. The present study reports on the findings of research into the attitudes and perceptions of a group of Chinese students studying English as an Additional Language (EAL) towards the legitimacy of non-native speaker (NNS) accents, including their own, as used in cross-cultural interactions in academic contexts. The research aims at unpacking students' views of their Chinese accented English to better understand the ways in which their attitudes towards English accents help negotiate and sustain their ethnic identities in academic contexts. Drawing on a qualitative paradigm, the study utilized in-depth interviews with a sample of four participants. The results suggested that intelligibility is highly regarded at least at the cognitive level, which gives their idiolectal varieties of English greater legitimacy. However, such a hard-developed belief is seriously thwarted by their lived experiences of discrimination over their accented speech, which pushes them back, yet again, to a position of perceived inferiority that hinders their active participation in their academic contexts.

When it comes to paying attention to the suprasegmental features of their speech, most learners of English seem to be unaware that such phenomena as stress, pitch, duration, and pausing can be of great importance regarding mutual intelligibility. Since they carry a considerable weight of establishing an intelligible conversation, it is argued that they should take part in learners' curricula. In this light, the present study is set out to examine the suprasegmental features of a non-native learner and a native speaker, deriving similarities and diversions with regards to the way they operate the suprasegmental features in their speech data. Therefore, the present study analyses and compares some suprasegmental features of the speech data gathered from a Turkish learner of English and a native speaker of American English. In this vein, fifty sentences are read aloud separately by the Turkish learner of English and the native speaker. The similarities and diversion points are presented and analyzed to highlight some recursivities within the dataset. In this way, teachers and learners of English might be informed upon certain points to improve their intelligibility.

The present study investigated Korean-accented English (KoE) intelligibility and conducted experiments in Korea, Japan, and the USA to test the benefits of listener's familiarity and identify the key phonological features of KoE. In the experiments, the participants were asked to transcribe the target (KoE) of 100 English statements each containing a target word representing one of the nine features. The transcription data were administered to four groups, depending upon the degree of KoE familiarity (length of exposure). The results indicated that KoE was most intelligible to native English speakers with lower familiarity and least intelligible to the Japanese participants with low KoE familiarity. Although the listeners' familiarity did not necessarily either facilitate or impede the intelligibility of KoE, the listeners with higher familiarity with KoE tended to recognize the voiced consonants of KoE better. The findings also indicated which KoE characteristics affected the overall intelligibility level, suggesting ways to prioritize KoE features in English language learning in Korean classrooms.

This research aimed to develop the World Englishes instructional model to enhance students' listening comprehension of varieties of English. The student's needs analysis was conducted in the first step of the study to gather data concerning the needs, problems, and opinions on teaching and learning English listening. Thirty students participated in the needs assessment questionnaire data collection by answering alternative and open-ended questions. Three experts evaluated the model's quality was evaluated in terms of the consistency of its components and the appropriateness of its component descriptions. Based on the results of the needs assessment questionnaire and expert evaluation, three main elements--students' needs analysis, theoretical concepts, and course components of the World Englishes instructional model--were developed as instructional components comprising course objectives, course contents, media and materials, teaching strategies, and learning activities, as presented in this paper.

This study is part of a series on speech-based first impressions of prelingually deaf cochlear implant (CI) users with differing speech intelligibility. Hiring managers with typical hearing (TH) rated CI users and TH young adults on various personality traits and suitability as job applicants after hearing recorded speech samples. Similar to prior peer listeners, managers rated TH speakers more positively than highly intelligible CI users (CI-Hi), with less-intelligible CI users rated even more negatively. Managers for white-collar or high-communication jobs rated CI-Hi lower than did managers of blue-collar or low-communication jobs. Positive attitudes and experience with deafness improved ratings of CI users. While underlining the importance of intelligibility, these patterns also highlight the impact of listeners' underlying attitudes on their initial judgments of CI users, which could affect deaf employment opportunities. The study calls for workplace education about hearing loss and deaf communication to improve deaf inclusion and employment rates.

Growing evidence suggests that auditory processing ability may be a crucial determinant of language learning, including adult second language (L2) speech learning. The current study tested 47 Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language students to examine the extent to which two types of auditory processing, i.e., perceptual acuity and audio-motor integration, related to improvements in the comprehensibility and nativelikeness of L2 speech following two weeks of choral repetition training (i.e., shadowing). All participants' pronunciation proficiency became significantly more comprehensible over time, and the degree of improvement in the nativelikeness of pronunciation was tied to the ability to remember and reproduce sounds (i.e., audio-motor integration). The findings suggest that robust auditory-motor integration may play a key role in the acquisition of advanced-level L2 pronunciation proficiency (i.e., comprehensible and nativelike speech).

The current study investigated the effects of repetition on the learning of second language (L2) spoken word forms. Japanese university students learning L2 English were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions (one, three, and six exposures) and learned 40 words while hearing them and viewing their corresponding pictures. A picture-naming test was administered before, immediately after, and approximately one week after the treatment. The elicited speech samples were evaluated for two aspects of spoken vocabulary knowledge: pronunciation (accentedness and comprehensibility) and form-meaning connection (spoken form recall). Results showed that (a) the number of exposures positively affected measures of form-meaning connection and pronunciation immediately after the treatment, and (b) cognateness moderated how strongly repetition impacted the pronunciation of L2 words. Moderate learning gains occurred for comprehensibility after six exposures to new words. However, with six exposures, only small effects of repetition were observed for accentedness.

Whereas many scholars have emphasized the relative importance of "comprehensibility" as an ecologically valid goal for L2 speech training, testing, and development, eliciting listeners' judgments is time-consuming. Following calls for research on more efficient L2 speech rating methods in applied linguistics, and growing attention toward using machine learning on spontaneous unscripted speech in speech engineering, the current study examined the possibility of establishing quick and reliable "automated" comprehensibility assessments. Orchestrating a set of phonological (maximum posterior probabilities and gaps between L1 and L2 speech), prosodic (pitch and intensity variation), and temporal measures (articulation rate, pause frequency), the regression model significantly predicted how naïve listeners intuitively judged low, mid, high, and native-like comprehensibility among 100 L1 and L2 speakers' picture descriptions. The strength of the correlation (r = 0.823 for machine vs. human ratings) was comparable to naïve listeners' interrater agreement (r = 0.760 for humans vs. humans). The findings were successfully replicated when the model was applied to a new dataset of 45 L1 and L2 speakers (r = 0.827) and tested under a more freely constructed interview task condition (r = 0.809).

Although current approaches to second language (L2) pronunciation underscore that instruction should concentrate on pronunciation features that help learners be more intelligible (and not necessarily more native like), there is little empirical evidence as to what those features are, especially in languages other than English. To address this gap, this exploratory study examined phonetic predictors of listener-based dimensions--namely, intelligibility, comprehensibility, and foreign accent--in L2 Spanish speech. Samples were taken from 42 Spanish learners of varying proficiency while performing a picture description task, rated for global measures by 80 native Spanish listeners, coded for phonemic errors, and analyzed phonetically for pronunciation features that previous research has reported as challenging for English-speaking learners. Mixed-effects models were fit to the data to examine relationships between the phonetic features and the listener-based dimensions. Results revealed that rising intonation and diphthongization of word-final /o/ predicted intelligibility, rising intonation predicted comprehensibility, and a variety of features were associated with foreign accent. Overall, results confirmed that non-target-like production of L2 pronunciation, including areas known to be challenging for Spanish learners, does not necessarily lead to intelligibility and comprehensibility issues. Based on these findings, we make recommendations regarding what features should be prioritized in L2 pronunciation instruction.