Intelligibility is considered key to successful and effective human communication. The intelligibility of the English used by its non-native speakers is the subject of much research enquiry, and as English continues to strengthen its foothold in international settings as the global lingua franca, the issue of mutual intelligibility has never been of greater importance. The paper begins by examining “intelligibility” as conceptualized by scholars in the fields of World Englishes (WE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF). While WE scholars approach the subject by investigating the international intelligibility of the new varieties of English, particularly to other non-native speakers of the language, ELF researchers seek to uncover how speakers negotiate and co-construct intelligibility in interaction, and the kinds of accommodation strategies employed in the process. Although the underlying assumptions and the methodologies associated with the 2 fields are not always congruent, the findings contribute towards developing a clearer picture of the subject of intelligibility in global communication. The paper ends by considering the pedagogical implications of the findings of intelligibility studies in WE and ELF.

Even though many researchers emphasise the interrelatedness of language and culture and the significance of teaching culture in foreign language education, understanding how culture can be taught has proven to be a difficult undertaking in many respects. This problem is hardly new, and the problems of defining what culture is and how to teach it in language classes have been of concern to researchers for decades. Developments in technology have opened up access to cultural resources from all over the world, and to this end, methods of teaching culture using technology have started to appear more regularly in research associated with second language teaching and learning. A glance through the literature reveals, however, that where in the past many teachers focused on teaching a single culture within a language class, in recent years there has been a movement to try to broaden the focus to include general intercultural communication competence, but a systematic approach for methods of teaching culture have been still lacking. However, it is generally accepted that cross-cultural understanding is indeed a by-product of foreign language learning, and language should be taught as an explicit element of cultural practice. Therefore, it is necessary to consider issues about teaching culture in foreign language education such as what role culture plays in language teaching and how it is being taught. Based on current developments in technology, it is timely to think about effective teaching methodologies for integrating culture and language that prepare learners to communicate and collaborate effectively in the 21st century

This study examined how adult native speakers of Korean prosodically structure their speech during spontaneous story telling. It asked participants to produce a spontaneous story from a picture book in L1 Korean. Participants’ phonological phrasing (via pause) was analyzed with reference to eight hierarchical syntactic structures defined in the study. The results suggested three-level hierarchy in phonological structure in spoken Korean: between sentences > between independent clauses > between a dependent clause and the matrix clause = any within-clause boundaries. Korean speakers paused the longest prior to starting a new sentence. They paused statistically significantly shorter between two independent clauses (e.g., coordinate clauses and adverbial clauses), and even shorter between a dependent clause (e.g., complement clauses and relative clauses) and the matrix clause. Interestingly, however, the last type of clausal boundaries, i.e., between interdependent but separate clauses, did not differ from any of the observed within-clause boundaries with respect to intonation structure marked by pauses. These results are consistent with the literature as to across-clause boundaries, but contra the traditional prediction that syntactic hierarchical structure may be mapped onto phonological structure: clausal boundaries are prosodically treated the same as within-clausal boundaries. Crosslinguistic and educational implications are discussed.

Collocational competence is important part of L2 English amplifier acquisition. This competence entails learners' ability to use the right combination of words with natural-sounding semantic prosody. It is known to be an integral part of mastering pragmatic function of L2 English vocabulary, which also is a challenge for the learners at the same time (Zhang, 2008). Despite the importance, previous studies on ESL/EFL learners' amplifier use lacked empirical evidence and insight about semantic prosody. The purpose of present learner corpora-based study was to fill the existing research gap by finding patterns of amplifiers. Two existing corpora were selected, coded, and analyzed to fulfill this purpose; they are Korean EFL learners and native speakers of English (NE). Results from analysis found Korean learners' overall underuse in amplifiers. Also, frequently occurring amplifier ranks for each corpus differed. Semantic prosody analysis revealed that amplifier associated with dominantly positive connotation were very, really, and highly. Amplifiers associated with dominantly negative connotation were extremely, absolutely, severely, and greatly. Contrast analysis showed that the only amplifier that Koreans and NEs used amplifier to signal same semantic prosody dominantly was severely (negative). Other than that, Koreans and NE showed salient discrepancies in semantic prosody use. The pedagogical implication of the present study is that vocabulary teaching need to include semantic prosody, and the first step will be to conduct ESL/EFL teacher education about it (Zhang, 2009). It's important to remind them of the value of semantic prosody in language communication (S Lee, 2011).

Chinese L2 learners of Japanese are identified as showing difficulties in the production of Japanese geminates. The idea of being difficult-to-listen is embodied in the concept Comprehensibility (Derwing & Munro 2015). This study first reviews the native pronunciation of Japanese singleton vs. geminate contrast. Then, we report findings based on the pronunciation by 20 Chinese learners of Japanese and discuss the issue of comprehensibility in geminate production. While the contrast in the closure duration between singleton and geminate consonants shows a similar pattern to reported Japanese speech, the learners show large differences in the vowel duration preceding and following consonants. We report findings from a linear mixed model that was run with speaker as a random effect. The results show that participants do not make differences in vowel duration, or the difference in vowel duration is reversed from L1 Japanese speakers. Identifying the locus of the source of an L2 accent should be accompanied with intelligibility and comprehensibility. Such identification is important in increasing comprehensibility in speech that is already intelligible.