Journal articles on the topic 'Italian language, pronunciation'

The article deals with the representation of Italian pronunciation in five contemporary dictionaries for young Slovenian learners. As the use of a dictionary not only stimulates the development of lexical competence, but can also serve as a useful means for pronunciation learning, the article investigates five categories representing phonetic-phonological features in a dictionary: introduction to phonetics/phonology (e.g. a pronunciation guide), phonetic transcription, phonemes, consonant length and accent. The representation of these features in a dictionary for young learners should be clear and coherent, and in some cases a dictionary (especially a dictionary intended for the youngest users) should also featureaudio pronunciations. The five dictionaries analysed are fragmentary with regard to the pronunciation: only one dictionary includes audio recordings (although the relation between the spelling and the pronunciation remains unclear, as it does not include a pronunciation guide); two dictionaries include deficient phonological transcriptions and incomplete pronunciation guides; one dictionary contains only the Italian alphabet with corresponding phonemes, while another dictionary is without any elements that could familiarize a Slovenian learner with Italian pronunciation.

This article is an attempt to review the most recent phonetic literature on the application of questionnaires in phonetic studies. In detail, we review the scope of pronunciation questionnaire-based surveys with respect to Polish and non-Polish students of English. In addition, this paper aims to examine European students’ beliefs and attitudes towards their own English pronunciation and is also intended to provide some arguments for or against the use of foreign-accented rather than native models of pronunciation in phonetic instruction. The data come from three groups of informants, namely: Italian, Spanish and Polish students of English. With respect to foreign, non-Polish respondents, the study was conducted at the University of Salento in Italy and the University in Vigo, Spain within the framework of the Erasmus Teacher Mobility Programme in two consecutive academic years: i.e. 2010/2011 and 2011/2012. As regards Polish respondents, our research involved subjects from six different tertiary schools, i.e. five universities and one college, located in various parts of Poland. On balance, the results of our study give an insight into the phonetic preferences of adult European advanced students of English with reference to the importance of good native-like pronunciation, the aims of pronunciation study, factors contributing to phonetic progress and their self-study pronunciation learning strategies. Our findings point to the fact that students of English wish to speak with good pronunciation, set a high native-like standard for themselves, report having benefited from their phonetic instruction and exposure to native English and that they work on their pronunciation by means of various, mostly cognitive, strategies. Rather than casting new light on teaching pronunciation, the outcome of this study is consistent with the findings of other research on foreign students’ choice of preferred pronunciation model, which is undeniably native rather than foreign-accented.

This article presents the results of the experimental phonetic study on the pronunciation of vowel sounds in Spanish, Italian and French languages of Mongolian students from the A1 level program at the National University of Mongolia. The study responded to the researchers’ concern to find out which the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of the tree foreign languages by Mongolian students was measured and analyzed using the Praat program. The results of the quantitative research were compared with the standard pronunciation parameters of the native speakers of the respective languages. The results of the study show that the phonetic characteristics of the learner’s mother tongue influence the way of pronunciation of a foreign language. The study shows that practice focused on the phonetic characteristics of the foreign language needed, taking into account the language learning habits and the characteristics of the student’s articulation activities in order to obtain the correct way of pronunciation of sounds of foreign languages. Therefore, it is important not to neglect phonetic content in the teaching methods and materials, and there is a need to increase phonetics and pronunciation exercises in seminars and practice classes. Монгол суралцагчдын испани, итали, франц хэлний эгшиг авианы дуудлагын туршилт судалгаа Хураангуй: МУИС-ийн гадаад хэлний хөтөлбөрийн испани, итали, франц хэлийг А1 түвшинд сурч буй 60 монгол суралцагчийн эгшиг авианы дуудлагын туршилт авиа зүйн судалгааны үр дүнг энэ өгүүлэлд тусгав. Монгол суралцагч гадаад хэлний авиаг хэрхэн дуудаж байгааг Праат программ ашиглан тодорхойлж, тоон судалгааны үр дүнг эх хэлтний жишиг дуудлагын үзүүлэлттэй харьцуулж, дүн шинжилгээ хийв. Судалгааны үр дүн эх хэлтний жишиг дуудлагын үзүүлэлтээс зөрүүтэй байгаа нь суралцагчдын төрөлх хэлний авианы өгүүлүүрийн онцлог гадаад хэлээр зөв дуудахад нөлөөлдөг нь батлагдсан. Судалгааны үр дүн гадаад хэлний зөв дуудлагыг хэвшүүлэхийн тулд авиа зүйн онцлог шинж, тухайн суралцагчийн хэл сурах дадал, өгүүлүүрийн онцлогийг харгалзан нэмэлт дадлага хийлгэх хэрэгцээ байгааг харуулж байна. Тиймээс гадаад хэл сурах, сургах арга зүй, сургалтын хэрэглэгдэхүүнд авиа зүйн агуулгыг орхигдуулахгүй байх нь чухал бөгөөд семинар, дадлагын хичээлээр хийх авиа, дуудлагын дасгалыг нэмэгдүүлэх шаардлагатай байна. Түлхүүр үг: авиа зүй, туршилтын арга, дуудлага, эгшиг авиа, монгол, испани, итали, франц.

Improving the feedback quality of a computer-based system for pronunciation training requires rather detailed and precise knowledge about the place and the nature of actual mispronunciations in a student’s utterance. To be able to provide this kind of information, components for the automatic localisation and correction of pronunciation errors have been developed. This work was part of a project aimed at integrating state-of-the-art speech recognition technology into a pronunciation training environment for adult, intermediate level learners. Although the technologies described here are in principle valid for any language pairs, the current system focuses on Italian and German learners of English.

The present study investigates the acoustic features of Italian sibilant fricatives (/s/, /z/ and /ʃ/) in the speech of L1 Spanish learners. Segmental duration, degree of voicing and place of articulation of learners’ productions are analysed alongside those of a control group of L1 Italian speakers to investigate the fine-grained phonetic differences between native and non-native pronunciation. Results from a quantitative analysis suggest that factors such as the degree of typological markedness of the phoneme and the influence of the L1 in perception and production affect L2 pronunciation to a different extent for each of the target sounds.

The present study investigates the acoustic features of Italian sibilant fricatives (/s/, /z/ and /ʃ/) in the speech of L1 Spanish learners. Segmental duration, degree of voicing and place of articulation of learners’ productions are analysed alongside those of a control group of L1 Italian speakers to investigate the fine-grained phonetic differences between native and non-native pronunciation. Results from a quantitative analysis suggest that factors such as the degree of typological markedness of the phoneme and the influence of the L1 in perception and production affect L2 pronunciation to a different extent for each of the target sounds.

This paper reports on a study into the inter-relationships amongst foreign language pronunciation, mimicry ability and a range of personality and attitudinal factors. It will begin with a brief review of studies into affective influences on pronunciation ability (Arnold 1999, Hu & Reiterer 2009) and research into the importance of mimicry talent (Jilka 2009; Piske, MacKay & Flege 2001). This will be followed by a short description of a pilot study carried out prior to the main experiment. In the main study, a group of Polish learners of English completed a number of mimicry tasks in three languages: Italian, Dutch and Chinese, as well as a narration task in English. Mimicry performance and English pronunciation were then assessed by native speakers and compared. Participants also completed a questionnaire concerning their feelings about the languages they were to mimic and a second questionnaire designed to detect affective factors such as language learning anxiety, as well as attitudes towards the pronunciation of Polish and English. The pilot study suggested that the perceived attractiveness of the foreign language to be mimicked did not affect the performance of most participants, and that mimicry skill was fairly constant across languages. However, those who were particularly concerned about their personal appearance showed greater fluctuation in their ability to mimic and their performance appeared to be influenced by their attitude towards the language. This is referred to by the author as the Cecily effect. That study also confirmed the results of my previous experimental work showing that mimicry skill is correlated to some degree with English language pronunciation and that both pronunciation and mimicry are negatively affected by high levels of anxiety. The main study sets out to investigate whether or not these conclusions hold true for a larger sample population and also seeks to determine the effect of confidence and willingness to take risks on scores for both foreign language pronunciation and mimicry exercises.

ABSTRACTIn spite of burgeoning evidence that the orthographic forms (“spellings”) of second language (L2) words affect L2 learners’ pronunciation, little is known about the pronunciation of known words in experienced learners. In a series of four studies, we investigated various orthographic effects on the pronunciation of L2 English words in instructed learners with 10 years’ experience of learning English. Participants were native users of the phonologically transparent Italian writing system. Study 1 investigated the pronunciation of “silent letters,” using a word-reading task and a word-repetition task. Study 2 examined the effects of vowel spelling on vowel duration, namely, whether L2 speakers produce the same target vowel as longer when it is spelled with a vowel digraph than with a singleton letter. Study 3 explored the effects of the morphemic spelling of the past tense marker <ed> using a verb paradigm-production task. Study 4 tested whether L2 speakers produce homophonic words differently when they are spelled differently. Results confirmed that orthographic forms affect experienced instructed learners’ pronunciation of known words, albeit less so in immediate word repetition than in reading-aloud tasks.

Italians' zeal for lacing their language with English words is well-known and on-going. Both everyday conversation and the mass media make widespread use of English terms and expressions, but their unphonetic spelling and pronunciation – full of insidious traps round every syllable – can create misunderstanding, confusion, and much humour, because Italians often tend to pronounce these international imports as they are written, much as they do in their mother tongue: either that, or they over-generalize the rules they they've learnt. A TV programme may be interrupted to announce a news flash that however comes out meatier, as ‘news flesh’. When giving business news, the phrase fiscal drag (whatever that may mean) becomes a truly obfuscating ‘fiscal drug’. And fashion news informs us of an exclusive ‘pullover’ by Missoni, whose stress shift unfortunately turns it into an order (from policeman to motorist): ‘pull over’.

AbstractMeasures of second language (L2) learners’ vocabulary size have been shown to correlate with language proficiency in reading, writing and listening skills, and vocabulary tests are sometimes used for placement purposes. However, the relation between learners’ vocabulary knowledge and their speaking skills has been less thoroughly investigated, and even less so in terms of pronunciation. In this article, we compare vocabulary and pronunciation measures for 25 Italian instructed learners of L2 French. We measure their receptive (Dialang score) and productive (vocd-D, MTLD) vocabulary size, and calculate the following pronunciation indices: acoustic distance and overlap of realizations for selected L2 French vowel pairs, ratings of nasality for ratings of foreign-accentedness, fluency metrics. We find that vocabulary measures show low to medium correlations with fluency metrics and ratings of foreign-accentedness, but not with vowel metrics. We then turn our attention to the impact of research methods on the study of vocabulary and pronunciation. More specifically, we discuss the possibility that these results are due to pitfalls in vocabulary and pronunciation indices, such as the failure of Dialang to take into account the effect of L1-L2 cognates, and the lack of measures for evaluating consonants, intonation and perception skills.

Some studies on training effects of pronunciation instruction have claimed that the training of prosodic features has effects at the segmental level and that the training of segmental features has effects at the prosodic level, with greater effects reported when prosody is the main focus of training. This paper revisits this claim by looking at the effects of pronunciation training on Italian learners of German. In a pre-post-test design, we investigate acoustic changes after training in learners’ productions of two features regarded as prosodic and two features regarded as segmental. The prosodic features were the pitch excursion of final rises in yes–no questions and the reduction in schwa epenthesis in word-final closed syllables. The segmental features were final devoicing and voice onset time (VOT) in plosives. We discuss the results for three groups (with segmental training, with prosody training, and with no pronunciation training). Our results indicate that there are positive effects of prosody-oriented training on the production of segments, especially when training focuses on syllable structure and prosodic prominence (stress and accent). They also indicate that teaching segmental and prosodic aspects of pronunciation together is beneficial.

The article is an analysis of national stereotypes formed in Italy regarding the Chinese people. Italian anecdotes containing the lexemes “China”, “Chinese”, “Chinaman/Chinese woman” are selected as materials for the study. The author identifies the general characteristics of Italian anecdotes about the Chinese, studies the linguistic features of these texts and makes their thematic classification depending on the stereotype involved in them. The main themes of the anecdotes are peculiarities of gastronomic traditions and food habits of the Chinese; highly developed industry and a wide range of consumer goods; anthropological features of the Chinese people; copying of foreign brands by the Chinese; the number of Chinese in relation to the world population; personal qualities of the Chinese people; the influence of native language norms on the pronunciation of Italian words.The author concludes that the comic effect of Italian anecdotes is based mainly on the hyperbolisation of certain character traits of the Chinese, their patterns of behaviour and certain cultural and linguistic norms inherent in this nation, but not causing understanding among Italians. At the same time, it is noted that the humorous discourse does not contain aggression or insults, which makes it possible to conclude that Italians have a friendly perception of the Chinese people.

This paper is a condensed presentation of the phonetics and phonology of Standard Italian, compared to the most prestigious local accents, viz. those of Florence, Milan and Rome. Historically based on the Florentine pronunciation, and traditionally identified with it, Standard Italian is nowadays used by trained speakers such as stage actors and (but less and less so) radio and TV speakers. The present paper aims at depicting the most salient features of Standard Italian, still a matter of primary reference in language courses, comparing them with the characteristic features of the three most prominent local varieties, with which the foreign learner is most likely to be confronted. All traditional (and sometimes widely debated) issues of Italian phonetics/phonology are addressed in the most ecumenical setting possible.

In Italian, developing readers exhibit lexicality and frequency effects, and are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. But how do bilingual children with different ages of first L2 (Italian) exposure and L2 vocabulary sizes read L2 words and pseudowords? Two reading aloud experiments investigated lexicality, frequency and stress assignment effects in fourth- and fifth-grade bilinguals and monolinguals. Naming latencies and pronunciation accuracy were analyzed. In Experiment 1, effects of lexicality and frequency and between-group differences emerged. In Experiment 2, the word frequency effect was confirmed. Late bilinguals, characterized by a smaller L2 vocabulary size, were less accurate than early bilinguals and monolinguals in assigning non-dominant stress. As with monolinguals, lexical information seems to be employed when reading Italian as a second language. Furthermore, bilingual readers are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. Stress assignment is affected by the L2 lexicon size of second-language learners.

Polish is a language where true geminates appear and the occurrence of a double consonant letter in spelling corresponds with double or at least prolonged consonant articulation regardless of the morphological structure of the word. The above principle also concerns most borrowings, such as the English word ‘hobby’, for instance. In English, true geminates do not occur and a morpheme-internal double consonant letter is only a fairly reliable indication of the way the preceding vowel should be pronounced. This discrepancy may lead to negative transfer in Polish learners of English. Our recent research of native Polish speech (Rojczyk and Porzuczek, in press) generally confirmed the results reported by Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996), among others, who found geminates to be 1.5-3 times longer than singletons. In our study we investigate the influence of double consonant letters on L1 and English pronunciation of Polish learners. They read trochaic family names containing intervocalic <nn>. Each name is preceded by a first name suggesting the nationality (Polish, English, German or Italian) of the person mentioned. By placing each tested item in a Polish and an English semantically and rhythmically equivalent sentences (This is .../To jest...), we measure the level of consonant length variation with respect to the language in which the potential geminates appear, the language context and the learning experience of the students. In this way we collect evidence and formulate observations concerning the learners’ awareness of the status of geminates in various languages and the probability of transfer in EFL learning.

In this article, we explore the possibility of evaluating L2 pronunciation, and, more specifically, L2 vowels, without referring to a native model, i.e., intrinsically. Instead of comparing L2 vowel productions to native speakers’ productions, we use Pillai scores to measure the overlap between target vowel categories in L2 English (/iː/ — /ɪ/, /ɑː/ — /æ/, /ɜː/ — /ʌ/, /uː/ — /ʊ/) for L1 French, L1 Spanish, and L1 Italian learners (n = 40); and in L2 French (/y/ — /u/, /ø/ — /o/, /ø/ — /e/, /ɛ˜/ — /e /, /ɑ˜/ — /a/, /ɔ˜/ — /o/) for L1 English, L1 Spanish, and L1 Italian learners (n = 48). We assume that a greater amount of overlap within a contrast indicates assimilated categories in a learner’s production, whereas a smaller amount of overlap indicates the establishment of phonological categories and distinct realisations for members of the contrast. Pillai scores were significant predictors of native ratings of comprehensibility and/or nativelikeness for many of the contrasts considered. Despite some limitations and caveats, we argue that Pillai scores and similar methods for the intrinsic evaluation of L2 pronunciation can be used, (i) to avoid direct comparisons of L2 users’ performance with native monolinguals, following recent trends in SLA research; (ii) when comparable L1 data are not available; (iii) within longitudinal studies to track the progressive development of new phonological categories.

Research shows that the orthographic forms (“spellings”) of second language (L2) words affect speech production in L2 speakers. This study investigated whether English orthographic forms lead L2 speakers to produce English homophonic word pairs as phonological minimal pairs. Targets were 33 orthographic minimal pairs, that is to say homophonic words that would be pronounced as phonological minimal pairs if orthography affects pronunciation. Word pairs contained the same target sound spelled with one letter or two, such as the /n/ in finish and Finnish (both /ˈfɪnɪʃ/ in Standard British English). To test for effects of length and type of L2 exposure, we compared Italian instructed learners of English, Italian-English late bilinguals with lengthy naturalistic exposure, and English natives. A reading-aloud task revealed that Italian speakers of EnglishL2 produce two English homophonic words as a minimal pair distinguished by different consonant or vowel length, for instance producing the target /ˈfɪnɪʃ/ with a short [n] or a long [nː] to reflect the number of consonant letters in the spelling of the words finish and Finnish. Similar effects were found on the pronunciation of vowels, for instance in the orthographic pair scene-seen (both /siːn/). Naturalistic exposure did not reduce orthographic effects, as effects were found both in learners and in late bilinguals living in an English-speaking environment. It appears that the orthographic form of L2 words can result in the establishment of a phonological contrast that does not exist in the target language. Results have implications for models of L2 phonological development.

В статье описываются современные процессы, связанные с нормализационной деятельностью на территории Франции и Италии, которые влияют на адаптацию англицизмов к IT-терминосистемам французского и итальянского языка. Рассматривается адаптация англицизмов, относящихся к таким структурным типам, как простое слово, сочетание слов, производное слово, сокращение. Сопоставительный анализ состава терминосистем французского и итальянского языков показывает сходство в адаптации структуры простого слова. Составные англицизмы представлены в сопоставляемых терминосистемах обоих языков, при этом в процессе адаптации они могут как сохранять свою форму, так и частично изменять ее согласно правилам принимающего языка. В обоих языках англицизмы-производные слова могут адаптироваться с помощью суффиксов или префиксов принимающего языка, также констатируется сходство в сохранении структуры англицизма-сокращения. Количественный подсчет показывает сходство в представленности названных типов в обоих языках: большинство англицизмов составляют производные слова, образованные суффиксальным способом, далее располагаются сокращения, сочетания слов, потом простые и префиксальные заимствования. Различие между IT-терминосистемами итальянского и французского языков заключается в том, что адаптация с сохранением структуры исходных терминов в большей степени характерна для IT-терминосистемы итальянского языка. Кроме того, во французском языке меняется произношение заимствованного из английского языка IT-термина в соответствии с произносительными нормами французского языка, при этом грамматическая структура английского языка редко сохраняется без изменений, тогда как в итальянском языке в случае сохранения грамматической структуры фонетическая форма не изменяется. The article describes the modern processes associated with the normalization activities in the territory of France and Italy, which affect the English borrowings adaptation to French and Italian IT-terms systems. We describe the adaptation of English borrowings related to such structural types as simple word, word combination, derived word, abbreviation. A comparative analysis of the French and Italian terminological systems shows similarities in the adaptation of simple words. The word combinations are represented in both languages, they can retain their form or partially change it according to adaptation models of French and Italian language. In both languages, derived words can be adapted with suffixes or prefixes as well as there is a similarity in maintaining the structure of English derived words. The calculation shows similarities in the representation of these types in both languages: the largest number of English borrowings is represented by derived words formed by suffix, followed by abbreviations, word combinations, simple words and prefix borrowing. The difference between Italian and French IT terminology is that adaptation with the preservation of the original term structure is more typical of the Italian IT terminology. The pronunciation of the borrowed IT-term changes in accordance with the French pronunciation norms, while the English grammatical structure of the term is rarely kept unchanged. In the Italian language the phonetic form does not change in case the grammatical structure is preserved.

New technologies have changed the methodology applied to the teaching of foreign languages. Moreover, teachers do not use them sufficiently. The oral language should gain more ground because communication uses speech more than writing. Each language has its phonetic, phonological and prosodic system. These features become important during a foreign language learning process, since the learner tends to assimilate the foreign sound to the sounds of his/her mother tongue because 1) his/her ear is not able to distinguish them, and 2) the brain couples the sound with the written sign. By following a traditional methodology, students achieve an adequate level in constructing correct sentences, but their oral performance remains poor. New technologies help students to practice the new sounds more precisely, thus, provoking the muscle of the phonetic apparatus to become so stretched to be able to produce them easily. Talking in a new language is the equivalent of making a physical exercise; it is a question not only of new commands received by the brain, but also of a flexible vocal tract. It is a physical, psychological and mental process, which, considering Italian and English, becomes even more difficult, because the two alphabets have more or less the same written signs (a,b,c, d, t, etc.). Rather, if we consider an Italian student of Arabic the problems are different for two reasons: 1) the letters, having different shape, avoid overlapping, so that the student 2) has only to develop the muscles for the emphatic and guttural letters (ع غ ص ض ط ظ). His/her mind has not the duty to cancel the sounds of the mother tongue and to substitute them with a new pronunciation. In this study, my challenge is to give much more emphasis to phonetics, phonology, stress and intonation, so to facilitate interaction during a speech act using real and not a limited classroom language. For these reasons, I planned a specific course in pronunciation, helped by spectrographs and laryngographs, for a separate group of students with the purpose to stress phonetics and phonology more than grammar. The results obtained after one year, at last, gave voice to my suppositions. Keywords: methodology, foreign languages, phonetics, phonology, prosody

The aim of this article is to identify the pragmatic functions of code-switching to the Sicilian dialect of the Italian language in the autobiography of the contemporary Italian writer G. Culicchia. Code switches studied by contact linguistics are the embedded language units of different levels in the matrix language utterance. The author uses I. Y. Mishintseva and G. N. Chirsheva's classification of pragmatic functions for studying code switches in literary works. The foreign language units in G. Culicchia’s work perform two groups of functions: functions characteristic of fiction (creating the effect of communication in the Embedded Language in the literary work) and those characteristic of spoken language (topic-related, metalinguistic, citing and emotional functions). The topic-related function of codeswitches is used to convey Sicilian culture realities as well as the direct speech of the author’s Sicilian relatives. The metalinguistic function of the code-switches under analysis involves introducing the reader to pronunciation and lexical features of the Sicilian dialect. The citing function means the author’s citing of Sicilian proverbs and sayings. The emotional function consists in expressing the author’s emotions and feelings towards Sicily and Sicilian relatives. Thus, the pragmatic functions show that the code-switches under analysis are the source of subjective and objective information in the novel. The Sicilian code-switches have a graphic feature in the novel: all of them are printed in italics. The italic type as a graphic stylistic device is used to logically separate Sicilian words from Italian lexis, to convey emotions, to separate the author’s Italian speech from the other characters’ Sicilian dialect.

Alphabetic orthographies show more or less ambiguous relations between spelling and sound patterns. In transparent orthographies, like Italian, the pronunciation can be predicted from the spelling and vice versa. Opaque orthographies, like English, often display unpredictable spelling–sound correspondences. In this paper we present a computational analysis of word-initial bi-directional spelling–sound correspondences for Dutch, English, French, German, and Hungarian, stated in entropy values for various grain sizes. This allows us to position the five languages on the continuum from opaque to transparent orthographies, both in spelling-to-sound and sound-to-spelling directions. The analysis is based on metrics derived from information theory, and therefore independent of any specific theory of visual word recognition as well as of any specific theoretical approach of orthography.

This work is the result of personal observations of university Albanian students` studying Albanian language, with different times of residence in Italy, and contact between the Albanian and Italian language, too. My contacts with the students are grouped in two situations: those at work as lectures, seminars, receptions and examinations, and casual. It can be seen big differences in the use of two languages in these different situations. In the first group, at work, the use of the Albanian language is certainly much more correct and various forms of "mixing" almost non-existent. In the second group, especially among people very close or in the presence of Italian friends, it can be seen immediately code changes between Albanian and Italian. The communication code changing is under the influence of various factors. It is clear that reference students use Italian for formal use, for example, in their communications with teachers, while the Albanian in informal situations as at home and more. Thus, the choice of language is influenced by situational factors, like the stylistic choices that people make in a single language. Moreover, they with the language choice can move and change the tone of a situation, from formal to informal, too. These situations encountered made the basis for beginning the study. The examples cited in this paper are collected and classified, in accordance with the standard methodology, into various groups according to the probable cause for the change of the code of communication: Code changes used mainly in Italy but also in Albania; Code changes related to technology; Code changes related to the pronunciation; Code changes related to the characteristics of the country where they stay; Translations. Certainly, this first phase of research has shown the clear presence of code changes in the Albanian language. These phenomena are of various types and of varying importance: in a group of individuals it is a strong influence of the territory, Italy, for this reason we can presume that, back in Albania, the students will lose it; in another group of individuals it seems that it could turn, maybe, into loans. The last category includes some words that reflect deficiencies in the lexicon of the Albanian language, but also others that may gain ground thanks to their peculiarities. The results presented in this work should not be generalized, they only aspire to expand our understanding to the linguistic and social phenomena of contact between two languages such as Albanian and Italian, and in general, on the subject of bilingualism and the effects of the stay for a long time in Italy of Albanian people.

Little attention is paid to prosody in second language (L2) instruction, but computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) offers learners solutions to improve the perception and production of L2 suprasegmentals. In this study, we extend with acoustic analysis a previous research showing the effectiveness of self-imitation training on prosodic improvements of Japanese learners of Italian. In light of the increased degree of correct match between intended and perceived pragmatic functions (e.g., speech acts), in this study, we aimed at quantifying the degree of prosodic convergence towards L1 Italian speakers used as a model for self-imitation training. To measure convergence, we calculated the difference in duration, F0 mean, and F0 max syllable-wise between L1 utterances and the corresponding L2 utterances produced before and after training. The results showed that after self-imitation training, L2 learners converged to the L1 speakers. The extent of the effect, however, varied based on the speech act, the acoustic measure, and the distance between L1 and L2 speakers before the training. The findings from perceptual and acoustic investigations, taken together, show the potential of self-imitation prosodic training as a valuable tool to help L2 learners communicate more effectively.

Abstract The purpose of this work was to experiment a didactic method to enhance learning of L2 by using psychomotor development in a first class of an Italian primary school. Two fundamental questions were posed at the outset of the project: a) can activities based on psycho-motor tasks enhance target language vocabulary acquisition in a group of first graders?; b) can creating a reggae/hip-hop song, improve pronunciation and retention of basic target language vocabulary? The target sample, consisted of 66 children from first grade, was divided into two groups (control vs experimental group). The protocol contents were taught over a period of 20 weeks and were closely related to those of the program of English. The significance of score differences in the entrance test and the final test was quantified through the analysis of the variance. The analysis of the results showed an improvement in the experimental group compared to the control group with respect to the acquisition and retention of L2 vocabulary. On the other hand, the data regarding pronunciation of the target language vocabulary tell a different story, with no significant difference emerging between the two groups. This experimental project allowed us to verify how physical activity and play, used as the primary teaching tool, can enhance L2 learning in primary school.

Despite the ubiquitousness of Lyric Diction Instructors (LDIrs) in both the academic and professional opera world, there remains a dearth of research examining the approaches and methods used for Lyric Diction Instruction (LDIn) as well the nonexistence of university programmes through which LDIrs gain profession-specific qualifications and/or certifications. Owing to this paucity of LDIn educational background accreditation and accountability, LDIrs in both educational institutions and opera houses are typically comprised of opera coaches, present or former opera singers, or "native speakers" of the target language. Using the qualitative framework of action research, the study empirically tested my five session, Italian Lyric Diction Course for Opera Singers by examining the validity and efficaciousness of its design, materials, course content, and pedagogical approach of explicit articulatory instruction. Rather than focusing on the empirical testing itself, this article focuses on the underlying pedagogical framework, i.e., The Seven Point Circle (7PC) and the ethical code of conduct, i.e., The Twelve Point Circle (12PC) derived from my M.A. thesis study. Data collection instruments included: semi-structured participant interviews, audio recording, transcribing of the classes, and an invited panel of eight observer-feedback experts from the fields of foreign language pedagogy, pronunciation instruction, and Italian language instruction.

Abstract. Hungarian, or "Magyar", is a Finno-Ugric language that is different from the other European languages. Despite existing within an Indo-European environment and experiencing some Latinization (Indo-Europeanization), it has retained its distinct characteristics. Nevertheless, it also has some linguistic features, such as a phonetic structure that carries no specific sounds that cannot be easily uttered by a French, Italian, German, or English speaker, rendering it relatively easier for speakers of some Indo-European languages. On the other hand, Morocco has a multilingual environment, with Standard Arabic and Berber (Amazigh) as official languages, along with French and dialectal Arabic. Thus, the coexistence of these languages allowed for a bilingual representation of place names; an Arabic endonym and a French exonym. Both variants hold an official status and are used in maps and road signs. Therefore, the goal of this study is to record Moroccans' pronunciation of Hungarian place names. It is worth investigating whether such Arabic speakers with French knowledge will have difficulty reading the Hungarian toponyms and what is the reasoning behind such difficulty.

Several studies examining Italian have shown that morphemes are effective processing units in reading aloud. Faster naming times and greater accuracy have been found in the reading of pseudowords consisting of real root + real suffix, than for matched pseudowords not made up of such morphemes. The results of this study suggest that the root is of primary importance in the reading aloud of Italian pseudowords. Faster naming times were found both for real root + real suffix pseudowords and for real root + non-suffix pseudowords than for pseudowords which did not include any morpheme. This held true for a stimulus list consisting mostly of words (Experiment 1), and for one consisting of pseudowords only (Experiment 2). Real root + non-suffix pseudowords were read as fast as pseudowords that were fully parsable into morphemes (root + suffix), suggesting that a headstart to a morphemic route can be provided by the root only. However, root + non-suffix pseudowords were pronounced less accurately than root + suffix combinations, indicating that the identification of a root before initiating pronunciation may conflict with the full elaboration of vocal output. Experiment 3 investigated the roles of root and suffix. An effect of suffix on naming latencies was observed, but it was not as strong as the root effect. Taken together, the results suggest that roots and suffixes are accessed and activated in a cascaded manner during the reading aloud of Italian.

Recent neurological breakthroughs in our understanding of the Critical Period Hypothesis and prosody may suggest strategies on how phonics instruction could improve L2 language learning and in particular phoneme/grapheme decoding. We therefore conducted a randomised controlled-trial on the application of prosody and phonics techniques, to improve phoneme-grapheme decoding, to test these findings on a typical late high school cohort of Italians. A trial group of 24, 17-18 year-olds followed a short 10-week, 20-hour trial course and were compared to a control (14 students) preparing for the Cambridge First Certificate exam. The trial group were given phoneme/grapheme decoding material and event-related-potential reinforcement in substitution of traditional exam practice, taught from a current textbook and web-site material. Results showed that the trial-group significantly improved in both orthography (p=0.048) and pronunciation (p=0.000), in particular in the long vowel and digraph categories. Furthermore, they significantly improved in a shortened interview category (p=0.024), for lexis, discourse and pronunciation. Due to the trial’s small size, we concentrated on reducing type 2 statistical errors to a minimum. We believe that our results confirmed the neurological findings of the use of prosody in TESOL and confirmed the validity of phonics techniques for L2 teaching. We also consider that the results are sufficiently robust to warrant a full-sized trial of phonics and prosody as a valid TESOL teaching technique

Objective of the research is to find out structural-semantic and functionally stylistic features of the borrowed vocabulary in poetry by Lina Kostenko. Methods. Theoretical — analysis and synthesis of literature of the researched issue; practical — to obtain factual materials and based on them make conclusions regarding structural-semantic and functionally stylistic features of the borrowed vocabulary in oeuvre by Lina Kostenko. Results. Language (and therefore speech) is both stylistics, orthoepia, and compliance grammatical norms, etc., but above all it is vocabulary. And the vocabulary of the speaker is characterized first of all by its purity, synonymous and phraseological richness, normativity of pronunciation and, finally, correlation of native (Ukrainian) foreign words. Vocabulary of the modern Ukrainian language was formed in the process of its extended historical development and is a product of many epochs. Its shaping and development is closely connected with the history of Ukrainian people. Based on the factual material selected, we can conclude that Lina Kostenko most often uses words that are borrowed from Western European languages 48 % from 100 % (German, French, English, Italian); for the most part, it uses them without changing the value, but uses it as a comparison. Non-Slavic borrowings (from Latin, Ancient Greek, Turkic) make up 44 % of the studied words, the meaning of which the poet sometimes changes; uses for comparison. The borrowing from the Slavic languages (Old Slavic, Polonism, Russian) used by L. Kostenko is only 8 %. The author uses them without changing the values. The poet uses the borrowed elements of other languages with stylistic instruction with the purpose of creating the non-national diversity in the basis of Ukrainian language. Lina Kostenko also makes extensive use of terminology. After all, the potentialities of the corresponding lexical category create an artistic image, being part of a certain tropical figure, comparing and enriching the artistic color, expressive elevation of the artistic environment. Usage of vocabulary of foreign origin without its abuse and distortions, the way Lina Kostenko does, is one of the ways to enrich the vocabulary of language.

Immigrants' age of arrival (AOA) in a country where a second language (L2) must be learned has consistently been shown to affect the degree of perceived L2 foreign accent. Although the effect of AOA appears strong, AOA is typically correlated with other variables that might influence degree of foreign accent. This study examined the pronunciation of English by native Italian immigrants to Canada who differed in AOA. As in previous research, those who arrived as young adults (late learners) were somewhat older at the time of testing, and produced somewhat longer English sentences, than those who arrived in Canada when they were children (early learners). The results of Experiment 1 showed that the greater chronological age of early than late learners was not responsible for the late learners' stronger foreign accents. Experiment 2 suggested that the late learners' longer L2 sentences were not responsible for observed early–late foreign accent differences. A principle components analysis revealed that variation in AOA and language use, but not chronological age or sentence duration, accounted for a significant amount of variance in the foreign accent ratings. The findings of the study were interpreted to mean that AOA effects on foreign accent are due to the development of the native language phonetic system rather than to maturational constraints on L2 speech learning.

в начале XX века в Китай пришла техника бельканто, внесшая значительные изменения в традиционное вокальное искусство. Это стало началом уникального синтеза восточных и западных вокальных традиций, который обогатил китайскую музыкальную культуру, но также представил новые вызовы, связанные с произношением и техникой исполнения. Данная статья посвящена анализу этого синтеза, изучая, как влияние бельканто способствовало развитию китайской вокальной практики и какие адаптации были необходимы для интеграции итальянской вокальной техники с особенностями китайского языка. Мы исследуем, как бельканто повлияло на методы обучения и исполнения в Китае, а также как китайские исполнители приняли и адаптировали эту технику для своего языкового и культурного контекста. Особое внимание уделено проблемам, связанным с произношением и артикуляцией, и методам, которые были разработаны для преодоления этих трудностей. Анализируется роль бельканто в формировании современного китайского вокального искусства, учитывая как технические, так и культурные аспекты этого взаимодействия. Основным методом исследования, принятым в данной работе, является метод документального анализа (bibliographic). at the beginning of the XX century, the bel canto technique came to China, which made significant changes to the traditional vocal art. This was the beginning of a unique synthesis of Eastern and Western vocal traditions, which enriched Chinese musical culture, but also presented new challenges related to pronunciation and performance technique. This article is devoted to the analysis of this synthesis, studying how the influence of bel canto contributed to the development of Chinese vocal practice and what adaptations were necessary to integrate Italian vocal technique with the peculiarities of the Chinese language. We explore how bel canto has influenced teaching and performance methods in China, as well as how Chinese performers have adopted and adapted this technique to their linguistic and cultural context. Special attention is paid to the problems associated with pronunciation and articulation, and the methods that have been developed to overcome these difficulties. The role of bel canto in the formation of modern Chinese vocal art is analyzed, taking into account both technical and cultural aspects of this interaction. The main research method adopted in this work is the method of documentary analysis (bibliographic).

Povijest hrvatske latinične grafije je iznimno bogata i istraživačima pruža brojne zanimljivosti, mada je dosad bilo objavljeno veoma malo djela o toj temi. Prvi takav pokušaj je bio Maretićeva povijest latiničke grafije (Maretić 1889). Svakako treba istaknuti rad Milana Moguša i Josipa Vončine (Moguš–vončina 1969) koji je u mnogočemu ispravio Maretićeve pogrešne tvrdnje. Također u posljednje vrijeme je bilo objelodanjeno nekoliko radova o povijesti latiničke grafije u Hrvata (Kapetanovič 2005, Farkaš–Ćurak 2016, Farkaš 2019). Kad se govori o istraživanju hrvatske latinice, nikako ne smijemo zaboraviti doprinos Lászla Hadrovicsa. On je bio jedini koji se usredotočio na detaljniji prikaz dvojnog razvoja latinice u Hrvata od samih početaka. U ovom ćemo radu ići njegovim tragovima, budući da je cilj našega rada predstavljanje dvojne tradicije hrvatske latinice i onog kulturnopovijesnog konteksta koji je okarakterizirao razvoj hrvatske grafije.U razvoju latinice crkva je imala najvažniju ulogu. Crkva je bila i središte pismenosti u srednjem vijeku. Iz toga slijedi da izgovor određenih latinskih glasova je utjecao na razvoj grafije pojedinih nacionalnih jezika. U slučaju hrvatskog jezika sve to je još posebnije, budući da na južnom dijelu Hrvatske nalazimo jak talijanski i mletački utjecaj, a na sjevernom je dijelu, što naime poklapa s Zagrebačkom biskupijom, očit jak mađarski utjecaj. Južna je tradicija pratila talijanski način izgovora latinskih glasova, što je utjecalo i na razvoj latiničke grafije. S druge strane nalazimo mađarski način izgovora lat. /s/, tj. [ʃ], [ʒ] na sjevernom području. Ova dva sustava su stoljećima karakterizirali hrvatsku latiničnu grafiju, međutim od kraja XVI. stoljeća je bilo više pokušaja za primjenu mješovitog sustava, a jedino je bilo to uspješno u slavonskoj grafiji XVIII. stoljeća.The history of the Croatian Latin-script orthography is remarkably rich and contains several interesting facts for the researchers; however, only a handful of writings have been published in this matter. The first work written in the topic is Maretić’s history of orthography (Maretić 1889). It is also important to mention the study by Milan Moguš and Josip Vončina (Moguš–vončina 1969), in which they corrected several false statements written by Maretić. Recently, a few more papers on orthographic history have been published (Kapetanovič 2005, Farkaš–Ćurak 2016, Farkaš 2019); nevertheless, it is necessary to point out the work by László Hadrovics, the only researcher in the subject who paid great attention to the dual tradition of the Latin-script orthography in the Croatian language. Following the steps of Hadrovics, the main goal of this paper is to present which cultural historical reasons determined the development of the dual tradition of the Croatian Latin-script orthography as well as to introduce the use of graphemes in detail.The church played an important role in the development of the Latin script. During the Middle Ages, the church counted as the centre of the literacy, thus it is obvious that the ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation defined the evolution of the individual national languages’ orthographies. From this point of view, the Croatian is a special case, as in the Middle Ages, the Southern Croatian areas were strongly affected by the Italian, more precisely by the Venetian language, while in the northern areas, overlapping the Archdiocese of Zagreb, a strong Hungarian impact can be observed. The southern orthographic tradition follows the Italian pronunciation, i.e. the spelling is also based on the current Italian orthography. Nevertheless, in the northern areas, the Latin /s/ phoneme is pronounced in a Hungarian way, as [ʃ] or [ʒ]. The two orthographic systems were in use side by side over the centuries; nonetheless, since the end of the 16th century, there were several attempts to create a “mixed” system, which was successfully carried out only in the 18th-century Slavonian orthography.

In Val Gardena, the first hesitant approaches to writing date back to the beginning of the 19th century with Mathias Ploner. The first printed descriptive grammar of a Dolomite-Ladin language was produced by Josef Anton Vian from Val di Fassa: Gröden, der Grödner und seine Sprache (1864). The most recent projects related to lexicography and grammar of the Istitut Ladin Micurá de Rü are a concrete expression of the close connection between grammar and dictionary. The publication of the grammar a few years after the dictionary (both available in online format) facilitates the integration of the two dimensions. This can be achieved by a system of hypertext references, thanks to which each term in the grammar opens a corresponding tab in the dictionary by means of a simple click. The dictionary is the tool most often and immediately used not only to understand the meaning of words, but also to solve grammatical uncertainties. The speaker’s competence is not reduced to lists of memorised words. The learning of a language is subject to stimulation through elements linked by relationships, grammatical and syntactic connections. The plug-in programme, adapted to our needs by Smallcodes in Florence, focuses on the textual rather than only the lexical dimension of the Ladin language and interacts effectively with Italian and German. For each lemma and each conjugated form, full integration with the online dictionary is achieved, as well as with the verb conjugator, the spell-checker, the phraseology database and the word’s pronunciation.

The translatability of shop names constitutes a problem for translation students. To find out the status of shop name translation in Saudi Arabia, a sample of 271 shop names (clothing, accessories, beauty products, restaurants, cafes… etc.) was collected and analyzed to find out which shop names are translated, which ones are not, and which ones should be translated and to set some guidelines for shop-name translation. Results showed that 24% of the shops have pure Arabic names, 25% have international brand names (Starbucks, Burger King, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Monsoon, Zara, Sony); 39% have local English names ( أوبريشن فلافل Operation Falafel, Brand Center براند سنتر, بيبي شوب Baby Shop); and 12% mixed names (Arabic + foreign). Only 6.7% of all shop names are fully translated (العربية للعود Arabian Oud; الركن السويسري Swiss Corner; الشمس والرمال للرياضة Sun & Sand Sports; Seven Degree Café مقهى ٧ درجات); 3,3% are partially translated (Cotton Home قطن هوم; ماما بطاطا Mama Batata; JORI COFFEE الجوري كوفي) and 90% are transliterated using Arabic letters (Bershka بيرشكا , MANGO مانجو, كامايو Camaieu). Many shop names are transliterated, although they are translatable, are difficult to decode as the grapheme sequence does not fit the Arabic graphological system (Dr Nutrition دكتور نيوتريشن & Natural Touch تاتش ناتشرال). It was recommended that Franchised International brand names such as Debenhams & Samsung cannot be translated but transliterated. Some foreign shop names can be fully or partially translated rather than transliterated (Dr Nutrition< دكتور التغذية; Natural Touch< اللمسة الطبيعية; Red Sea Mall< مول البحر الأحمر). The Arabic version is for Arab shoppers who do not know English and the English version is for foreigners. Shop names containing café, chocolate, garden and others can be partially translated (Caribou Café مقهى كاريبو; Atayf Garden حديقة أطياف). French and Italian shop names should be transliterated according to their pronunciation in the source language, not in English (Parfois بارفواه, not بارفويس). The word order in compounds should be correct, and the vowels, diphthongs and consonants should be transcribed accurately. The transliteration should be consistent for all shop branches. Further recommendations are given.

Abstract Notwithstanding the primacy of the CV syllable, a number of languages allow for more complex types of syllables. In particular, word-initial consonant clusters are particularly challenging for any phonological theory. In this paper it is argued that obstruent clusters may be the result of casual speech processes where the most salient/ frequent phonemes and features occurring in most pronunciation variants of a word are preserved. As a result, sibilants, being acoustically salient, tend to occur more often than other obstruents as the first member of word-initial obstruent clusters. A framework couched in Optimality Theory is presented, where a subfamily of faithfulness constraints refer to strength values stored in the underlying representation. The more salient and/or frequent a phoneme/feature is, the higher the strength value assigned to it. Finally, a number of languages are compared, arguing that their phonotactic differences may be due to the different ranking of markedness constraints and MAX-STRENGTHVALUE constraints.

Increasing preoccupations and interest manifested for the Romanian language as a foreign language compose a focused and clear expression in the volume “Romanian as a foreign language. Methodology and cultural applicability”, launched at the Turku University publishing house, Finland (2018). The editors, Paul Nanu (Department of Romanian Language and Culture, University of Turku, Finland) and Emilia Ivancu (Department of Romanian Studies of the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Poland) with this volume, continue a series of activities dedicated to the promotion of the Romanian language and culture outside the country borders. This volume brings together a collection of articles, previously announced and briefly presented at a round table organized by the two Romanian lectors, as a section of the International Conference “Dialogue of cultures between tradition and modernity”, (Philological Research and Multicultural Dialogue Centre, Department of Philology, Faculty of History and Philology, “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia). The thirteen authors who sign the articles are teachers of Romanian as a foreign language, either in the country or abroad. The challenge launched by the organisers pointed both at the teaching methods of Romanian as a foreign language – including the authors’ reflections upon the available textbooks (Romanian language textbooks) and the cultural implications of this perspective on the Romanian language. It is probably no accident that the first article of the aforementioned volume – “Particularities of teaching Romanian as a foreign language for the preparatory year. In quest of “the ideal textbook’’ (Cristina Sicoe, University of the West, Timișoara) – brings a strict perspective upon that what should be, from the author’s point of view, “the ideal textbook”. The fact that it does not exist, and has little chances ever to exist, could maybe be explained by the multitude of variables which appear in practice, within the didactic triangle composed by teacher – student – textbook. The character of the variables is the result of particular interactions established between the components of the triad. A concurrent direction is pointed out by the considerations that make the object of the second article, “To a new textbook of Romanian language as a foreign language’’ (Ana-Maria Radu-Pop, University of the West, Timișoara). While the previous article was about an ideal textbook for foreign students in the preparatory year of Romanian, this time, the textbook in question has another target group, namely Erasmus students and students from Centres of foreign languages. Considering that this kind of target group “forms a distinct category”, the author pleads for the necessity of editing adequate textbooks with a part made of themes, vocabulary, grammar and a part made of culture and civilization – the separation into parts belongs to the author – that should consider the needs of this target group, their short stay in Romania (three months to one year) and, last but not least, the students’ poor motivation. These distinctive notes turn the existent RFL textbooks[1] in that which the author calls “level crossings”, which she explains in a humorous manner[2]. Since the ideal manual seems to be in no hurry to appear, the administrative-logistic implications of teaching Romanian as a foreign language (for the preparatory year) should be easier to align with the standards of efficiency. This matter is addressed by Mihaela Badea and Cristina Iridon from the Oil & Gas University of Ploiești, in the article “Administrative/logistic difficulties of teaching RFL. Case study”. Starting from a series of practical experiences, the authors are purposing to suggest “several ideas to improve existent methodologies of admitting foreign students and to review the ARACIS criteria from March 2017, regarding external evaluation of the ‘Romanian as a foreign language’ study programme”. Among other things, an external difficulty is highlighted (common to all universities in the country), namely the permission to register foreign students until the end of the first semester of the academic year, meaning around the middle of February. The authors punctually describe the unfortunate implications of this legal aspect and the regrettable consequences upon the quality of the educational act. They suggest that the deadline for admitting foreign students not exceed the 1st of December of every academic year. The list of difficulties in teaching Romanian as a foreign language is extremely long, reaching sensitive aspects from an ethical perspective of multiculturalism. This approach belongs to Constantin Mladin from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia, who writes about “The role of the ethical component in the learning process of a foreign language and culture. The Macedonian experience”. Therefore, we are moving towards the intercultural competences which, as the author states, are meant to “adequately and efficiently round the acquired language competences”. In today’s Macedonian society, that which the author refers to, a society claimed to be multiethnic, multilingual and pluriconfessional, the emotional component of an intercultural approach needs a particular attention. Thus, reconfigurations of the current didactic model are necessary. The solution proposed and successfully applied by Professor Constantin Mladin is that of shaking the natural directions in which a foreign language and culture is acquired: from the source language/culture towards the target language/culture. All this is proposed in the context in which the target group is extremely heterogeneous and its “emotional capacity of letting go of the ethnocentric attitudes and perceptions upon otherness” seem to lack. When speaking about ‘barriers’, we often mean ‘difficulty’. The article written by Silvia Kried Stoian and Loredana Netedu from the Oil & Gas University of Ploiești, called “Barriers in the intercultural communication of foreign students in the preparatory year”, is the result of a micro-research done upon a group of 37 foreign students from 10 different countries/cultural spaces, belonging to different religions (plus atheists), speakers of different languages. From the start, there are many differences to be reconciled in a way reasonable enough to reduce most barriers that appear in their intercultural communication. Beneficial and obstructive factors – namely communication barriers – coexist in a complex communicational environment, which supposes identifying and solving the latter, in the aim of softening the cultural shock experienced within linguistic and cultural immersion. Several solutions are recommended by the two authors. An optimistic conclusion emerges in the end, namely the possibility that the initial inconvenient of the ethnical, linguistic and cultural heterogeneity become “an advantage in learning the Romanian language and acquiring intercultural communication”. Total immersion (linguistic and cultural), as well as the advantage it represents as far as exposure to language is concerned, is the subject of the article entitled “Cultural immersion and exposure to language”, written by Adina Curta (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia). Considered to be a factor of rapid progress and effectiveness of acquisition, exposure to language that arises from the force of circumstances could be extended to that what may be named orchestrated exposure to language. This phrase is consented to reunite two types of resources, “a category of statutory resources, which are the CEFRL suggestions, and a category of particular resources, which should be the activities proposed by the organizers of the preparatory year of RFL”. In this respect, we are dealing with several alternating roles of the teacher who, besides being an expert, animator, facilitator of the learning process or technician, also becomes a cultural and linguistic coach, sending to the group of immersed students a beneficial message of professional and human polyvalence. A particular experience is represented by teaching the Romanian language at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. This experience is presented by Nicoleta Neșu in the article “The Romanian language, between mother tongue and ethnic language. Case study”. The particular situation is generated by the nature of the target group, a group of students coming, on the one hand, from Romanian families, who, having lived in Italy since early childhood, have studied in the Italian language and are now studying the Romanian language (mother tongue, then ethnic language) as L1, and, on the other hand, Italian mother tongue students who study the Romanian language as a foreign language. The strategies that are used and the didactic approach are constantly in need of particularization, depending on the statute that the studied language, namely the Romanian language, has in each case. In the area of teaching methodology for Romanian as a foreign language, suggestions and analyses come from four authors, namely Eliana-Alina Popeți (West University of Timișoara), “Teaching the Romanian language to students from Romanian communities from Serbia. Vocabulary exercise”, Georgeta Orian (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia) “The Romanian language in the rhythm of dance and hip-hop music”, Coralia Telea (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia), “Explanation during the class of Romanian as a foreign language” and Emilia Ivancu (Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Poland), “Romanian (auto)biographic discourse or the effect of literature upon learning RFL”. The vocabulary exercise proposed to the students by Eliana-Alina Popeți is a didactic experiment through which the author checked the hypothesis according to which a visual didactic material eases the development of vocabulary, especially since the textual productions of the students, done through the technique that didactics calls “reading images”, were video recorded and submitted to mutual evaluation as well as to self-evaluation of grammar, coherence and pronunciation. The role of the authentic iconographic document is attested in the didactics of modern languages, as the aforementioned experiment confirms once again the high coefficient of interest and attention of the students, as well as the vitality and authenticity of interaction within the work groups. It is worth mentioning that these students come from the Serbian Republic and are registered in the preparatory year at the Faculty of Letters, History and Theology of the West University of Timișoara. Most of them are speakers of different Romanian patois, only found on the territory of Serbia. The activity consisted of elaborating written texts starting from an image (a postcard reproducing a portrait of the Egyptian artist Eman Osama), imagining a possible biography of the character. In the series of successful authentic documents in teaching-learning foreign languages, there is also the song. The activities described by Georgeta Orian were undertaken either with Erasmus students from the preparatory year at the “1 Decembrie 1989” University of Alba Iulia, or with Polish students (within the Department of Romanian Studies in Poznań), having high communication competences (B1-B2, or even more). There were five activities triggered by Romanian songs, chosen by criteria of sympathy with the interests of the target group: youngsters, late teenagers. The stake was “a more pleasant and, sometimes, a more useful learning process”, mostly through discovery, through recourse to musical language, which has the advantage of breaking linguistic barriers in the aim of creating a common space in which the target language, a language of “the other”, becomes the instrument of speaking about what connects us. The didactic approach, when it comes to Romanian as a foreign language taught to students of the preparatory year cannot avoid the extremely popular method of the explanation. Its story is told by Coralia Telea. With a use of high scope, the explanation steps in in various moments and contexts: for transmitting new information, for underlining mechanisms generating new rules, in evaluation activities (result appreciation, progress measurements). Still, the limits of this method are not left out, among which the risk of the teachers to annoy their audience if overbidding this method. Addressing (Polish) students from the Master’s Studies Program within the Romania Philology at the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, Emilia Ivancu crosses, through her article, the methodological dimensions of teaching Romanian as a foreign language, entering the curricular territory of the problematics in question by proposing an optional course entitled Romanian (auto)biographic discourse”. Approaching contact with the Romanian language as a foreign language at an advanced level, the stakes of the approach and the proposed contents differ, obviously, from the ones only regarding the creation and development of the competence of communication in the Romanian Language. The studied texts have been grouped into correspondence/epistolary discourse, diaries, memoires and (auto)biography as fiction. Vasile Alecsandri, Sanda Stolojan, Paul Goma, Neagoe Basarab, Norman Manea, Mircea Eliade are just a few of the writers concerned, submitted to discussions with the help of a theoretical toolbox, offered to the students as recordings of cultural broadcasts, like Profesioniștii or Rezistența prin cultură etc. The consequences of this complex approach consisted, on the one hand, of the expansion of the readings for the students and, on the other hand, in choosing to write dissertations on these topics. A “tangible” result of Emilia Ivancu’s course is the elaboration of a volume entitled România la persoana întâi, perspective la persoana a treia (Romania in the first person, perspectives in the third person), containing seven articles written by Polish Master’s students. Master’s theses, a PhD thesis, several translations into the Polish language are also “fruits” of the initiated course. Of all these, the author extracted several conclusions supporting the merits and usefulness of her initiative. The volume ends with a review signed by Adina Curta (1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia), “The Romanian language, a modern, wanted language. Iuliana Wainberg-Drăghiciu – Textbook of Romanian language as a foreign language”. The textbook elaborated by Iuliana Wainberg-Drăghiciu (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia) respects the CEFRL suggestions, points at the communicative competences (linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic) described for levels A1 and A2, has a high degree of accessibility through a trilingual dictionary (Romanian-English-French) which it offers to foreign students and through the phonetic transcription of new vocabulary units.

Abstract The orthographic forms (spellings) of second language (L2) words and sounds affect the pronunciation and awareness of L2 sounds, even after lengthy naturalistic exposure. This study investigated whether instruction could reduce the effects of English orthographic forms on Italian native speakers’ pronunciation and awareness of L2 English sounds. Italians perceive, produce, and judge the same sound as a short sound if it is spelled with one letter and as a long sound if it is spelled with a digraph, due to L1 Italian grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) rules whereby double consonant letters represent long consonants. Totally, 100 Italian learners of English were allocated to two conditions (final n = 88). The participants in the explicit GPC (EGPC) condition discovered English GPC rules relating to sound length through reflection, explicit teaching, and practice; the participants in the passive exposure condition practiced the same words as the EGPC participants, but with no mention of GPCs. Pre- and postintervention production (delayed word repetition) and phonological awareness (rhyme judgment) tasks revealed no positive effects of the instruction. GPC instruction appears to be ineffective in reducing orthographic effects on L2 phonology. Orthographic effects may be impervious to change, whether by naturalistic exposure or by instruction.

The article is dedicated to the problems of working on the text of opera librettos in a foreign language in the process of learning opera. The stages of this work are considered - from understanding the meaning, which makes it possible for the interpreter to approach the most appropriate interpretation of the composer's intention, to the elaboration of a foreign pronunciation as an important indicator of the vocalist's professionalism. The relevance of the subject is related to the practice of staging operas in the original language that has taken place root in the activity of opera houses in recent decades. The author offers modern methods of working on a text in a foreign language of an opera libretto and shares extensive practical experience in this field of activity. The idea is especially emphasized that the process of studying a vocal work in a foreign language should take place in stages: from reading and learning the text without music to understanding the idea of the work as a synthesis of music and words. The process organized in this way will allow solving the task of creating a convincing artistic image. When practicing pronunciation, the importance of correct articulation and clear diction is noted and practical advice is given to improve them. Typical mistakes of vocalists in Italian and French pronunciation in singing are listed, and ways to correct them are indicated. The author of the article emphasizes that a good knowledge of foreign languages is an indispensable tool condition for a vocalist who dreams of a successful career.

This article intends to add to the rising discussion related to the employment of authentic plays and drama within a high school compulsory curriculum for enhancing learners’ foreign language (L2) oral skills. In particular, it examines the pedagogical use of authentic contemporary plays for developing learners’ L2 oral production in terms of (1) complexity – syntactic and mean length of AS-units (MLAS) and (2) accuracy – global and pronunciation accuracy. For this purpose, a class of 10 final year high school students with a lower-intermediate to upper-intermediate level of language in an Italian context was exposed longitudinally to a blended-drama approach – the use of literary play scripts, drama games and techniques, and a full-scale performance – conducted over two terms for a total of 40 hours in-class lessons. A control group was taught through a traditional approach over the same period. Quantitative data were collected through a pre-test/post-test design with three tasks under different conditions regarding status and interaction: oral proficiency interview (OPI), story-retelling and guided role-play (GRP). Findings revealed that drama significantly improved learners’ pronunciation accuracy, syntactic complexity and MLAS. There was no significant statistical result on global accuracy between the two groups. Pedagogical implications for teaching practice will be discussed.

Abstract In Government Phonology and its descendants, there is a direct relation between representational complexity and lateral strength, as only melodically filled nuclei can discharge government and licensing. This relation is only broken in special circumstances, e.g. when lateral actorship is granted by a systemic parameter. In this paper, I provide a normalisation of lateral actorship by showing that the latter's correlation with complexity also holds for some silent nuclei without introducing a dedicated parameter. The hypothesis is that representational complexity does not necessarily correspond to some phonetic event: a non-empty nucleus can be unpronounced, without this impinging on its lateral actorship. Turbidity Theory provides the formal tools for distinguishing between empty and unpronounced nuclei. This follows from splitting the association between melodic and prosodic units into two independent relations - projection and pronunciation. Empty nuclei lack melodic content, whereas unpronounced nuclei only lack the pronunciation relation. This approach is shown to account for disparate phenomena, such as glide mutation in Classic Arabic, inflectional markers spell-out in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic and the apparently exceptional behaviour of muta cum liquida clusters in Hungarian and in the Italian dialect of Finale Emilia. This approach also allows for a refinement of our understanding of the so-called yers, as well as for constraining the use of floating melody.

AbstractOne of the hottest debates in psychology—whether bilingual-monolingual differences exist in cognitive control—is at a stalemate. Here we propose that the stalemate could be broken by shifting the research focus from whether those differences emerge to why they should. We offer an example of this approach by testing the assumption of current theories of language-control associations that adaptive control is involved in bilingualism, specifically language production. Unbalanced Italian-English bilinguals living in the Milan area completed a Stroop task in their L1 and a picture-naming task in their L2. Both tasks involved a manipulation of the proportion of the type of stimuli that are assumed to require control, i.e., incongruent stimuli in the Stroop task (e.g., the word RED written in blue) and pictures with noncognate names in the picture-naming task (e.g., the picture of a horse, whose Italian name, “cavallo,” has a very different pronunciation). Both confirmatory and exploratory analyses showed a clear dissociation between the two tasks, with the Stroop task producing an interactive pattern indicative of adaptive-control involvement and the picture-naming task failing to produce a similar one. These results suggest that adaptive control may not be involved in bilingual language production and, therefore, may not produce bilingual-monolingual differences in cognitive control. It is hoped that this research will inspire a change in the study of language-control associations, pushing future research efforts towards grounding the assumptions for those associations in empirical evidence.

In a previous study on voiceless stop aspiration in Heritage Calabrian Italian spoken in Toronto, we found that the transmission of a sociophonetic variable differed from cross-generational phonetic variation induced by increased contact with the majority language. Universal phonetic factors and the social characteristics of the speakers appeared to influence contact-induced variation much more straightforwardly than the transmission of the sociophonetic variable. In the current study, we investigate further, examining possible alternative explanations related to the lexical distribution of the aspiration phenomena. We test two alternative hypotheses, the first one predicting that the diffusion of a majority language’s phonetic feature is frequency-driven while change in a sociophonetic feature is not (or not that regularly across generations), and the second one predicting that sociophonetic aspiration decreases across generations by being progressively more dependent on the frequency of lexical items. Our results show that sociophonetic aspiration resists lexicalization and applies to both frequent and infrequent words even in the speech of third-generation speakers. By contrast, the progressive introduction of contact-induced phonetic change is led by high-frequency words. These findings add to the complexity of heritage language phonology by suggesting that the pronunciation features of a heritage language can follow different fates depending on their sociolinguistic roles.

Abstract Previous research has highlighted that the use of lexical borrowings is often accompanied by metalinguistic elements that have been analysed as flags or alterity markers. This paper aims to investigate the use of these markers from a usage-based perspective, focusing on their functions in communication. It will first be argued that lexical borrowings may pose certain challenges to recipient-language speakers; these challenges will be rephrased as features of reduced accessibility. The notion of reduced accessibility will be elaborated by commenting on both form-related aspects concerning the items’ conformity with respect to the RL system (pronunciation, spelling, morphology) and content-related aspects concerning semantic transparency as defined in diachronic cognitive onomasiology. It will then be argued that in addition to the function of alterity marking, the markers also serve to enhance the accessibility of lexical borrowings. A revised categorisation of three types of relevant meta-information techniques will be proposed (flagging, metalinguistic comments, frame information). A survey on the use of recent anglicisms in French and Italian newspaper articles will reveal how the use of meta-information techniques can be seen as a strategy to communicatively negotiate and facilitate the use of borrowed items. Finally, implications of the usage-based approach to alterity marking and enhancing accessibility will be discussed.

Abstract Previous research has highlighted that the use of lexical borrowings is often accompanied by metalinguistic elements that have been analysed as flags or alterity markers. This paper aims to investigate the use of these markers from a usage-based perspective, focusing on their functions in communication. It will first be argued that lexical borrowings may pose certain challenges to recipient-language speakers; these challenges will be rephrased as features of reduced accessibility. The notion of reduced accessibility will be elaborated by commenting on both form-related aspects concerning the items’ conformity with respect to the RL system (pronunciation, spelling, morphology) and content-related aspects concerning semantic transparency as defined in diachronic cognitive onomasiology. It will then be argued that in addition to the function of alterity marking, the markers also serve to enhance the accessibility of lexical borrowings. A revised categorisation of three types of relevant meta-information techniques will be proposed (flagging, metalinguistic comments, frame information). A survey on the use of recent anglicisms in French and Italian newspaper articles will reveal how the use of meta-information techniques can be seen as a strategy to communicatively negotiate and facilitate the use of borrowed items. Finally, implications of the usage-based approach to alterity marking and enhancing accessibility will be discussed.

The purpose of the article is to identify the peculiarities of the actor's linguistic characterization using a foreign accent in the process of working on the role and to establish the dependence of the actor's ideas about the character's personal characteristics and social status on the degree of accent color. The methodology of researching a foreign accent as a means of creating a linguistic characteristic of a character is complex. The method of theoretical-conceptual and theoretical-linguistic analysis of special literature on accent issues, features of comparison of intonation systems of different languages are applied; typological method and method of system analysis, which contributed to the study of acting tools in the process of working on the linguistic characteristics of the character, etc. Scientific novelty. The foreign language accent in the context of the specifics of the actor's work on the creation of the image is studied; it is stated that the actor's imitation of a foreign accent involves the use of special phonetic tools with the addition of grammatical and/or lexical factors in order to enhance the effect; the complexes of articulation-acoustic features inherent in the Ukrainian language with French, English, British, Italian, Estonian, Jewish and Caucasian accents, as well as the peculiarities of the actor's work on their imitation are analyzed. Conclusions. Foreign language accent as a linguistic characteristic of a character is one of the most important means of identifying his personality because a person's speech skills create an idea of ​​the environment to which he belongs, can provide information about his origin. In stage speech, a foreign accent is used to give the character's language a sharp character, vivid imagery, and truthfulness and realism of his behavior - the accent is part of the character's "I", a familiar form of expression related to national and family life. Foreign accent, as well as the territorial type of pronunciation, is perceived by the viewer stereotypically and is an indicator not only of personal characteristics, but also a marker of his social status, and its level is associated with education, intelligence, leadership, and self-confidence. The actor’s strategies for developing foreign accents in the process of working on the linguistic characteristics of the character are to use appropriate deviations from the phonetic, lexical, and grammatical norms of the Ukrainian language. Keywords: stage speech, foreign accent, actor, artistic image, character, linguistic characteristic.

04–473Adler, Renatte K. and Loughrin-Sacco, Steven J. (San Diego State U., USA). Internships for American undergraduates: acquiring language and cross-cultural skills for a global market. Journal of Language for International Business (Glendale, Arizona, USA), 15, 1 (2004), 30–40.04–474Allum, Paul (Rikkyo U., Tokyo, Japan; Email: allum@rikkyo.ac.jp). Evaluation of CALL: initial vocabulary learning. ReCALL (Cambridge, UK), 16, 2 (2004), 488–501.04–475Barcroft, Joe (Washington U., USA; Email: barcroft@artsci.wustl.edu). Effects of sentence writing in second language lexical acquisition. Second Language Research (London, UK), 20, 4 (2004), 303–334.04–476Belz, Julie (Pennsylvania State U., USA; Email: jab63@psu.edu). Learner corpus analysis and the development of foreign language proficiency. System (Oxford, UK), 32, 4 (2004), 577–591.04–477Benati, Alessandro (U. Greenwich, UK; Email: A.Benati@gre.ac.uk). The effects of processing instruction and its components on the acquisition of gender agreement in Italian. Language Awareness (Clevedon, UK), 13, 2 (2004), 67–80.04–478Bitchener, John (Auckland U. of Technology, New Zealand; Email: john.bitchener@aut.ac.nz). The relationship between the negotiation of meaning and language learning: a longitudinal study. Language Awareness (Clevedon, UK), 13, 2 (2004), 81–95.04–479Blin, Francoise (Dublin City U., Ireland; Email: francoise.blin@dcu.ie). CALL and the development of learner autonomy: towards an activity-theoretical perspective. ReCALL (Cambridge, UK), 16, 2 (2004), 377–395.04–480Boehringer, Michael, Bongartz, Christiane and Gramberg, Anne-Katrin (U. Waterloo, Canada). Language learning and intercultural training: the impact of cultural primers on learners and non-learners of German. Journal of Language for International Business (Glendale, Arizona, USA), 15, 2, (2004), 1–18.04–481Cartes-Henriquez, Ninette, Solar Rodriguez, M. I. and Quintana Letelier, R. (U. de Concepcion, Correo, Chile; Email: ncartes@udec.cl). Electronic texts or learning through textbooks: an experimental study. ReCALL (Cambridge, UK), 16, 2 (2004), 539–557.04–482Church, Ruth Breckinridge, Ayman-Nolley, Saba and Mahootian, Shahrzad (Northeastern Illinois U., USA; Email: rbchurch@neiu.edu). The role of gesture in bilingual education: does gesture enhance learning?International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK), 7, 4 (2004), 303–319.04–483Clyne, Michael, Isaakidis, Tina, Liem, Irene and Rossi Hunt, Claudia (U. of Melbourne, Australia; Email: mgclyne@unimelb.edu.au). Developing and sharing community language resources through secondary school programmes. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK), 7, 4 (2004), 255–278.04–484Cohen, Andrew D. (U. Minnesota, USA; Email: adcohen@umn.edu). The learner's side of foreign language learning: where do styles, strategies, and tasks meet?International Review of Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching (Berlin, Germany), 41 (2003), 279–291.04–485Cziko, Gary A. (U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA; Email: garycziko.net). Electronic tandem language learning (eTandem): a third approach to Second Language Learning for the 21st century. CALICO Journal (Texas, USA), 22, 1 (2004), 25–39.04–486DiFino, Sharon M. and Lombardino, Linda J. (U. of Florida, USA). Language learning disabilities: the ultimate foreign language challenge. Foreign Language Annals (Alexandria, VA, USA), 37, 3 (2004), 390–400.04–487Dubreil, Sebastien (U. of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA; Email: sdubreil@nd.edu), Herron, Carol and Cole, Steven B. An empirical investigation of whether authentic web sites facilitate intermediate-level French language students' ability to learn culture. CALICO Journal (Texas, USA), 22, 1 (2004), 41–61.04–488Duppenthaler, Peter M. (Tezukayama Gakuin U., Japan). Journal writing and the question of transfer of skills to other types of writing. JALT Journal (Tokyo, Japan), 26, 2 (2004), 172–188.04–489Egbert, Joy and Yang, Yu-Feng (Washington State U., USA; Email: jegbert@wsu.edu). Mediating the digital divide in CALL classrooms: promoting effective language tasks in limited technology contexts. ReCall (Cambridge, UK), 16, 2 (2004), 280–291.04–490Elder, Catherine (Monash U., Australia) and Manwaring, Diane. The relationship between metalinguistic knowledge and learning outcomes among undergraduate Students of Chinese. Language Awareness (Clevedon, UK), 13, 3 (2004), 145–162.04–491Ewald, Jennifer D. (Saint Joseph's U., USA; Email: jewald@sju.edu). A classroom forum on small group work: L2 learners see, and change, themselves. Language Awareness (Clevedon, UK), 13, 3 (2004), 163–179.04–492García, Paula (Northern Arizona U., USA; Email: pg4@dana.ucc.nau.edu). Developmental differences in speech act recognition: a pragmatic awareness study. Language Awareness (Clevedon, UK), 13, 2 (2004), 96–115.04–493Gearon, Margaret (Monash U., Australia; Email: margaret.gearon@education.monash.edu.au). Learner strategies for filling the knowledge gap during collaborative tasks. Babel – Journal of the AFMLTA (Queensland, Australia), 39, 1 (2004), 26–34.04–494Grantham O'Brien, Mary (U. of Calgary, Canada). Pronunciation matters. Die Unterrichtspraxis (New Jersey, USA), 37, 1 (2004), 1–9.04–495Gruba, Paul (U. of Melbourne, Australia). Designing tasks for online collaborative language learning. Prospect (Sydney, Australia), 19, 2 (2004), 72–81.04–496Harris, Vee and Grenfell, Michael (U. London, UK; Email: m.grenfell@soton.ac.uk). Language-learning strategies: a case for cross-curricular collaboration. Language Awareness (Clevedon, UK), 13, 2 (2004), 116–130.04–497Heift, Trude (Simon Fraser U., Canada; Email: heift@sfu.ca). Corrective feedback and learner uptake in CALL. ReCALL (Cambridge, UK), 16, 2 (2004), 416–431.04–498Hruska, Barbara (U. of Tampa, Florida). Constructing gender in an English dominant kindergarten: implications for second language learners. TESOL Quarterly (Alexandria, VA, USA), 38, 3 (2004), 459–485.04–499Hubbard, Philip and Bradin Siskin, Claire (Stanford U., California, USA; Email: phubbard@stanford.edu). Another look at tutorial CALL. ReCALL (Cambridge, UK), 16, 2 (2004), 448–461.04–500Hyland, Fiona (U. of Hong Kong, China; Email: hylandf@hkucc.hku.hk). Learning autonomously: contextualising out-of-class English language learning. Language Awareness (Clevedon, UK), 13, 3 (2004), 180–202.04–501Kasper, Gabriele (U. of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA; Email: gkasper@hawaii.edu). Participant orientations in German conversation-for-learning. The Modern Language Journal (Malden, MA, USA), 88, 4 (2004), 551–567.04–502Kim, Yong Suk (Korean U. of Technology and Education; Email: yongkim@kut.ac.kr). Exploring the role of integrative orientation in a Korean EFL environment. English Teaching (Anseonggun, Korea), 59, 3 (2004) 77–91.04–503Lapkin, Sharon and Swain, Merrill (U. of Toronto, Canada). What underlies immersion students' production: the case ofavoir besoin de. Foreign Language Annals (Alexandria, VA, USA), 37, 3 (2004), 349–355.04–504Lever, Tim (U. of Sydney, Australia). AMEP students online: The view from morning self-access. Prospect (Sydney, Australia), 19, 2 (2004), 39–55.04–505Malcolm, Diane (Arab Gulf U. in Bahrain). Why should learners contribute to the self-access centre?ELT Journal (Oxford, UK), 58, 4 (2004), 346–354.04–506Noelle, Lamy (The Open U., UK; Email: m.n.lamy@open.ac.uk). Oral conversations online: redefining oral competence in synchronous environments. ReCALL (Cambridge, UK), 16, 2 (2004), 520–538.04–507Park, Gi-Pyo (Soonchunhyang U., Korea). Comparison of L2 listening and reading comprehension by university students learning English in Korea. Foreign Language Annals (Alexandria, VA, USA), 37, 3 (2004), 448–458.04–508Riley, Jean, Burrell, Andrew and McCallum, Bet (U. of London, UK; Email: j.riley@ioe.ac.uk). Developing the spoken language skills of reception class children in two multicultural, inner-city primary schools. British Educational Research Journal (London, UK), 30, 5 (2004), 657–672.04–509Ryan-Scheutz, Colleen and Colangelo, Laura M. (U. of Notre Dame, USA). Full-scale theatre production and foreign language learning. Foreign Language Annals (Alexandria, VA, USA), 37, 3 (2004), 374–389.04–510Sealey, Alison and Thompson, Paul (U. of Reading, UK). ‘What do you call the dull words?’ Primary school children using corpus-based approaches to learn about language. English in Education (Sheffield, UK), 38, 1 (2004), 80–91.04–511Stewart, Melissa A. and Pertusa, Inmaculada (Western Kentucky U., USA). Gains to language learners from viewing target language closed-captioned films. Foreign Language Annals (Alexandria, VA, USA), 37, 3 (2004), 438–447.04–512Thomas, Alain (U. of Guelph, Canada; Email: thomas@uoguelph.ca). Phonetic norm versus usage in advanced French as a second language. International Review of Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching (Berlin, Germany), 42, 4 (2004), 365–382.04–513Van Berkel, Ans (Free U. Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Email: aj.van.berkel@let.vu.nl). Learning to spell in English as a second language. International Review of Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching (Berlin, Germany), 42 (2004), 239–257.04–514Ward, Monica (Dublin City U., Ireland; Email: mward@computing.dcu.edu.ie). The additional uses of CALL in the endangered language context. ReCALL (Cambridge, UK), 16, 2 (2004), 345–359.04–515Yamamori, Koyo, Isoda, Takamichi, Hiromori, Tomohito and Oxford, Rebecca L. (National I. Educational Policy Research, Japan; Email: koyo@nier.go.jp). Using cluster analysis to uncover L2 learner differences in strategy use, will to learn, and achievement over time. International Review of Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching (Berlin, Germany), 41 (2003), 381–409.04–516You, Xiaoye (Purdue U., USA; Email: youx@purdue.edu). “The choice made from no choice”: English writing instruction in a Chinese University. Journal of Second Language Writing (New York, USA), 13, 2 (2004), 97–110.