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Linguistic diversification within our public schools has demanded professional responsibility from speech-language pathologists (SLPs) serving nonstandard English speaking students. Understanding and recognizing normal cultural linguistic differences is the responsibility of the SLP. This study focused on the relationship of three speech features to intelligibility ratings of 10 preschool aged Black English speakers as assigned by 4 licensed standard English speaking SLPs with varying experience. The SLPs also rated the perceived effect of these speech features (i.e., articulation, speaking rate, and resonance) on intelligibility. Using the Pearson product-moment correlation, ratings were correlated and found to demonstrate an association between intelligibility ratings and all three speech features assessed. To determine which speech feature affected intelligibility the most, a linear association using a stepwise regression was applied to all listeners' ratings. For 3 of the 4 listeners, the strongest association between intelligibility and articulation. Ratings of the 4th listener, the listener with the most experience(> 3 years) demonstrated the strong association between intelligibility and resonance. The listener with _the least amount of experience tended to assign higher severity ratings to ratings for intelligibility, rate, and resonance than did the other listeners. Findings from this study demonstrate a need for more studies within the area of Black English as well as further investigative studies to assess listeners' perception of dialectical differences based on the experience within linguistically different or similar communities. Various measures of intelligibility of Black English speakers should also be explored for more accurate assessment tools for this population. Clinical implications focus on the SLP's responsibility to be experienced and knowledgeable of the linguistic community they are serving.

The diploma thesis An analysis of the history of French borrowings' pronunciation from Middle to Modern English on the basis of corpus data attempts to account for the influence of Old French borrowings and their pronunciation on the Middle English phonological system with respect to Modern English. The theoretical part of the thesis explains extralinguistic and intralinguistic aspects of language contact and the related lexical and phonological borrowing, which is followed by an overview of the history of the English and French phonological systems and complemented by the corresponding scribal practices. The research is carried out on a list of French loans extracted from and further studied in Oxford English Dictionary. Selected samples are looked up in a Middle English corpus and their probable pronunciation is inferred on the basis of their orthography. The analysis is concerned with five French phonemes absent in the medieval English.

Assuming that post-lexical processes significantly affect the English spoken language when in connected speech, and that this is one of the main reasons why students of English as a foreign language find listening comprehension so difficult to cope with, this study aims to find out the main processes concerning phrasal phonology that render spoken language so different from the written one. Drawing on these findings, it investigates the connection between listening comprehension and the teaching of pronunciation using a top-down approach, that is to say, starting from the whole picture, and based on the organization of the language in chunks in the fluidity of speech. This is an action-research, conducted with two groups of upper-intermediate students during one semester. It is based on the assumption that by raising students‟ awareness of post-lexical processes, with the support of the Lexical Approach which encourages teaching language in chunks, teachers can enable students to be better listeners. One of the groups did pronunciation awareness raising exercises whereas the other one only followed the coursebook. Students‟ listening abilities were tested using the Cambridge FCE Listening test, at the beginning and at the end of the experiment. At the end of the semester, the comparison of both groups‟ performance in the FCE listening test showed that the group who had been explicitly taught phrasal phonology developed their listening comprehension skills considerably, outperforming the other group. The results point to the importance of teaching pronunciation to develop listening comprehension. / Partindo do pressuposto de que processos pós-lexicais afetam significativamente o inglês oral na fala fluente, e que esta é uma das principais razões que fazem com que alunos de inglês como língua estrangeira considerem a compreensão oral tão difícil, esta pesquisa tem como objetivo identificar os principais processos que fazem a língua falada ser tão diferente da escrita. Partindo dessa diferença, foram investigadas as conexões entre compreensão oral e ensino de pronúncia, usando-se uma abordagem holística, ou seja, começando de uma visão geral, da organização da língua em blocos na fluidez da fala. Esta é uma pesquisa-ação efetuada com dois grupos de alunos de nível intermediário superior durante um semestre, e está baseada na tese que chamando a atenção dos alunos para processos pós-lexicais, com o suporte da abordagem lexical (o ensino da língua em blocos), poderemos ajudá-los a desenvolver sua compreensão oral. Um dos grupos trabalhou com exercícios de pronúncia enquanto o outro somente com o livro didático. A capacidade de compreensão oral destes alunos foi testada no começo e no final da pesquisa, através do teste de FCE da Universidade de Cambridge. No final do semestre, comparados os resultados de ambos os grupos nesse teste, verificamos que o grupo que recebeu instrução explícita de fonologia frasal apresentou uma melhora significativa na compreensão oral, superando o outro grupo. Os resultados apontam para a importância do ensino de pronúncia para desenvolvimento da compreensão oral.

This dissertation reports research into the problem of how to teach mastery of the English writing system (MEWS) to students of English as a second language (ESL). The problem involves the relatedness of English orthography and phonology. The research had two purposes. First was development of classroom instructional materials for improving reading proficiency in ESL students by application of generative phonological principles. Second was use of the instructional materials in a pilot study of fifty-three ESL college freshmen. A major finding was that subjects' reading proficiency was far below that of native speakers at the college level. Another was that the subjects had more difficulty with English vowels than with consonants. The subjects' scores on nonsense-word tests correlated significantly with five other criteria, including measures of ability to use ESL. A uniform disparity between ESL-student and native-speaker scores on tests of nonsense words was identified. Native-speakers generally had perfect scores, and ESL students had low scores. A chief implication is the importance of understanding orthography in reading English. Recommendations are that ESL proficiency be determined by nonsense-word tests and that the MEWS program be used by students of English as a second dialect.