Original Paper EŠects of living in a target language country on the acquisition of English: Proˆciency in production of rhythmic patterns and TOEIC score
Abstract This study investigated the eŠects of living in the country of a target language on learners' acquisition of English durational patterns with respect to interstress intervals (ISIs). We were interested in nding out what kind of eŠects the experience of living abroad had and how much eŠect it exerted on the learners' proˆciency level. We were also interested in investigating whether the age of arrival in the country of a target language could be a factor aŠecting the acquisition of spoken language. Production experiments were carried out to investigate the durational patterns used by four groups of speakers: adult native speakers of American English (AMR), American third graders (G3), Japanese learners of English who had lived in the U.S. (RTN), and Japanese learners of English who had neither lived nor studied in the U.S
