Explore the vast range of titles available.

While numerous studies have recently shown that variation in input quantity predicts children’s rate of acquisition across a range of language skills, comparatively little is known about the impact of variation in input quality on (bilingual) children’s language development. This study investigated the relation between specific quality-oriented properties of bilingual children’s input and measures of children’s language development across a number of skills while at the same time taking family constellation into account. Participants were bilingual preschoolers (n = 50) acquiring Dutch alongside another language. Preschoolers’ receptive and productive vocabulary and morphosyntax in Dutch were assessed. Parental questionnaires were used to derive estimates of input quality. Family constellation was first operationalized as presence of a native-speaker parent and subsequently in terms of patterns of parental language use. Results showed that proportion of native input and having a native-speaker parent were never significant predictors of children’s language skills, whereas the degree of non-nativeness in the input, family constellation in terms of parental language use, and language richness were. This study shows that what matters is not how much exposure bilingual children have to native rather than non-native speakers, but how proficient any non-native speakers are.

Climate change is reshaping urban environments, intensifying the need for resilient green space design and management that supports biodiversity, improves ecosystem services, and adapts to changing conditions. Understanding the trade-offs between native and non-native species selection is important for developing climate-resilient urban green spaces. This review examines public preferences for native versus non-native plant species and their implications for urban green space design and management. We critically analyse the ecosystem services and biodiversity benefits provided by both native and non-native plants in urban spaces, highlighting the complex trade-offs involved. Our findings indicate that while native plants can be underrepresented in urban landscapes, they offer significant ecological benefits including support for local wildlife and pollinators. Some studies have highlighted the climate resilience of native plants; however, they are likely to be more affected by climate change. Therefore, conservation strategies are needed, especially for endemic and threatened plant species. Several studies suggest a more flexible approach that integrates plant species from diverse climatic origins to improve resilience. We also explore conservation gardening (CG) as a socio-ecological strategy to integrate endangered native species into urban landscapes, promoting biodiversity and ecosystem resilience. This review stresses the importance of informed plant species selection and community involvement in creating climate-resilient urban green spaces.

Hybridization and genetic modification are potential methods for incorporation of stress tolerance being explored to support some at-risk tree species. However, many concerns, both ecological and economic, have been identified in using these biotechnologies, such as potential for invasiveness or high cost. There is limited information on perceptions towards hybrid and genetically modified (GM) trees, particularly from individuals responsible for widescale tree management. An online survey was administered to land managers in Indiana, USA to gauge perceptions to hybrid and GM trees, and current hybrid tree use. Land managers had stronger concern for ecological, rather than economic, issues, with potential for invasiveness being strongest. Agreement was highest for using the tree types for conservation and restoration of at-risk species and production purposes. However, perceptions varied by characteristics such as concern type, age, and land type managed. Ecological concern and land type managed most strongly predicted hybrid use. Overall, the majority of land managers agreed, rather than disagreed, with a variety of potential hybrid and GM tree advantages and purposes. Thus, results indicate that if these biotechnologies are deemed appropriate for supporting at-risk species, the majority of land managers in Indiana might be agreeable to such recommendations from researchers. However, it was also clear that despite this, most respondents concurrently had strong ecological concerns about suitability as a native species replacement. To address this, it is essential that these tree types be thoroughly vetted, and land managers be actively engaged in the process, as this population would ultimately be responsible for any widescale implementation of hybrid and GM trees.

In this essay, I engage in autoethnographic reflection on my role as a native researcher, addressing questions and issues related to evaluating a researcher’s complete-membership in Critical Complete-Member Ethnography (CCME). I revisit CCME as a critical communication research method and introduce two contextual elements –the geopolitics of transnational mobility and cultural belongingness– to enhance the depth of self-reflection that CCME can encourage researchers to undertake. Specifically, I discuss these two components within the framework of nativeness, as these factors often involve the challenges faced by international researchers when they claim their native or insider position upon returning to their non-Western homelands to conduct ethnography. In my autoethnographic reflection, I draw on my fieldwork experience in South Korea as an instance, focusing on different conditions that destabilized my native position: institutional regulations of crossing the border during the global pandemic, my growing feeling of in-betweenness, and my performance of U.S. academic membership in the field. Through reflection, I demonstrate that nativeness is not consistently given or entitled but changing and fluctuating in different times and contexts. Ultimately, I argue that in-flux aspects of my native position complicate and expand methodological considerations for determining and accessing a researcher’s complete-membership and their epistemological intimacy with their communities in CCME.

Within the fields of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP), the question of whether English as an Additional Language (EAL) scholars are disadvantaged by the pressure to publish in English continues to be debated. In this paper, I challenge this orthodoxy, raising questions about the evidence upon which it is based. Within a framework of ‘verbal hygiene’, I will argue that the attention accorded to ‘non-nativeness’ may be disproportionate to its significance for publication success. I conclude by proposing some reorientations for researchers and practitioners in the field that encompass non-linguistic structures of inequity.

Communication is challenging for disabled individuals, but with advancement of brain-computer interface (BCI) systems, alternative communication systems can be developed. Current BCI spellers, such as P300, SSVEP, and MI, have drawbacks like reliance on external stimuli or conversation irrelevant mental tasks. In contrast to these systems, Imagined speech based BCI systems rely on directly decoding the vowels/words user is thinking, making them more intuitive, user friendly and highly popular among Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI) researchers. However, more research needs to be conducted on how subject-specific characteristics such as mental state, age, handedness, nativeness and resting state activity affects the brain's output during imagined speech. In an overt speech, it is evident that native and non-native speakers' brains function differently. Therefore, this paper explores how nativeness to language affects EEG signals while imagining vowel phonemes, using brain-map analysis and scalogram and also investigates the inclusion of features extracted from resting state EEG with imagined state EEG. The Fourteen-channel EEG for Imagined Speech (FEIS) dataset was used to analyse the EEG signals recorded while imagining vowel phonemes for 16 subjects (nine native English and seven non-native Chinese). For the classification of vowel phonemes, different connectivity measures such as covariance, coherence, and Phase Synchronous Index-PSI were extracted and analysed using statistics based Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) approach. Different fusion strategies (difference, concatenation, Common Spatial Pattern-CSP and Canonical Correlation Analysis-CCA) were carried out to incorporate resting state EEG connectivity measures with imagined state connectivity measures for enhancing the accuracy of imagined vowel phoneme recognition. Simulation results revealed that concatenating imagined state and rest state covariance and PSI features provided the maximum accuracy of 92.78% for native speakers and 94.07% for non-native speakers.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which posed challenges for accommodating student learning, also opened avenues for using digital resources in online learning. However, differences were observed in their use, effectiveness, and intensity across developed and least developed societies. This is referred to as “digital inequalities,” caused by factors such as insufficient organizational-level support and teachers’ digital competence (DC). This study was conducted to determine teachers’ DC and reveal if their DC was explained by their digital nativeness and principals’ digital instructional leadership capital. The study used a quantitative research method, whereby data were collected from 393 teachers. The researchers used SmartPLS 4 and SPSS 24 to analyze data. The findings complement the available literature and help pave ways to promote the integration of digital resources in teaching and learning.

Pronunciation plays an indisputable role in communication; even more so in communication between native and non-native speakers of English. The goals for pronunciation teaching have shifted from accent-free or native-like pronunciation to comprehensibility and teaching practices aimed at non-native English learners vary and are often based on teachers’ opinions rather than research findings. The paper aims to present the current topics in twenty selected research papers dealing with pronunciation teaching (teaching practices in the English language classrooms, selected segmental and suprasegmental features). The analysed papers indicate that a teacher’s good theoretical background can raise students’ awareness and the overall performance of pronunciation phenomena, whether at the segmental or the suprasegmental level. Students may benefit from different strategies applied to pronunciation learning, but traditional teaching methods are still prevalent in the contemporary English language classroom. The contribution presents partial results of the research project KEGA 001TTU-4/2019.

Since the 1990s, the emphasis on intelligibility as a goal in pronunciation teaching rather than near-native or nativelike competence has been reinforced by the increasing use of English as a lingua franca. The insight of the intelligibility principle has greatly impressed researchers in China’s English education, but has “very limited and weak” impacts on English pronunciation teaching and learning in China. English education in China has been systematically conducted from schools to universities under the direction of national syllabi and curriculum standards issued by the Ministry of Education. Using the documentary research method, this paper, the first try of its kind, takes a historical look at China’s national syllabi and curriculum standards for schools issued after 1949, focusing on the conception of the nature and the role of pronunciation and pronunciation teaching, pronunciation goals, teacher’s role, as well as requirements or suggestions about what to teach and how to teach. By tracing the process of developments in pronunciation teaching notions and principles that were and/or are officially advocated in China, the paper reveals two important facts. First, the English national syllabi and curriculum standards have encompassed both the nativeness principle and the intelligibility principle, though implicitly giving dominance to the former one, which in part accounts for the favor for the nativeness principle in formal English education, especially in schools, in China. Second, with the notion of English as a lingua franca adopted in the syllabi and curriculum standards, the intelligibility principle has been gaining more and more weight. Consequently, by elaborating that the two principles are by nature not incompatible, it is proposed that the current curriculum standards go further to take balanced attitudes towards the two principles so as to lead Chinese English teachers and students to set more realistic and instrumental-pragmatic pronunciation goals in line with varying English learning purposes. The findings and the proposal could be adopted by teachers and learners so as to change the school reality and may shed light on future relevant revisions of the current national English curriculum standards, teaching material development, teacher training, and pronunciation teaching methodology research.

Abstract Recent years have seen a shift in the social scientific study of introduced species. Social scientists have shown that popular interpretations vary beyond the critical, invasive frameworks and include more celebratory or welcoming responses. Yet this research has taken the form of case studies. This has limited comparative inquiry. In response, this article develops a typology of sociocultural responses to introduced species by nonspecialists. The article then discusses major forms of collective meaning-making that go into creating these different cultural types.