Mary Grantham O’Brien

List of John Benjamins publications for which Mary Grantham O’Brien plays a role.

Journals

Maczuga, Paulina, Johannes Knaus and Mary Grantham O’Brien 2024 A principled approach to teaching German lexical stress assignmentJournal of Second Language Pronunciation 10:1, pp. 126–137 | Article
This paper reports on the decisions made in the development and delivery of the training outlined in Maczuga, O’Brien and Knaus (2017). Framed within a Processing Instruction framework, this contribution considers previous input-based training research, which has primarily focused on the… read more
Teló, Cesar, Pavel Trofimovich and Mary Grantham O’Brien 2022 Disentangling professional competence and foreign accentJournal of Second Language Pronunciation 8:3, pp. 413–443 | Article
This study examined listeners’ evaluations of first (L1) and second language (L2) English speech in work-related contexts. Ninety-six English-speaking listeners from Calgary rated audio recordings of 12 English speakers (6 L1 English, 6 L1 Tagalog) along three continua capturing one professional… read more
Trofimovich, Pavel, Charlie Nagle, Mary Grantham O’Brien, Sara Kennedy, Kym Taylor Reid and Lauren Strachan 2022 Second language comprehensibility as a dynamic constructThe Evolution of Pronunciation Teaching and Research: 25 years of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness, Levis, John M., Tracey M. Derwing and Murray J. Munro (eds.), pp. 153–179 | Chapter
This study examined longitudinal changes in second language (L2) interlocutors’ mutual comprehensibility ratings (perceived ease of understanding speech), targeting comprehensibility as a dynamic, time-varying, interaction-centered construct. In a repeated-measures, within-participants design,… read more
Taylor Reid, Kym, Mary Grantham O’Brien, Pavel Trofimovich and Allison Bajt 2020 Testing the malleability of teachers’ judgments of second language speechJournal of Second Language Pronunciation 6:2, pp. 236–264 | Article
This study examined whether a negative social bias can influence how teachers evaluate second language (L2) speech. Twenty-eight teachers of L2 German from Western Canada – 14 native speakers (NSs) and 14 proficient non-native speakers (NNSs) – rated recordings of 24 adult L2 learners of German… read more
Trofimovich, Pavel, Charlie Nagle, Mary Grantham O’Brien, Sara Kennedy, Kym Taylor Reid and Lauren Strachan 2020 Second language comprehensibility as a dynamic construct25 years of Intelligibility, Comprehensibility and Accentedness, Levis, John M., Tracey M. Derwing and Murray J. Munro (eds.), pp. 430–457 | Article
This study examined longitudinal changes in second language (L2) interlocutors’ mutual comprehensibility ratings (perceived ease of understanding speech), targeting comprehensibility as a dynamic, time-varying, inter action-centered construct. In a repeated-measures, within-participants design,… read more
O’Brien, Mary Grantham, Tracey M. Derwing, Catia Cucchiarini, Debra M. Hardison, Hansjörg Mixdorff, Ron I. Thomson, Helmer Strik, John M. Levis, Murray J. Munro, Jennifer A. Foote and Greta Muller Levis 2018 Directions for the future of technology in pronunciation research and teachingJournal of Second Language Pronunciation 4:2, pp. 182–207 | Article
This paper reports on the role of technology in state-of-the-art pronunciation research and instruction, and makes concrete suggestions for future developments. The point of departure for this contribution is that the goal of second language (L2) pronunciation research and teaching should be… read more
O’Brien, Mary Grantham 2013 Investigating second language pronunciationMultilingualism and Language Diversity in Urban Areas: Acquisition, identities, space, education, Siemund, Peter, Ingrid Gogolin, Monika Edith Schulz and Julia Davydova (eds.), pp. 39–62 | Article
Pronunciation that deviates from native norms – what many refer to as a ‘foreign accent’ – in second and additional languages acts an immediate marker. It has been shown to negatively affect attitudes toward the speaker in question. Native speakers of a given language are tuned in to accents, and… read more
O’Brien, Mary Grantham, Alison Klara Eisel Hendricks and Alison Klara Eisel Hendricks 2013  Making use of cues to sentence length in L1 and L2 German Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 3:4, pp. 448–477 | Article
The current study examines whether German native speakers and immersed and non-immersed L2 learners of German use prosodic cues to identify the length of a sentence in perception as a means to investigate the interaction between prosody and syntactic structure among L2 learners. In a perceptual… read more