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50 Years of ERIC
50 Years of ERIC
The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is celebrating its 50th Birthday! First opened on May 15th, 1964 ERIC continues the long tradition of ongoing innovation and enhancement.

Learn more about the history of ERIC here. PDF icon

Showing all 6 results
Perceiving Vowels in a Second Language
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Flege, James Emil; MacKay, Ian R. A. – Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2004
This study examines the perception of English vowels by native speakers of Italian. In two preliminary experiments, Italian university students who had lived in Canada for 3 months were found to have difficulty discriminating because they often identified both members of each contrast as instances of a single Italian vowel. The participants in two…
Descriptors: Vowels, Second Language Learning, Italian, Native Speakers
The Effect of Experience on Adults' Acquisition of A Second Language.
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Flege, James Emil; Liu, Serena – Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2001
Research has suggested child but not adult immigrants to the U.S. and Canada make regular progress learning English as their length of residence (LOR) increases. Compared groups of Chinese adults living in the United States who differed in length of residence LOR to assess the role of input in adult's naturalistic acquisition of a second language…
Descriptors: Adults, Children, Comparative Analysis, Immigrants
An Instrumental Study of Vowel Reduction and Stress Placement in Spanish-Accented English.
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Flege, James Emil; Bohn, Ocke-Schwen – Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1989
A study compared how native speakers of Spanish and English produced four English word pairs that are morphologically related but differ in stress and vowel quality. The magnitude of differences observed suggests that second language learners acquire stress placement and vowel reduction in English on a word-by-word basis. (Author/MSE)
Descriptors: English (Second Language), Error Patterns, Language Patterns, Language Research
Mimicry of Non-Distinctive Phonetic Differences between Language Varieties.
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Flege, James Emil; Hammond, Robert M. – Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1982
Using a delayed mimicry paradigm to assess speakers' awareness of nondistinctive phonetic differences which, in part, distinguish languages, the study provides tentative evidence that such differences are detectable by language learners and do not present an impossible barrier to phonetic learning in second-language acquisition. (EKN)
Descriptors: College Students, English, Language Research, Phonetics
The Production of New and Similar Vowels by Adult German Learners of English.
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Bohn, Ocke-Schwen; Flege, James Emil – Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1992
Examination of the effect of second-language experience on the production of second-language vowels found that experienced native-speaking German learners of English did not pronounce similar English vowels more intelligibly than inexperienced learners, but experienced speakers produced a dissimilar English vowel better than inexperienced…
Descriptors: Adults, Distinctive Features (Language), English (Second Language), German
The Word Unit in Second Language Speech Production and Perception.
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Flege, James Emil; Munro, Murray J. – Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1994
Studied the word as a unit in second-language speech acquisition. Spanish and English monolinguals' renditions of "taco" differed systematically. Bilinguals' accuracy in producing the various segments of a second-language word may be interrelated. In judging second-language speech, listeners respond to phonetic errors distributed over the entire…
Descriptors: Acoustic Phonetics, Adult Students, Bilingualism, College Students