Bridging Fluency Disparity between Native and Nonnative Speakers in Multilingual Multiparty Collaboration Using a Clarification Agent

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (CSCW2) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Wen Duan ◽  
Naomi Yamashita ◽  
Yoshinari Shirai ◽  
Susan R. Fussell
Keyword(s):  
Nonnative Speakers

Evaluating the English Articulation of Nonnative Speakers

1974 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-148
Author(s):  
Clara S. Wing
Keyword(s):  
Nonnative Speakers

ASYMMETRIES IN UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR The Role of Method and Statistics

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Paolillo
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Statistical Models ◽  
Logistic Regression Model ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Potential Explanation ◽  
Differential Learning ◽  
Grammaticality Judgments

Felix (1988) claimed to demonstrate that UG-based knowledge of grammaticality causes nonnative speakers (NNSs) to have more accurate grammaticality judgments on sentences that are ungrammatical according to UG than on those that are grammatical. Birdsong (1994) criticized the methodology employed, noting that it ignores “response bias” (a propensity to judge sentences as ungrammatical) as a potential explanation. Felix and Zobl (1994) dismissed this criticism as merely methodological. In this paper, Birdsong's criticism is upheld by considering a statistical model of the data. At the same time, a more complete logistic regression model allows a fuller statistical analysis, revealing tentative support for the asymmetry claim, as well as differential learning states for different constructions and a tendency toward transfer avoidance. These theoretically significant effects were unnoticed in the earlier discussion of this research. For SLA research on grammaticality judgments to proceed fruitfully, appropriate statistical models need to be considered in designing the research.

Legal English Difficulties and Ways to Overcome

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
O Shkurat ◽  
◽  
L Gartsunova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Credit Card ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Movement Analysis ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
Real Problem ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Legal Writing ◽  
Jury Instructions ◽  
Major Factors

Abstract. This article is devoted to the study of legal English and its main characteristics. Legal language is the language used by legal professionals in their professional activity. That fact that historically legal English developed separately from the plain English made it difficult for understanding by laypeople. People find the traditional legal writing in such documents as jury instructions, security disclosures, credit card agreements, apartment leases, cell phone contract, promissory note etc. Even native English speakers often complain that they cannot fully understand the documents written to give them information. The understanding of legal English has been a problem for centuries. It was the cause why the plain English movement arose in the 1970s. The purpose of the movement was to simplify the legal writing, make it simple and clear for average people. This problem arises not only for those people whose native language is English. Nonnative speakers also struggle with the complexity of English legal writing. Ukrainian legal professionals that engaged in the area of international, business or corporate law, have to draft documents in English. Sometimes that could be a real problem because unlike English and American legal schools, the majority of ours don't provide the separate course of English legal writing. The purpose of this article is to give practical advice to Ukrainian lawyers and interpreters, how, taking into account the peculiarities of legal English discourse, to draft documents in clear, simple and understandable way. Results of research. A lot of English and American scientists, lawyers as well as linguists, devoted their studies to the plain English movement. Analysis of their works shows that four major factors had influenced on the development of legal English: historical, sociological, political and jurisprudential. Owing to them legal English is full of words of foreign origin, archaisms, argots and terms of art. These factors also caused the frequent usage of formal words, common usage of common words with uncommon meaning, deliberate ambiguity in legal writing. The studies of legal writing by lawyers have focused basically on vocabulary. Linguists in their researchers have identified some other features: overly complex sentences, passives, nominalizations, multiple negations, archaisms and jargon, inappropriate document design. Described ways of simplifying legal English are quite easy to use. Taking into account tips mentioned in the article, legal professionals will be able to draft documents that will be clear and understandable for general public.

scholarly journals How much do visual cues help listeners in perceiving accented speech?

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
YI ZHENG ◽  
ARTHUR G. SAMUEL
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Apparent Distance ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Accented Speech ◽  
Compressed Speech ◽  
Degraded Speech

AbstractIt has been documented that lipreading facilitates the understanding of difficult speech, such as noisy speech and time-compressed speech. However, relatively little work has addressed the role of visual information in perceiving accented speech, another type of difficult speech. In this study, we specifically focus on accented word recognition. One hundred forty-two native English speakers made lexical decision judgments on English words or nonwords produced by speakers with Mandarin Chinese accents. The stimuli were presented as either as videos that were of a relatively far speaker or as videos in which we zoomed in on the speaker’s head. Consistent with studies of degraded speech, listeners were more accurate at recognizing accented words when they saw lip movements from the closer apparent distance. The effect of apparent distance tended to be larger under nonoptimal conditions: when stimuli were nonwords than words, and when stimuli were produced by a speaker who had a relatively strong accent. However, we did not find any influence of listeners’ prior experience with Chinese accented speech, suggesting that cross-talker generalization is limited. The current study provides practical suggestions for effective communication between native and nonnative speakers: visual information is useful, and it is more useful in some circumstances than others.

Perception of Speech Acts Categories in Donald Trump’s Tweets by Native and Nonnative Speakers of English

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Davood Souri ◽  
Ali Merç
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
English Teachers ◽  
Large Majority ◽  
Contextual Variables ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Nonnative Speakers Of English

Twitter plays an important role in today’s world. Its role among politicians and those who are interested in politics is more obvious. Due to its importance and special characteristics such as character limits, it has drawn the attention of many researchers including linguists and ELT researchers. This study aimed to compare the perceptions of native and nonnative speakers in identifying speech acts in Donald Trump’s tweets. The subjects of this study were nine English native speakers and twenty nonnative English teachers who were Turkish citizens. Thirty- seven tweets of Donald Trump over the course of a week were selected and the participants were asked to identify the speech acts of the tweets based on the speech acts taxonomy by Searle (1976). The analysis of the data revealed that both native and nonnative speakers of English identified the speech acts of the large majority of the tweets very differently. These differences were partly due to lack of enough political as well as background knowledge and partly due to lack of contextual variables.

English as an international language

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 28.1-28.16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Clyne ◽  
Farzad Sharifian
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Position Paper ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
International Language ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Key Dimensions

In recent years, there has been a rapid evolution in the demographics of English speaking communities and individuals around the world, with an unprecedented growth in the number of users and learners of English. In the majority of cases, these learners and users are those who would traditionally have been classified as “non-native” speakers. This trend towards non-native speakers far outweighing native speakers in number is projected to pick up speed. The evolving nature of English in this context of its globalisation has called for a reassessment of a number of key dimensions in applied linguistic studies of English. Scholarly debates have surfaced about various political issues including the validity of the old distinction between “native” and “nonnative” speakers, what form English should – or is likely to – take as a language of international/intercultural communication (or lingua franca), and which groups are empowered and which ones disadvantaged by the accelerating prominence of English. Collectively, the essays in this issue of the journal engage with these issues in order to take the debate up to the next level. This article is a position paper which offers to open up the forum and to expand on some of some of these fundamental questions.

Complex Structures in the Child-Directed Speech of Native and Nonnative Speakers

2018 ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aslı Altan ◽  
Erika Hoff
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Child Interaction ◽  
Mother Child Interaction ◽  
Bilingual Communities

Children in bilingual communities are frequently exposed to speech from nonnative speakers, but little research has described how that input might differ from the input of native speakers. There is evidence that input from nonnative speakers might be less useful to language learning children, but little research has asked why. This chapter analyzes the frequency of complex structures in the child-directed speech of 30 native English speakers and 36 nonnative speakers who were late learners of English, all speaking English to their two-and-a-half-year-old children. All instances of nine categories of complex structures were coded in transcripts of mother-child interaction. The frequency of all but one category was greater in the speech of native speakers. These findings suggest that input provided by native speakers provides more frequent models of complex structures than nonnative input.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document