This study assessed the extent to which second-language learners are sensitive to phonetic information contained in visual cues when identifying a non-native phonemic contrast. In experiment 1, Spanish and Japanese learners of English were tested on their perception of a labial/ labiodental consonant contrast in audio (A), visual (V), and audio-visual (AV) modalities. Spanish students showed better performance overall, and much greater sensitivity to visual cues than Japanese students. Both learner groups achieved higher scores in the AV than in the A test condition, thus showing evidence of audio-visual benefit. Experiment 2 examined the perception of the less visually-salient /1/-/r/ contrast in Japanese and Korean learners of English. Korean learners obtained much higher scores in auditory and audio-visual conditions than in the visual condition, while Japanese learners generally performed poorly in both modalities. Neither group showed evidence of audio-visual benefit. These results show the impact of the language background of the learner and visual salience of the contrast on the use of visual cues for a non-native contrast. Significant correlations between scores in the auditory and visual conditions suggest that increasing auditory proficiency in identifying a non-native contrast is linked with an increasing proficiency in using visual cues to the contrast.

This study aimed to raise awareness of maker education for pre-service teachers and discuss maker education in their major subjects by developing and applying a maker education course for pre-service teachers with various majors based on novel engineering (NE), a teaching and learning method that combines humanities and engineering. Accordingly, the course was developed following the procedure of the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE) model, and the educational effectiveness was investigated using test tools. The educational effect and difficulties were also examined through the analysis of reflective journals written by 20 pre-service teachers with various majors who participated in the course. To investigate the educational effectiveness of the developed course, the science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) literacy of the participants—before and after the course—was measured, with the results demonstrating a statistically significant improvement. Analysis of the reflective journals identified a recognition of sharing effectiveness, the joy of making, and an in-depth understanding of maker education as education effects, and a lack of understanding of techniques, the burden of prototype fabrication, and the limitation of majoring subjects as difficulties experienced during the activities. This study verified that NE could be used as a significant maker education measure for pre-service teachers with various majors. Based on this verification, this study also proposes a strategy to develop more effective NE-based maker education.

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This paper investigated the rhythmic features of speakers of English as a lingua franca in Asian contexts. A speech corpus of 150 conversations between speakers of English in Asia with different L1 backgrounds was collected and %V, ΔV, VarcoV, and nPVI-V of each speaker were analyzed. It was found that L1 difference of the speakers and the speakers' daily use of English influenced %V, while the speakers' daily use of English influenced ΔV. The gender difference of the speakers also affected the rhythm of the utterances in VarcoV. A weak correlation between the two speakers' rhythm in each conversation was also found in %V and ΔV. No significant effects were found in nPVI-V. The results revealed that the speakers tended to accommodate the rhythm of their utterance to that of the interlocutors'. Further study on the speaking rate of the speakers is required to overcome some inconsistencies found in the results of the rhythmic metrics used in this study.