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Persuasiveness in oral communication in English can be expressed with various vocal phonetic cues that may not be readily accessible to English second language (L2) learners whose native language may employ a different set of cues. With a goal to increase L2 learners' perceived spoken confidence and persuasiveness, and obtain empirical evidence for phonetic adjustments that native English speakers make to influence listeners, the current study explored the use of consonant prolongation in stressed syllable onsets for emphasis by native British English speakers and English L2 learners. The native speakers' durations of continuant consonants and voiceless stop consonant voice onset times (VOTs) in (1) neutrally-produced speech and (2) persuasively delivered motivational/shocking/emotional messages were compared to Latvian L2 English speakers' productions. The results revealed that in persuasive speech, the British speakers' consonantal durations, particularly those of continuants, got significantly longer relative to the vowels that followed them; for English L2 learners, the duration of consonants did not change as a factor of speech type. This is in line with our previous research with American English speakers and carries implications for L2 speech learning and teaching.

While appropriate stress and rhythm is of importance for any speaker’s intelligibility, such properties are critical for international teaching assistants (ITA), who deliver new and complex information to native speaker audiences. Given the limited time available for ITA instruction and the need for a time-efficient rhythm teaching method, this article reports findings of a small-scale feasibility study that tested the effectiveness of a synchronous speech component introduced into conventional rhythm instruction. Synchronous speech involves teacher and learner speaking in unison continuously, which allows the L2 learner to learn rhythm implicitly and uninterruptedly, and provides rich auditory-visual input, ample motor speech practice and real-time feedback, thereby automatizing rhythm patterns. In a 6-week-long pre-post experimental feasibility study, blind listeners evaluated pre- training and post-training recordings of ITA-produced speech. Data revealed a trend towards more improvement in L2 rhythm working with the synchronous speech technique. Results establish feasibility in both instruction and research.