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Purpose: A 5-session twice-weekly clear speech protocol with daily home practice was developed to enable Spanish-accented speakers of English to code-switch for increased listener ease of understanding. This study provides preliminary data to test the hypothesis that this protocol results in increased ease of understanding for native English listeners, not in decreased talker accentedness. Method: Using a single-case experimental design, 6 adult native Spanish speakers with English proficiency participated in the protocol. Ease of understanding and accentedness were probed at least 5 times pretraining, at each training session, and once per week for 5 weeks posttraining. Thirty native English–speaking listeners assessed the probes using 7-point scales for each measure. Results: Ease of understanding improved for all participants (mean improvement = 3.5 points; effect size range = 6.98 to 15.33). Accentedness improved for 4 of 6 participants (mean improvement = 2.3 points; effect size range = 4.04 to 10.48). At the outset, most participants expressed concern that this approach would highlight speech errors. Upon follow-up, all participants reported confidence in using the approach and found it helpful in daily communication. Conclusions: Further research should explore the effects of this protocol on intelligibility and acoustic metrics and their relationship to ease of understanding and accentedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In this study, the authors aimed to determine how between-language interaction contributes to phonological acquisition in bilingual Spanish-English speaking children. Method: A total of 24 typically developing children, ages 3;0 (years;months) to 4;0, were included in this study: 8 bilingual Spanish-English speaking children, 8 monolingual Spanish speakers, and 8 monolingual English speakers. Single word and connected speech samples were obtained for each child. This study examined interaction between the two languages of bilingual children during phonological acquisition through the measurement of (a) transfer (the frequency and types of phonological transfer present in the speech of bilingual children); (b) deceleration (a slower rate of acquisition for bilinguals as compared with monolinguals); and (c) acceleration (a faster rate of acquisition for bilinguals as compared with monolinguals. Results: Findings demonstrated that (a) transfer was evident in the productions of bilingual children, (b) differences were found in accuracy between monolingual and bilingual children, and (c) sound frequency did not predict differential accuracy of either phonetically similar sounds between languages or phonetically dissimilar sounds specific to Spanish or English. Implications: The results from this study indicate that transfer, deceleration, and a possible variation of the acceleration hypothesis occur in bilingual phonological acquisition. Evidence was found for separation and interaction between the bilingual children's 2 languages (J. Paradis & F. Genesee, 1996). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]