The purpose of the current longitudinal case report study was to document and investigate the phonological acquisition in one typically developing Kurdish-speaking boy during 10 months between the ages of 21 and 31 months. Speech samples were analyzed to document phonological acquisition, phonological accuracy, phonetic inventory, phonological mean length of utterance (PMLU), the proportion of whole-word proximity (PWP), the proportion of whole-word correctness (PWC), error patterns, syllabic shapes, consonant clusters acquisition, and speech intelligibility. All Kurdish vowels and consonants except trilled /r/ were acquired in a phonetic inventory by 31 months. He also acquired consonant clusters in the initial and final syllable position and produced all Kurdish syllable structures. The child's speech intelligibility increased over time. As anticipated, his phonological processes decreased over time but still continued to an older age. This study provides longitudinal information that can be implemented to demonstrate individual differences between children in the evaluation and treatment of Kurdish-speaking children.

Many professionals (e.g., doctors, teachers, etc.) provide input to parents on whether their children should be exposed to two languages. Some common misconceptions about bilingualism are so pervasive that they have affected the advice professionals give to bilingual parents. The primary purpose of this exploratory study was to describe bilingual parents’ perceptions about bilingualism (for children who are typically developing as well as for those who have disabilities) and their experiences with professionals advising monolingual language use in the household. Parents’ reports and perceptions of the professionals’ justification for this advice were explored. An anonymous online questionnaire was conducted to discover parent perceptions about bilingualism for typically developing children and children with disabilities. After applying post hoc exclusion criteria, 28 bilingual parents who also reported receiving language advice of monolingualism from a professional were included in the current study. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Results revealed that professionals advising against bilingualism included schoolteachers, pediatricians/doctors, speech-language pathologists, daycare teachers, preschool owners, otolaryngologists, and board-certified behavior analysts/registered behavior technicians. Professionals had several reasons for advising the use of only one language with their children, including fears of delays and confusion. Common misconceptions about bilingualism as a cause for language delay and confusion are still perpetuated in both professional and informal settings. Some professionals continue to recommend monolingualism despite evidence supporting the benefits of childhood bilingualism.

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the efficacy of ultrasound-based training in improving the pronunciation of English /l/ and /ɹ/ sounds in six Japanese speakers in Japan. Participants were trained using ultrasound tongue imaging and shadowing exercises, with half utilizing ultrasound feedback on their own. The analysis involved (i) SSANOVAs of tongue shapes of those sounds with root mean square (RMS) and (ii) pre- and post-training sound discrimination tasks with 795 native English listeners on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The results showed significant enhancement in the differentiation of /l/ and /ɹ/ tongue curves post-training, particularly in word-initial positions. Intelligibility notably improved among participants who showed greater increase of lingual contrast at posttest, indicating the training is especially beneficial for those with neutralized /l/ and /ɹ/ pre-training. However, perceived intelligibility increased more for /l/ than for /ɹ/, particularly in participants who utilized individually customized ultrasound feedback. A participant exhibited a delayed tongue tip raising for coda /l/, suggesting temporal coordination of multiple gestures can be learned via visuo-proprioceptive feedback with ultrasound on themselves. These promising findings necessitate further large-scale investigation.

This study investigates the assertion of Jenkins’ (2000) Lingua Franca Core (LFC) that correct vowel length is necessary for ELF intelligibility. Vowel durations of audio tokens from speakers of 9 languages, collected under ELF conditions, were measured. Talkers in this study produced longer vowel lengths for short vowels before voiced consonants than before unvoiced consonants; long vowels did not show the same lengthening effect. Eleven native speakers of Swedish listened to these recordings and indicated which vowel they heard. Listeners were more likely to choose a long vowel when the target vowel was long and a short vowel when the target vowel was short. Both the expected (long vs. short) length of the vowel and actual vowel duration played parts in explaining choice of a long or short vowel by participants, but not voicing of the following consonant. The LFC's contention that vowel length is important for ELF intelligibility is partially supported.

This article presents a multilingual online platform for foreign and second language (L2) pronunciation training. The platform contains several target languages and tailors its exercises to the learner's native language. The exercises address both segmental and prosodic pronunciation, and target learners at the beginner level. This article focuses on the principles that guide the creation of new language content for additional target languages. New language content will automatically make use of all features of the pronunciation training platform described in this article. We hope that this may make the development of online pronunciation training for a wider variety of languages more viable.

This study aims to explore the effect of explicit and implicit instructions on improving English pronunciation as far as stress production is concerned. 28 tertiary level Chinese EFL learners were divided equally into two groups and attended a pronunciation training course of eight 30-minute sessions using the two approaches in question respectively. All participants took a pretest before the treatment and the identical test on completion of the training as the posttest, consisting of a controlled reading task of a series of words followed by sentences/dialogues that particularly show tonic stress, contrastive stress, and emphatic stress. Participants’ recordings were analyzed acoustically on PRAAT. Readings of intensity peaks and F0 averages for each syllable at word-level and for each word at sentence-level were obtained. These values were then processed in order to obtain the difference in amplitude and F0 between stressed and unstressed syllables/words. The statistical results generated from a series of repeated measures ANOVAs revealed that, while both groups improved their pronunciation in stress production in the posttest, the improvement seemed more pronounced in the explicit group. The findings provided credence for the feasibility of instructing suprasegmental aspects of speech in language classrooms and especially highlighted the advantages of explicit instruction.

This study addresses deconstructing L2 English comprehensibility and accentedness. The topic has interested scholars as comprehensibility and accentedness have been found partly independent phenomena, and modern L2 teaching aims for comprehensible rather than native-like speech. It is hence important to establish the constituents of comprehensibility and focus on those when teaching and assessing students. Previous research on the topic has found suprasegmental features of speech to be more strongly associated with comprehensibility than segmental features. The present study seeks verification for these results by using novel L1 speaker groups. This is important because some speech features may be more prevalent in some accents than in others, causing stronger effects on comprehensibility. In this study, speech samples were elicited from 40 L1 Finnish and L1 Finland-Swedish teenagers with CEFR B1–B2 English proficiency. The speech samples were rated for comprehensibility and accentedness by English-speaking listeners ( n = 34) and analysed for twelve speech features, (e.g., speed of delivery, pausing, and segmental accuracy). Then, the speech data measurements were tested for connections with the ratings of comprehensibility and accentedness. The results strengthen our understanding that speech and articulation rate and mean length of run are important constituents of L2 English comprehensibility and accentedness and that segmental accuracy is more strongly linked with accentedness than comprehensibility. In addition, the study suggests that the link between pausing and L2 comprehensibility may be stronger than previously assumed.

This study investigated how Namibian English speakers produce vowel qualities in controlled speech. Participants were 14 proficient Namibian English speakers, who produced monosyllabic English CVC words, presented in orthographic form. The first and second formant values were extracted from the speakers’ productions to determine the vowel qualities in each word. The formant values produced by the Namibian English speakers were then compared to those produced by nine British English speakers, obtained from a previous study, in order to examine how Namibian English vowel qualities relate to British English vowel categories. The results showed a great deal of variation and overlap in the Namibian vowel categories, particularly in the close front vowels and open and close back vowels. This resulted in the formation of five to six clusters of vowel qualities. This is likely an effect of the varied linguistic backgrounds of the participants. Furthermore, the Namibian English vowels differed significantly from most British English vowels, especially in the F2 formant. Some commonalities with earlier research into Namibian English vowel qualities was found in the fronting, backing and mergers of some vowel categories.

This study investigated the effectiveness of a color-coding system on the sentence-construction skills of a Greek child with Down syndrome. A five-stage single-subject design was implemented, consisting of assessment, baseline, treatment, post-treatment and follow-up phases. The treatment protocol was devised based on the Colorful Semantics program (Bryan, 2003). It focused on the construction of SVO clauses in the context of a picture-description task. The sentence-building process involved the segmentation of the target utterance into its basic syntactic constituents, facilitated by color-coding information of the subject, the verb and the object, and the use of wh- questions. Evidence based on an extensive assessment battery guided the selection and the design of the treatment program. During the baseline, post-treatment and follow-up phases, the child described the same set of action images for comparison purposes, whereas the sentence-coding protocol was introduced and implemented within two 45-minute sessions in a single week. In the baseline session, the child produced a full utterance in response only to 2/16 target pictures. After two treatment sessions, the child was able to describe almost all target pictures using full sentences, while adopting the coding system independently, without the aid of the clinician. Additionally, at 8 weeks post-treatment, the child was still able to describe nearly 50% of the pictures correctly, while using full clauses without the aid of the sentence-coding system. Conclusively, these results not only demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed treatment protocol, but also its efficiency and long-term effects. Given that the protocol was applied to a single participant, findings cannot be generalized without conducting a more extensive investigation.