OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) perception abilities in quiet and noise of native Japanese listeners who acquired English late in life and lived in the United States. The study addressed two primary questions: (1) whether native Japanese listeners who developed some fluency in English showed poorer English speech perception abilit...

The present study examined to what extent proficiency in a non-native language influences speech perception in noise. We explored how English proficiency affected native (Swedish) and non-native (English) speech perception in four speech reception threshold (SRT) conditions, including two energetic (stationary, fluctuating noise) and two informational (two-talker babble Swedish, two-talker babb...

can attend an English school in some of their spare hours, and many of them do so ; but the greater number either learn English of their own accord before entering the college, or acquire it after passing their examination. The recent substantial advantages for the acquirement of such knowledge will, no doubt, spur the young hands ; and in future we expect very few men of this class will pass i...

second-language (l2) acquisition is generally thought to be constrained by maturational factors that circumscribe a critical period for native-like attainment. consistent with the maturational view are age effects among learners who begin l2 acquisition prior to, but not after, closure of the putative critical period. some studies indicate that native-like acquisition of a second language by le...

This study investigated the intelligibility of native and Mandarin-accented English speech for native English and native Mandarin listeners. The word-final voicing contrast was considered (as in minimal pairs such as `cub' and `cup') in a forced-choice word identification task. For these particular talkers and listeners, there was evidence of an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for ...

This study examined the production of English consonants by native speakers of Italian. The 240 adult native Italian speakers of English who participated had begun learning English when they emigrated to Canada between the ages of 2 and 23 years. Word-initial, word-medial and word-final tokens of English stops and fricatives were assessed through forced-choice judgments made by native English-s...

tsimpli and dimitrakopoulou (2007) observed that uninterpretable features are unavailable in second language (l2) acquisition after the critical period. in this paper, we verify this claim by providing evidence from persian speaking learners of english as an l2 on the status of resumptive pronouns (rps) as uniterpretable features. unlike english which does not allow rps, persian shows various b...

Data from Princeton University’s New Immigrant Survey were analyzed to examine the associations between immigrants’ media use and 3 indicators of acculturation—current English proficiency, preference to use English in interactions, and American political knowledge. Findings show that pre-immigration uses of English language TV, radio, and print media and post-immigration use of English language...