Non-native speakers of English in the classroom: what are the effects on pupil performance?

There has been an increase in the number of children going to school in England who do not speak English as a first language. We investigate whether this has an impact on the educational outcomes of native English speakers at the end of primary school. We show that the negative correlation observed in the raw data is mainly an artefact of selection: non-native speakers are more likely to attend school with disadvantaged native speakers. We attempt to identify a causal impact of changes in the percentage of non-native speakers. Our results suggest zero effect and rule out negative effects

Native and non-native speakers of English in summarising expository texts

This study examines how native and non-native English speakers summarise expository texts. It investigates if there is any difference in quality between the summaries produced by two groups of students; namely native speakers of English, who acquire the language in early childhood and have their education (from kindergarten / grade 1 to high school) in English, and non-native speakers, who acquire the language in an ESL/EFL context. The sample consisted of seventy undergraduates from a private Malaysian university, comprising thirty-five native and thirty-five non-native speakers of English. Data for the study include summaries by students, response to teacher and student questionnaires as well as interviews with both teachers and students. The results of the study revealed that there was a significant difference in the quality of summaries of native and non-native English speakers in expository text

Dutch Word Stress as Pronounced by Indonesian Students

This study focuses on the way in which the Dutch monophthongal vowels are pronounced by Indonesian students. To investigate whether Indonesian students realize the Dutch vowels correctly, especially when they are stressed, I analysed duration and quality of stressed and unstressed Dutch vowels. Measurements were done on the duration and the formant frequencies of the vowels spoken by Indonesian students and by native speakers of Dutch as well. Statistical analysis showed that in general the differences in duration between vowels spoken by the Indonesian students and by the native speakers were not significant. However, the effect of stress on the lengthening of the vowels was stronger for the Indonesian students than for the native speakers. In addition, statistical analysis of the formant frequencies confirmed that the non-native speakers realized the Dutch vowels slightly differently from the Dutch native speakers. The Indonesian students pronounced the stressed vowels more clearly than their unstressed counterparts; yet their vowel diagram is smaller than the vowel diagram of the native speakers

Non-native children speech recognition through transfer learning

This work deals with non-native children's speech and investigates both multi-task and transfer learning approaches to adapt a multi-language Deep Neural Network (DNN) to speakers, specifically children, learning a foreign language. The application scenario is characterized by young students learning English and German and reading sentences in these second-languages, as well as in their mother language. The paper analyzes and discusses techniques for training effective DNN-based acoustic models starting from children native speech and performing adaptation with limited non-native audio material. A multi-lingual model is adopted as baseline, where a common phonetic lexicon, defined in terms of the units of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), is shared across the three languages at hand (Italian, German and English); DNN adaptation methods based on transfer learning are evaluated on significant non-native evaluation sets. Results show that the resulting non-native models allow a significant improvement with respect to a mono-lingual system adapted to speakers of the target language

Differential modulation of performance in insight and divergent thinking tasks with tDCS

While both insight and divergent thinking tasks are used to study creativity, there are reasons to believe that the two may call upon very different mechanisms. To explore this hypothesis, we administered a verbal insight task (riddles) and a divergent thinking task (verbal fluency) to 16 native English speakers and 16 non-native English speakers after they underwent Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of the left middle temporal gyrus and right temporo- parietal junction. We found that, in the case of the insight task the depolarization of right temporo-parietal junction and hyperpolarization of left middle temporal gyrus resulted in increased performance, relative to both the control condition and the reverse stimulation condition in both groups (non-native > native speakers). However, in the case of the divergent thinking task, the same pattern of stimulation resulted in a decrease in performance, compared to the reverse stimulation condition, in the non-native speakers. We explain this dissociation in terms of differing task demands of divergent thinking and insight tasks and speculate that the greater sensitivity of non-native speakers to tDCS stimulation may be a function of less entrenched neural networks for non-native languages

What do English language teachers need to know about English as an International Language?

Some applied linguists have provided a definition of English as an international language (EIL) in order to distinguish it from other concepts such as English as a foreign language (EFL) or English as a second language (ESL). Whereas EFL and ESL have usually been related to non-native speakers of English communicating with native speakers of English, English as an international language can be defined as “that English in all its linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects which is used as a vehicle for communication between non-native speakers only, as well as between any combination of native and non-native speakers.” (Campbell et al. 1983) In other words, EIL aims at mutual intelligibility and appropriate language use involving nationals of different countries. Essentially, the concept of EIL focuses on cross-cultural, cross-linguistic interactions. In order to identify the major features of EIL, Campbell et al. (1983) introduced three principles of teaching EIL (TEIL): (1) knowledge of the different social and cultural patterns and rules present in communicative exchanges involving speakers of more than one country or culture; (2) training native speakers in the use of English in international contexts; and (3) training non-native speakers in the use of language with native as well as with non-native speakers. This paper aims at dealing with some pedagogical implications of TEIL in Portuguese basic and secondary schools. In spite of recent changes in ELT in Portugal, there are still some common ideas based on linguistic and pedagogical fallacies. Through the proposal of a TEIL paradigm, this paper will point out some of these fallacies hoping to generate ample debate on the new directions in ELT worldwide and in Portugal

Can monolinguals be like bilinguals? Evidence from dialect switching

Bilinguals rely on cognitive control mechanisms like selective activation and inhibition of lexical entries to prevent intrusions from the non-target language. We present cross-linguistic evidence that these mechanisms also operate in bidialectals. Thirty-two native German speakers who sometimes use the Öcher Platt dialect, and thirty-two native English speakers who sometimes use the Dundonian Scots dialect completed a dialect-switching task. Naming latencies were higher for switch than for non-switch trials, and lower for cognate compared to non-cognate nouns. Switch costs were symmetrical, regardless of whether participants actively used the dialect or not. In contrast, sixteen monodialectal English speakers, who performed the dialectswitching task after being trained on the Dundonian words, showed asymmetrical switch costs with longer latencies when switching back into Standard English. These results are reminiscent of findings for balanced vs. unbalanced bilinguals, and suggest that monolingual dialect speakers can recruit control mechanisms in similar ways as bilinguals

Research methods and intelligibility studies

This paper first briefly reviews the concept of intelligibility as it has been employed in both English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and world Englishes (WE) research. It then examines the findings of the Lingua Franca Core (LFC), a list of phonological features that empirical research has shown to be important for safeguarding mutual intelligibility between non-native speakers of English. The main point of the paper is to analyse these findings and demonstrate that many of them can be explained if three perspectives (linguistic, psycholinguistic and historical-variationist) are taken. This demonstration aims to increase the explanatory power of the concept of intelligibility by providing some theoretical background. An implication for ELF research is that at the phonological level, internationally intelligible speakers have a large number of features in common, regardless of whether they are non-native speakers or native speakers. An implication for WE research is that taking a variety-based, rather than a features-based, view of phonological variation and its connection with intelligibility is likely to be unhelpful, as intelligibility depends to some extent on the phonological features of individual speakers, rather than on the varieties per se