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The 11th International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech
University of Toronto, Canada
April 23rd – 25th, 2025
Doctoral workshop April 22nd, 2025
The University of Toronto is pleased to host New Sounds 2025, the 11th International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech, fully in person, on its downtown campus in Toronto, Canada. New Sounds brings together researchers, teachers, and learners interested in second/third language phonetics and phonology. The conference will be preceded by a doctoral workshop on April 22.
Call for Papers
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to,
Theories and models of L2 speech learning |
Speech perception and production |
Phonetics and phonology in SLA |
Sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic aspects of L2 speech learning |
Multilingualism and the acquisition of additional languages |
The effects of and best practices in pronunciation instruction & training |
The use of technology for L2 speech research, instruction & training |
The organizers invite proposals involving original research for the following:
Doctoral Workshop Presentations: The Doctoral Workshop will take place on the Tuesday (April 22, 2025) preceding the main conference. This is an opportunity for PhD students to make a 15-minute presentation on their dissertation project (research problem, methodology) followed by 15 minutes of feedback from a discussant.
Papers: 20-minute oral presentation followed by a 10-minute question period.
Posters: A poster session will take place on two of the three days of the conference. Posters will be displayed and presented by their authors for the length of their session.
Thematic sessions: Thematic sessions will be included on two of the three days of the conference. These should be structured around a particular theme proposed by the sessions’ organizers including 4-5 papers and a final discussion.
Instructions for Submissions
Conference Submission Platform (Microsoft CMT):
https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/NewSounds2025/
Proposal formats are as follows:
Thematic sessions: a 100-150-word overview of the topic as well as the authors & titles of the papers to be presented within the session should be sent to newsounds.2025@utoronto.ca by July 19th, 2024 with the subject line ‘New Sounds 2025 – Thematic Session Proposal’. Proposals will be assessed by the conference’s organizing committee. Papers within each thematic session will be assessed subsequently alongside paper & poster abstracts for the non-thematic sessions; inclusion of a paper within a thematic session proposal does not guarantee acceptance. Notification of acceptance will be sent by August 1st, 2024. Thematic session proposals should be sent by e-mail and not on CMT.
Doctoral workshop presentation: a 300-word text + reference list outlining the research problem and methodology submitted via Microsoft CMT (https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/NewSounds2025/) by September 15, 2024. Please note that accepted presentations will need to be submitted two weeks prior to the workshop (by April 8, 2025) in order to provide discussants sufficient time to review & prepare feedback.
Proposals for papers and posters (including papers within a thematic session): a 300-word text + reference list outlining the research problem, methodology, results, and contributions. All proposals will be assessed considering the following criteria: presence of a motivated research problem with links to previous research; methodological soundness; quality of the analysis including evidence of data having already been collected (authors should indicate the number of participants on which the analysis presented in the proposal is based); contribution to the field; appropriateness of the topic for the conference. These should be submitted via Microsoft CMT (https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/NewSounds2025/) by September 15, 2024 and will be assessed via triple peer review.
Please note that the conference Microsoft CMT system will not be available for submissions before August 1, 2024. Notices of acceptance will be sent by December 15, 2024.
This is an in-person only conference and all presentations are to be in English.
Keynote Speakers
Lisa Davidson is the Silver Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at New York University (USA). She is also the Director of the Phonetics & Experimental Phonology Lab and Co-General Editor of the Laboratory Phonology journal. Her research interests focus on laboratory phonology, speech production & perception, and language acquisition.
Ineke Mennen is Professor of Applied English Linguistics at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Graz (Austria). Her main focus in research has been on intonation. She is particularly interested in understanding along which dimensions intonation (and other prosodic aspects) differs across languages or language varieties, and how such differences are generated in speech production, evaluated in speech perception, acquired in first or second language acquisition, and lost or broken down in conditions of attrition or speech impairment. Professor Mennen has received research grants and fellowships from the Economic and Social Research Council (EHRC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the British Academy (BA), NHS Highland Endowment Fund, and Ataxia UK. Currently, Prof. Mennen is working on the FWF funded project “When your native language sounds foreign“.
Kazuya Saito is Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, Culture, Communication & Media at University College London (UK). His research interests cover a wide range of topics in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), Education, and Psycholinguistics. Specifically, he is interested in the assessment, development, and teaching of adult second language (L2) speech.
Yue Wang is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and Director of Language and Brain Lab. Her current research focuses on the roles of various experiential factors in speech perception, production, and learning, with the goal of exploring how multisensory and cognitive systems cooperate functionally in speech processing. Such topics speak to the long-deliberated theoretical argument in terms of the contribution of language-specific versus general sensory-motor mechanisms in speech processing. This theme provides the theoretical framework for her recent and current projects in two lines of research, mainly supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
Important Dates
Deadline for thematic session proposals | July 19th, 2024 |
Notification of acceptance for thematic session proposals | August 1st, 2024 |
Deadline for abstracts (oral presentations, posters, doctoral workshop) | September 15, 2024 |
Notification of acceptance | December 15, 2024 |
Doctoral workshop | April 22, 2025 |
Conference dates | April 23-25, 2025 |
Organizing Committee
Laura Colantoni | Department of Spanish & Portuguese, University of Toronto |
Ewan Dunbar | Department of French, University of Toronto |
Emily Elfner | Department of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, York University |
Fatima Hamlaoui | Department of French, University of Toronto |
Yoonjung Kang | Department of Language Studies, University of Toronto |
Alexei Kochetov | Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto |
Monika Molnar | Department of Speech Pathology, University of Toronto |
Phil Monahan | Department of Language Studies, University of Toronto |
Chandan Narayan | Department of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, York University |
Yasaman Rafat | Department of Languages and Cultures, Western University |
Anabela Rato | Department of Spanish & Portuguese, University of Toronto |
Gemma Repiso Puigdelliura | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
Nathan Sanders | Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto |
Jessamyn Schertz | Department of Language Studies, University of Toronto |
Jeffrey Steele | Department of Language Studies, University of Toronto |
Olga Tararova | Department of Languages and Cultures, Western University |
We wish to thank the contributions of: