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Purpose: This scoping review considers the acoustic features of a clear speech register directed to nonnative listeners known as foreigner-directed speech (FDS). We identify vowel hyperarticulation and low speech rate as the most representative acoustic features of FDS; other features, including wide pitch range and high intensity, are still under debate. We also discuss factors that may influence the outcomes and characteristics of FDS. We start by examining accommodation theories, outlining the reasons why FDS is likely to serve a didactic function by helping listeners acquire a second language (L2). We examine how this speech register adapts to listeners' identities and linguistic needs, suggesting that FDS also takes listeners' L2 proficiency into account. To confirm the didactic function of FDS, we compare it to other clear speech registers, specifically infant-directed speech and Lombard speech. Conclusions: Our review reveals that research has not yet established whether FDS succeeds as a didactic tool that supports L2 acquisition. Moreover, a complex set of factors determines specific realizations of FDS, which need further exploration. We conclude by summarizing open questions and indicating directions and recommendations for future research.

In today’s globalized world, learning languages and developing intercultural skills are of paramount importance due to dynamic and complex global interdependencies. However, not every language student around the world has a chance to engage in face-to-face intercultural communication with people from different backgrounds. Telecollaboration offers a worthwhile opportunity by creating digital environments for language learners to communicate with people from diverse backgrounds. This qualitative meta-synthesis therefore aimed to investigate the research papers that were published between 2010 and 2015 in respect to language and intercultural learning within telecollaborative environments. Besides reporting emerging research trends among the studies, this synthesis study scrutinized recent emerging issues and observable patterns under five main themes: (1) the participants’ overall views on their telecollaborative experiences, (2) language learning through telecollaboration, (3) intercultural learning through telecollaboration, (4) the challenges experienced within the telecollaborative projects, and (5) the needs for further effective telecollaboration. Finally, this study synthesizes key emerging issues in telecollaborative projects and offers further research and practice directions in line with the current observable patterns.

This article examines the language ideologies undergirding university English language admission requirements. Universities are today caught between the order of the nation state and that of corporate globalization as they seek to attract both national and international students. This tension produces conflicting processes of (converse) racialization and linguistic (un)marking within which universities construct language proficiencies and ethnonational identities. Our study finds two categorically different constructs of English language proficiency (ELP): inherent ELP based on citizenship, linguistic heritage, and prior education, and tested ELP. These two constructs of ELP map onto two dichotomous student groups. One side of this binary—the white native-speaker citizen construct—is subject to converse racialization and unmarking. While it becomes blurred, it casts its Other into clear relief: the Asian non-native speaker non-citizen. The research has implications for critical language testing and language policies in higher education. (Citizenship, English as a global academic language, internationalization of higher education, international students, language ideologies, language testing, native speakerism, racialization, World Englishes)

The present study examines the role that multimodality and translanguaging play in scaffolding oral interactions during language‐related episodes (LREs) involving meaning negotiation. The oral tasks carried out using synchronous video‐based computer‐mediated communication were part of a tandem virtual exchange (Spain, Canada). The participants, 18 dyads of English and Spanish college‐level learners, conducted three oral interaction tasks in pairs online. LREs were identified and transcribed and data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, including all instances of translanguaging and uses of multiple modes of meaning‐making. Quantitative data revealed that translanguaging involved not only English and Spanish, but also other shared languages and occurred mostly during meaning negotiation. Additionally, the use of multimodal elements, including gestures, postures, gaze, multiple digital and physical devices (mobile devices, computers, props, notes) was examined. Qualitative data analyses revealed the interplay between multimodality and learners’ multilingual repertoires which reinforced and complemented meaning‐making during these episodes. The Challenge Given the wide‐spread use of video calls and the affordances the medium provides for foreign language learning and, specifically, for oral interaction, how do learners manage the use of multimodal and multilingual elements in oral interactive tasks? Do multimodality and linguistic repertoires aid comprehension and enhance the meaning negotiation process?

Intelligibility problems between native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English are often attributed to some perceived inadequacy of the NNSs. This emphasis on the NNSs' role in successful communication is highly problematic, given that intelligibility is a negotiated process between speaker and listener. In some cases, NSs have negative attitudes toward NNSs that impair their willingness to communicate with NNSs and to acknowledge proficient NNS speech. Thus, NS attitudes are also important factors in the success of NSNNS communication. This article demonstrates a brief intervention that reduces negative language attitudes and thus promotes communication between NS undergraduates and NNSs who are international teaching assistants (ITAs). Two studies are reported. In both, undergraduates engaged in cooperative problem-solving exercises with ITAs. Results show that undergraduates exposed to structured intergroup contact subsequently rated ITAs higher in instructional competence and comprehensibility. Future applications of contact theory promise to improve NSs' comprehension of nonnative English and to cultivate their global citizenship.

People are frequently concerned about the impressions they make on others (referred to as metaperceptions), but their insights are often inaccurate. Illustrating the phenomenon called the liking gap, speakers interacting in their first language (L1) and second language (L2) tend to underestimate how much they are liked by their interlocutor, and these judgments often predict their desire to engage in future interaction and collaboration. To understand the scope of this bias and its consequences, we focused on L1–L2 dyadic interaction, examining metaperception as a potential barrier to conversations between university students. We recruited 58 previously unacquainted university students to perform a 10-min academic discussion task between one L1 and one L2 speaker. Afterward, the speakers (a) assessed each other’s interpersonal liking, speaking skill, and interactional behavior; (b) provided their metaperceptions of their interlocutor’s assessments of the same dimensions; and (c) estimated their interest in future interaction with the same interlocutor. All speakers showed a reliable metaperception bias to underestimate their interpersonal liking, speaking skill, and interactional behavior. However, only L1 speakers’ desire to engage in future interaction was associated with their metaperceptions of interpersonal liking. We discuss implications of this finding for understanding and promoting academic communication.

The pairing of telecollaboration and focused instruction can lead to measurable gains in second language learners' pragmatic competence. This article examines speech act production in telecollaborative exchange, focusing on the requesting behavior of American learners of German for professional purposes as they interacted with German-speaking professionals in Germany via synchronous Web conferences. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative methods, the study investigated the effect of interaction with expert speakers and the implementation of focused instruction on learners' pragmatic development. Whereas quantitative analysis showed no change between experimental conditions, qualitative analysis of 4 learners' request production over the course of 4 online discussions revealed idiosyncratic developmental pathways and the emergence of a common strategy for managing participation in oral synchronous computer-mediated communication. The findings provide new insight regarding the nature of second language request production and confirm the utility of pragmatics instruction in telecollaboration. At the same time, the study calls for more refined analytical tools when investigating language development in extended telecollaborative discourse. (Verlag).

Although researchers generally agree that native speakers (NSs) process formulaic sequences (FSs) holistically to some extent, findings about nonnative speakers (NNSs) are conflicting, potentially because not all FSs are psychologically equal or because in some studies NNSs may not have fully understood the FSs. We address these issues by investigating Chinese NSs and NNSs processing of idioms and matched nonidiom FSs in phrase acceptability judgment tasks with and without think-alouds (TAs). Reaction times show that NSs processed idioms faster than nonidioms regardless of length, but NNSs processed 3-character FSs faster than 4-character FSs regardless of type. TAs show NSs’ understanding of FSs has reached ceiling, but NNSs’ understanding was incomplete, with idioms being understood more poorly than nonidioms. Although we conclude that idioms and nonidioms have different mental statuses in NSs’ lexicons, it is inconclusive how they are represented by NNSs. TAs also show that NNSs employed various strategies to compensate for limited idiom knowledge, causing comparable processing speed for idioms and nonidioms. The findings highlight the importance of distinguishing subtypes of FSs and considering NNSs’ quality of understanding in discussions of the psychological reality of FSs.

The study discussed in the article analyzes the user chat logs and other artifacts of a virtual world, Quest Atlantis (QA), and proposes the concept of Negotiation for Action (NfA) to explain how interaction, specifically, avatar-embodied collaboration between native English speakers and nonnative English speakers, provided resources for English language acquisition. Iterative multilayered analyses revealed several affordances of QA for language acquisition at both utterance and discourse levels. Through intercultural collaboration on solving content-based problems, participants successfully reached quest goals during which emergent identity formation and meaning making take place. The study also demonstrates that it is in this intercultural interaction that pragmatics, syntax, semantics, and discourse practices arose and were enacted. The findings are consistent with the authors' ecological psychology framework, in that meaning emerges when language is used to coordinate in-the-moment actions. (Verlag, adapt.).

Conversational alignment (i.e., the automatic tendency of interactants to reuse each other's morphosyntactic structures and lexical choices in natural dialogue) is a well-researched phenomenon in native (Pickering & Ferreira, 2008) and to a smaller extent in second language (L2) speakers (Jackson, 2018) as confirmed by many highly controlled lab-based experimental studies investigating face-to-face oral interaction. Only a few studies have explored alignment in more naturally occurring L2 interactions (e.g., Dao, Trofimovich, & Kennedy, 2018), some of them extending the context to written computer-mediated communication (SCMC) (e.g., Michel & Smith, 2018). The current study aimed to address this gap by taking a closer look at alignment in L2 conversations mediated by two different types of SCMC (videoconference vs. text chat). We explored lexical as well as structural alignment in three target languages (Chinese, French, and German) involving interactional partners of different status (L2 peer, L1 peer, and L1 tutor). Results revealed that lexical and structural alignment are both present and observable in different SCMC contexts. From a methodological point of view, we discuss how different analyses suit the data generated by the affordances of the different SCMC contexts in the target languages and argue for a more dynamic and pervasive perspective on interaction.