ABOUT THE AUTHOR ELEONORA MARTIIAN

This article is based on the results of a project that analyses the linguistic development of English as a third language at different ages in a bilingual program. Specifically, it examines the influence of the age of introduction of English as a foreign language on general proficiency. Participants were 60 secondary school students who had Basque and/or Spanish as their first language and Basque as the language of instruction except for the subjects Spanish and English. All the students had studied English for six years but they had started learning English at different ages. Half of the students started learning English in grade 6 and the other half in grade 3. All the participants completed a battery of tests and questionnaires including different measures of proficiency in English: story telling, listening comprehension, composition, grammar and cloze test. The results indicate that older learners present a higher level of proficiency in English. The differences between older and younger students are discussed as related to several factors involved in foreign language learning.

This study examined the relationship of university students’ English proficiency to the age at which they started learning English in mainland China. With the data collected from 4530 students in 50 universities in 24 different provinces or municipalities, we employed a multiple regression model to investigate (a) whether the tested English score in the national entrance exam was predicted by the age at which the students started learning English and (b) whether the start age of English learning influences the association between time invested and learning outcome. Our results found that students who began learning English in third grade predicted significantly lower scores than those who started in kindergarten. However, no such significance of “advantage” was observed in earlier starts from kindergarten over Grade 1. Although the main effect of total learning duration was not significant, its interaction effect suggests that students who start learning later benefit more from longer durations of English input and tend to catch up quickly and show faster growth. These findings conflict with the ‘the earlier, the better’ assumption in language learning and further raise the question to what degree foreign language education should prioritize starting early versus focusing on quality and positive affect.

ABSTRACT: This paper reports on a comparative study of the use of simultaneous talk or ‘sync talk’ by Japanese and English speakers. The analysis is based on a concept of floor derived in part from Edelsky [Language in Society, 10, 383–421 (1981)], but adapted and developed for the purposes of the present study. Analysis of tape‐recorded and videotaped conversations among Japanese speakers (speaking Japanese) and among American speakers (speaking English) shows that, while both groups use sync talk, it is used with much greater frequency by the Japanese speakers. This can be shown by quantitative analysis. Furthermore, in addition to verbal simultaneous talk, Japanese speakers were found to engage in more nonverbal interactive behavior during conversation than their American counterparts. The final section of this paper discusses the implications of these findings for cross‐cultural communication and language learning.

For a language beginner there are many methods of attaining the goal of learning a second or foreign language, one of the most useful ones of which is to make a comparison in sentence structure between one's own native tongue and a second or foreign language. A learner will find out that there are some differences and similarities between the two languages by means of comparison, through which he/she will feel learning a foreign language is not so difficult as he/she imagines and give birth to a strong desire to learn a foreign language. For a Chinese speaker who is learning English as a foreign language, she/he may make great strides in English through the comparison of sentence structure between the two languages. On the other hand, this way can help the English speakers not only better understand but feel more at ease in Chinese learning as well. The overall purpose of this study is to seek to compare Chinese to English in basic sentence structure, including inflections, problems in subject-verb agreement, etc., to guide both the English beginners to take interest in English and the English speakers feel an interest in Chinese, and to facilitate successfully acquiring their aim of learning a second or foreign language.

This study examined the relative distances among English front vowels in a message produced by 47 Korean and American speakers from an internet speech archive in order to provide better pronunciation skills for Korean English learners. The Euclidean distances in the vowel space of F1 and F2 were measured among the front vowel pairs. The first vowel pair [i-ɛ] was set as the reference from which the relative distances of the other two vowel pairs were measured in percent in order to compare the vowel sounds among speakers of different vocal tract lengths. Results show that F1 values of the front vowels produced by the Korean and American speakers increased from the high front vowel to the low front vowel with differences among the groups. The Korean speakers generally produced the front vowels with smaller jaw openings than the American speakers did. Second, the relative distance of the high front vowel pair [i-ɪ] showed a significant difference between the Korean and American speakers while that of the low front vowel pair [ɛ-æ] showed a non-significant difference. Finally, the Korean speakers in the higher proficiency level produced the front vowels with higher F1 values than those in the lower proficiency level.

Getting acquainted with others is one of the most basic interpersonal communication events. Yet there has only been a limited number of studies that have examined variation in the interactional practices through which unacquainted persons become acquainted and establish relationships across speakers of the same language. The current study focuses on self-disclosure practices in initial interactions between first language speakers of English from Australia and the United States. It was found that while both American and Australian participants volunteered self-disclosures in the context of presentation-eliciting questions, there was a noticeable tendency for the American participants to self-disclose without being prompted by questions from the other participant. We also found that there was a tendency for the Australians to use positive assessments in response to self-disclosures less often and with a lesser degree of intensity than the American participants. These tendencies in self-disclosure practices are argued to reflect the ways in which underlying cultural premises are used by participants. However, given that a significant degree of inter-speaker and same-speaker variability was also observed, it is concluded that the study of pragmatic variation be situated on the level of interactional routines, relational dyads, and upwards that are engaged in particular social activities.

Purpose: To evaluate brain activation areas during the processing of languages in multilingual volunteers by functional MRI and to examine the differences between the mother and foreign languages. Materials and Methods: Nine multilingual (Korean, French, and English speaking) Korean individuals were enrolled in this study. Functional images were acquired during a lexical decision task (LDT) and picture naming task (PNT) in each of the Korean, French and English languages. The areas activated were analyzed topographically in each language and task, and compared between languages. Results: Activation was noted in Broca’s area, supramarginal gyrus, fusiform gyrus during the LDT. During the PNT, activation was noted in Broca’s area, left prefrontal area, cerebellum, right extrastriated cortex. While Broca’s area activation was observed for all languages during LDT, there was more activation in Broca’s area and additional activation in the right prefrontal area with foreign languages. During the PNT, there was more activation in the left prefrontal area with foreign languages. Conclusion: Broca’s area, which is known as a major language region, was activated by all languages and tasks. The brain activation areas were largely overlapping with the mother and foreign languages. However, there were wider areas of activation and additional different activation areas with foreign languages. These results suggest more cerebral effort during foreign language processing.

Reading is the action of extracting meaning from a text or passage and obtaining information from the author. Speaking is the practice that using words to interact with others. Than English language learning is a behavior that tends to have relative provisions and produces strong actions. The problem that discussed are focused on reading and speaking skills because students felt unconfident to read and speak English and them afraid of making mistakes in English learning.
 This research used quantitative correlation design to approach the data. The population was 642 students’ at the first grade in SMA Ibrahimy sukorejo. The sample selected as many as 62 students in the study was carried out using a side-by-side purposive technique while data collection was carried out by tests and observations the data analysis used Pearson product moments to analyze the relationship between reading and speaking skills with learning English in class 1 socio IV at SMA Ibrahimy Sukorejo of Situbondo.
 The research's findings indicate that students' reading and speaking skills have a positive and correlation significant of English learning and alternative hypothesis is accepted. Based on The score sig 1.000 ≤ 0.05. The Alternative Hypothesis (Ha) is accepted based on the results of the hypothesis testing, and based on the output of the analysis of the Pearson formula in SPSS, it has a significant score (Sig) of 0.24 and 1.000. Score Sig 0.05 indicates that the independent variable has an impact on the dependent variable. It shows there is a correlation between reading and speaking skills in the first grade of social 4 at SMA Ibrahimy Sukorejo students learning English as a foreign language.

ABSTRACTWe empirically evaluated three theoretical models—the threshold hypothesis, transfer theory, and time-on-task theory—for educating English language learners (ELLs), with a focus on the role of language factors in explaining achievement differences among ELLs. Participants were 196 sixth graders with Spanish language backgrounds who started learning English in kindergarten and then were continuously enrolled in a U.S. school. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the extent to which Spanish and English language and literacy—skills that are emphasized differentially in competing theories for educating ELLs—predict academic achievement assessed in English. Results indicated that Spanish literacy, over and above English language proficiency, was substantially predictive of academic achievement, consistent with the transfer theory. This model was a more focused version of the threshold hypothesis, in that the weaker predictor of Spanish oral language proficiency was excluded. Time-on task theory was not supported.

A Quanti-qualitative research was done at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador in Esmeraldas to know the relationship between cultural identity and accent in learners of English as a foreign language with the students from the Foreign and National Language Pedagogy career, the methods used were analysis, synthesis and hermeneutics, and the techniques of survey, reading passages and interview. The investigation was carried out from September/2024 to March/2025. A survey was conducted among 20 students. It revealed that students’ cultural identity has a big impact on students’ performance when they learn a second language. Besides, reading passages were presented to students and revealed that they had problems concerning speech production due to their natural accent and way of talking. There exists a relationship between cultural identity and accent when speaking in English, so they need a good pronunciation and accent if they want to be understood.

Presents the preliminary results from work in progress of a paired study of the acquisition of voiceless stops by Spanish speakers leaning English and American English speakers learning Spanish. For this study, the hypothesis was that the American speakers would have no difficulty suppressing the aspiration in Spanish unaspirated stops; the Spanish speakers would have difficulty acquiring the aspiration necessary for English voiceless stops, according to F.R. Eckman's (1977) markedness differential hypothesis. The null hypothesis was proved. The results also reveal that a simple report of means will not distinguish the speakers and the respective language learning situation; measurements must also include the range of acceptability of VOT (voice onset time) for phonetic segments.

The purpose of this article is to discuss Relation between Socio-Economic Status and Motivation of Learners in Learning English as a Foreign Language, in Iran. Motivation has played an important role in global language activity, and it has been as one of the real strategies used in foreign language setting in general and in English language as a foreign or second language in particular. We are, English language teacher have never neglected motivation and its relation with socio-economic status in teaching and learning English language in classrooms. In this work, investigators selected two hundred and thirty Iranian learners who studying in third grade high school in Boushehr city. In this article, both female and male students of ten high schools were participated in order to collect data. The one of instruments of this study is designed based on Garnder’s AMTB (1985). The AMTB questionnaire utilized in the study consists of the sections: Integrative component; Motivation component; Orientation component. Another instrument of this paper is designed based on Bourdieu’s (1986) in order to collect data from family socio-economic status of students. The finding of this paper indicated that most of the independent variables especially economical capital has appositive relation with motivation in EFL learning. In addition, the results of the study revealed noticeable evidence of the existence of a strong relationship between socio-economic status and motivation in language learning (English as a FL).

A surprising dissimilarity is attested in the perception of approximants by speakers of American and Standard Southern British English. Eighteen subjects (6 AE and 12 SSBE) performed an identification task in which they judged whether stimuli were more like /r/ or /w/. The stimuli comprised five sounds, copy-synthesised from a source /r/, where the values of F2 and F3 we adjusted to fall between the frequencies typical for ["turned r"] and [w]. The only significant difference between the two dialect groups' performance occurred with a token in which F3 was at a frequency typical for /r/ and F2 was lowered to that of /w/. AE and SSBE speakers identified this token as /r/ 90% and 59% of the time, respectively. This is unexpected as /r/ in both dialects is characterised by a low F3. However, the difference may be due to the existence of the 'labiodental' variant of /r/ in SSBE. As this variant does not have a low F3, SSBE speakers must tolerate a wider diversity of /r/-types than AE speakers. Therefore, the /r/ category in SSBE may be becoming increasingly defined by F2, rather than F3, which also has implications for the future production of /r/ in this accent

Previous work has found that interaction between speakers influences their production, in that phonetic similarity of the speakers to each other increases [Sancier and Fowler, J. Phonetics 25, 421–426 (1995); Pardo, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 2382–2393 (2006); and Tobin, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 125, 2757 (2009)]. These studies have mostly focused on segmental properties of speech. Little is known, however, about how prosodic properties of speech are affected in conversational interaction. An experiment is presented that examines the interaction between native speakers of British English and American English. Using the synchronous speech paradigm [Cummins, ARLO 3, 7–11 (2002) and Zvonik and Cummins, in Proceedings of the Eurospeech 2003 (2003), pp. 777–780] where two speakers read sentences at the same time, we examine how speakers influence each other at the prosodic level. Eight subjects (4 dyads), each consisting of one British and one American speaker, read the following: a short story that contained four words where the two dialects differ in stress pattern, 13 target words where the dialects differ in vowels, and 84 sentences with varying intonation patterns (question, statement, and focus). The goal was to examine how speakers adjust to each other’s speech, and whether certain prosodic properties are more susceptible to adjustment to the co-speaker’s production than others.

It is not often that there is a need to publish a book made up of chapters selected from three previously published books. The Croatian national research project Investigating learning and acquisition of foreign languages at an early school age (led by Mirjana Vilke) and its sequel Investigating learning and acquisition of foreign languages in primary school (led by Yvonne Vrhovac), with their unique experimental longitudinal design and involving four foreign languages, caught attention of the international audience from the very start. The interest has continued to this day.With the growing importance of English as a modern lingua franca teaching English to young learners has spread to practically all parts of the world. This global change, combined with a lack of systematic studies into early language learning in the formal setting, has made findings such as those of the Croatian research highly valuable.The three volumes describing early learning and teaching of English as a foreign language to Croatian young learners from which the chapters in this book were selected – all called Children and foreign languages – were published in 1993, 1995 and 2001, respectively. What is quite unique to the three volumes, and to the present book, is that they offer an in-depth view into early teaching and learning of English from two perspectives: the researchers’ perspective and the teachers’ perspective.