The performance of automatic speech recognizers has been observed to be dramatically worse for speakers with non-native accents than for native speakers. This poses a problem for many speech recognition systems, which need to handle both native and non-native speech. The problem is further complicated by the large number of non-native accents, which makes modeling separate accents difficult, as...

The performance of automatic speech recognizers has been observed to be dramatically worse for speakers with non-native accents than for native speakers. This poses a problem for many speech recognition systems, which need to handle both native and non-native speech. The problem is further complicated by the large number of non-native accents, which makes modeling separate accents difficult, as...

This study investigates whether adult L2 learners’ experience with lexical tones and pitch accent in their first language facilitates the acquisition of L2 lexical tones. Three groups of beginning learners of Mandarin with different L1 prosodic experience: native Hmong (a tone language), native Japanese (a pitch and accent language), and native English (a non-tone, non-pitch accent language) sp...

While both insight and divergent thinking tasks are used to study creativity, there are reasons to believe that the two may call upon very different mechanisms. To explore this hypothesis we administered a verbal insight task (riddles) and a divergent thinking task (verbal fluency) to 16 native English speakers and 16 non-native English speakers after they underwent tDCS stimulation of the left...

This study was motivated by three factors, which also contribute to its significance for today’s academic writing. First, research articles are the significant means of communication between the writers all over the world. Second, persuasion and organization are crucial notions in academic writing where the authors have to consider the academic audiences and their needs.  Third, some writers ar...

We assess the use of hedge phrases in “affective” NLG texts. A simple experiment suggests non-native speakers prefer texts that contain hedge phrases, but native speakers prefer texts that do not contain hedge phrases.

The purpose of this study was to examine Cook’s (2003) ‘multiple competence’ by investigating backward pragmatic transfer (from L2 [English] to L1 [Persian]) in refusals to invitations. It explored participants’ frequency and content of refusal strategies in L1 regarding the status (i.e., power and distance) of interlocutors and the proficiency level of EFL learners. The participants were Persi...