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Much has been written about the acquisition of L2 phonology. In addition to this research, recent years have witnessed an exponential growth in the study of cross-linguistic influence in L3 acquisition (Cenoz, 2005; Cenoz, et al., 2001; Cenoz & Ulrike, 2000; de Angelis, 2005, 2007; Gut, 2010); however, there is a noteworthy lack of literature dealing with L3 acoustic analyses (Gut, 2010, Llama, et al., 2010). In order to fill this gap, this study examines the production of Spanish L3 falling diphthongs among Japanese L1-English L2 speakers in the US. The data indicate that falling diphthongs are the most vulnerable to errors in Spanish L3 due to transfer from prosodic variation and degree of task formality.

That Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) is the most widely spoken lingua franca in Cameroon is no longer open to debate. In spite of its functional load in the complex multilingual make-up of the country, it does not enjoy the recognition given to the two official languages as governmental authorities completely ignore the language. This ongoing official neglect has affected the attitude of Cameroonians towards the language as most of them style it a ‘bad’ language that must be limited to the informal sector. This paper explores the possibility of projecting the language especially through its recognition by the state and its use in education given that ‘when a language is assigned significant functions, it grows and gains more respect’ (Adegbija, 1994, p. 71). Schröder (2003, p. 255) reinforces this assertion by stating that ‘if CamP were used as a medium of instruction for some school subjects . . . its utility and subsequently its prestige would certainly be enhanced.’ In a bid to achieving this objective, we analyzed the attitudes of 100 educated Cameroonians (with university education) towards its use and towards steps aimed at projecting it. The results reveal that although CPE is such a useful language in Cameroon and that attitudes towards the language have improved tremendously, it still needs to be given a push for it to gain overt prestige. The study identifies a number of challenges facing the promotion of CPE and proposes some solutions.

Curriculum development is considered the most important component of higher education system in every country. The ability of instructors in effective teaching, especially at university level, has a meaningful relationship with their knowledge of the curriculum. Therefore, the process of developing these programs, and especially the main partners who should participate in the formulation of curricular programs, has attracted a wide range of attention. Due attention to the necessity of carefully planned curricula and their components as a complex system is a sensitive indicator of the trend of intellectual thought system and educational trends of the instructors. This article investigates the TEFL PhD programs held in Iranian universities to cast light on their points of strength and weakness.

This article examines the aspects of similarity and diversity between different cultures through the cognitive theory of metaphor. The aim is to show that both aspects need to be intertwined for the development of intercultural communication and for solving problems of understanding that can arise in cross-cultural communication. The author used the cognitive theory of metaphor developed by Lakoff and Johnson and applied it to a cross-cultural analysis of a randomly selected set of metaphors in Persian and English. The results of the study revealed that there is a certain degree of similarity between the two languages, but several aspects of such metaphors are culture-specific. This underlines the importance of intercultural studies for foreign language teachers.

Writing is most probably the most difficult skill for ESL/EFL learners to master. It is difficult not only because it requires junior writers to generate and organize ideas in a language other than their mother tongue but also because it forces them to present their already generated and organized ideas in such a text form that is understandable to readers from a wide range of socio-cultural backgrounds as well as to the native speakers of English. Therefore, the question of how to teach writing in a second/foreign language has been at the center of attention for a good number of researchers and educators over the past decades. Attempts at determining how to teach writing, and what to teach in writing courses, have resulted in the development of teaching methods, materials, and procedures which are based on an analysis of different genres, and the quest is still going on. This paper provides a brief overview of genre analysis, discusses the notions of Genre Constellations, Genre hierarchies, Genre chains, Genre Sets, Genre Networks, and Subgenres, and elaborates on the relationship of genre analysis to international communication.

The present quantitative study aims at investigating or better to say, comparing the working memory ability (WMA) of Iranian EFL male and female learners in terms of reading skill. In order to do so, forty students, twenty male and twenty female, were randomly selected and then three different but equivalent texts were distributed among them. In each administration, immediately after reading the text, they were supposed to answer a few questions to check their understanding of the texts. Having collected the required samples, the SPSS program of Independent t-test was run three times. The gained findings revealed that regarding reading skill, beginning females outperformed by far the males. But with regard to the intermediate and advanced level students, no significant difference was observed.

This paper, adopting the constructional perspective, deals with the interaction of aspect and construction with reference to the ted4 construction in Hakka. It is claimed that, syntactically, ted4 is a phase marker; the meaning of the ted4 construction denotes a change of state; and aspectually, the ted4 construction encodes telicity. The quantitative expression collocated with the ted4 construction is an additional argument which is licenced by the ted4 construction, not by the verb nor by ted4, and it can salvage the ungrammaticality of certain ted4 constructions. Further, the aspectual coercion of the ted4 construction manifests that constructions win in conflicts between lexical meanings and constructional meanings. Finally, the schemata of ted4 constructions are diagrammed to exhibit their semiproductive patterns in syntax, semantics, and aspect.

Dynamic Assessment (DA) posits that learners’ potential is a reliable measure for predicting learners’ possible improvement in future, i.e., learners’ responsiveness to instruction is seen as a measure of learners’ potential (ZPD). This raises the question whether it is possible to distinguish the quantitative and qualitative effects of DA on the items and persons. To this end two types of Rasch scaling were used to scale sets of wh-type questions and scanning items: (a) students’ answers were treated in a binary correct/incorrect fashion; (b) the change in correctness (if any) was modeled within a Rasch rating scales framework. Using a pre-intervention-post design, Rasch scaling of the data of 42 Iranian university students showed the anticipated quantitative improvement in learners’ performance on the posttest relative to the pretest—for the wh-type questions as well as for scanning items. However, no clear qualitative effects were found as the item and person hierarchies were essentially invariant across the pre- and post-tests. Interestingly, the rating scale formulation showed great promise as measure of ZPD as it proved to be a useful tool to capture the pre- and post-test data simultaneously.