IU Second Language Psycholinguistics Lab
The Second Language Psycholinguistics Lab at Indiana University is directed by Isabelle Darcy. The lab examines the nature and scope of phonological knowledge in L1 and L2, individual differences in phonological acquisition, and instruction methods for pronunciation.
IU Phonetics Lab
The website of the Phonetics Lab at Indiana University includes approximately 175 links to online resources about fundamental concepts in phonetics and resources for conducting research. It also has links to various free software programs for conducting acoustic analyses and information about over 40 different software resources for conducting perception/production experiments.
Research Resources
WORD PROPERTIES
EsPal
EsPal is searchable database of Spanish word properties, which include word and bigram frequencies, phonological structure and neighborhoods, orthographic structure and neighborhoods, and subjective ratings like concreteness. You can find the properties of a list of words or search for words that have specific properties.
NIM
NIM is a search engine for looking up words that match certain properties like frequency. You can also input words and get information about their frequency, lexical neighbors, orthographic similarity, etc. It is available for English, Spanish, and Catalan.
English Lexicon Project
This site allows the user to generate lists of words or non-words that have specific lexical characteristics, such as a certain frequency, phonological neighborhood density, part of speech, number of syllables, etc.
English Minimal Pairs
This site is geared for teachers, but it has a minimal pair generator in which you put in an example of the kinds of pairs you want and it gives you others that differ in those same sounds. You can also generate words according to a specific phonotactic pattern, sound, letter, or rime.
Minimal Pair Finder
This minimal pair finder works for English, Spanish, Italian and Greek.
EsPal is searchable database of Spanish word properties, which include word and bigram frequencies, phonological structure and neighborhoods, orthographic structure and neighborhoods, and subjective ratings like concreteness. You can find the properties of a list of words or search for words that have specific properties.
NIM
NIM is a search engine for looking up words that match certain properties like frequency. You can also input words and get information about their frequency, lexical neighbors, orthographic similarity, etc. It is available for English, Spanish, and Catalan.
English Lexicon Project
This site allows the user to generate lists of words or non-words that have specific lexical characteristics, such as a certain frequency, phonological neighborhood density, part of speech, number of syllables, etc.
English Minimal Pairs
This site is geared for teachers, but it has a minimal pair generator in which you put in an example of the kinds of pairs you want and it gives you others that differ in those same sounds. You can also generate words according to a specific phonotactic pattern, sound, letter, or rime.
Minimal Pair Finder
This minimal pair finder works for English, Spanish, Italian and Greek.
STIMULUS PICTURE SETS
Cogsci.nl
This site has a very comprehensive list of standardized picture and video sets that can be used in experiments. A description, link, reference, and license information are provided where available.
Tarrlab stimuli
Michael J. Tarr at Carnegie Mellon University maintains a stimulus repository for images of novel objects, everyday objects, events, and faces.
IPNP
The International Picture-Naming Project has pictures normed in American English, German, Mexican Spanish, Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Taiwanese Mandarin.
MultiPic
MultiPic is a standardized set of 750 drawings, normed in Spanish, British English, German, Italian, French, Dutch (Belgium and the Netherlands).
NOUN Database
The Novel Object and Unusual Name (NOUN) Database has photographs of objects that adults and children cannot easily name.
This site has a very comprehensive list of standardized picture and video sets that can be used in experiments. A description, link, reference, and license information are provided where available.
Tarrlab stimuli
Michael J. Tarr at Carnegie Mellon University maintains a stimulus repository for images of novel objects, everyday objects, events, and faces.
IPNP
The International Picture-Naming Project has pictures normed in American English, German, Mexican Spanish, Italian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Taiwanese Mandarin.
MultiPic
MultiPic is a standardized set of 750 drawings, normed in Spanish, British English, German, Italian, French, Dutch (Belgium and the Netherlands).
NOUN Database
The Novel Object and Unusual Name (NOUN) Database has photographs of objects that adults and children cannot easily name.
EXPERIMENT PRESENTATION
jsPsych
jsPsych is a library of JavaScript plugins that can be used to create behavioral experiments that run through a web browser. It is extremely versatile; if it can be coded in JavaScript, it can be part of your experiment. If you have limited coding experience, it can be a very steep learning curve, but the ability to run experiments through a web browser and have results automatically save to a server has been VERY useful. In order to help get you started with jsPsych, the materials that Franzi Kruger and I presented at the PSLLT 2018 workshop "Running experiments in a web browser using jsPsych" are available here. These materials include an introduction to scripting in jsPsych as well as heavily annotated example scripts for different types of perception experiments.
PsychoPy
PsychoPy is a free program for creating and running behavioral experiments. I haven't personally used it, but some researchers in the IU lab recommend it, especially due to its user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface and the possibility of coding in Python for additional functionality. It now supports online experiments, so this may be a good alternative to jsPsych if you aren't comfortable with coding.
OpenSesame
OpenSesame is another free program for creating and running behavioral experiments. Like PsychoPy, it has a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface for constructing experiments.
DMDX
DMDX is a free program for running experiments. It allows a lot of versatility in how you display images and play sound files, and it has accurate reaction time measures. However, learning to write the scripts can take some time.
jsPsych is a library of JavaScript plugins that can be used to create behavioral experiments that run through a web browser. It is extremely versatile; if it can be coded in JavaScript, it can be part of your experiment. If you have limited coding experience, it can be a very steep learning curve, but the ability to run experiments through a web browser and have results automatically save to a server has been VERY useful. In order to help get you started with jsPsych, the materials that Franzi Kruger and I presented at the PSLLT 2018 workshop "Running experiments in a web browser using jsPsych" are available here. These materials include an introduction to scripting in jsPsych as well as heavily annotated example scripts for different types of perception experiments.
PsychoPy
PsychoPy is a free program for creating and running behavioral experiments. I haven't personally used it, but some researchers in the IU lab recommend it, especially due to its user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface and the possibility of coding in Python for additional functionality. It now supports online experiments, so this may be a good alternative to jsPsych if you aren't comfortable with coding.
OpenSesame
OpenSesame is another free program for creating and running behavioral experiments. Like PsychoPy, it has a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface for constructing experiments.
DMDX
DMDX is a free program for running experiments. It allows a lot of versatility in how you display images and play sound files, and it has accurate reaction time measures. However, learning to write the scripts can take some time.
Teaching Resources
Fonética: Los sonidos del español
This website from the University of Iowa is extremely useful for teaching Spanish phonetics. It shows how each segment is articulated with an animation and a step-by-step description, and it has video and audio of example words for each segment.
Voices of the Hispanic World
This site from Ohio State has audio and video files of speakers from different regions with transcripts. You can search by country, linguistic feature, language, and conversation topic.
Acceso
The University of Kansas Collaborative Digital Spanish Project (Acceso) is an open-access, digital learning environment designed to promote the acquisition of Spanish and the development of cultural understanding of the varied groups of people who share Spanish as a common language. It has lessons centered around different regions that include both cultural and linguistic information.
Audio Lingua
Here you can listen to and download short audio clips of Spanish speakers talking about various topics. I've used it to find examples of different dialects and for sound files to use for listening activities. You can search by topic and appropriate proficiency level. Many other languages are available as well.
iSpraak
This free website automatically evaluates speaking samples submitted by students and provides them with instantaneous corrective feedback. The instructor sets up the activity by selecting the language of instruction and including a short text for students to read. To help model the pronunciation, iSpraak can generate a target language audio file, or the instructor can provide their own audio prompt. When an activity is made, a special link is created and can be shared directly with students.
Los Acentos del Español
This is a game from El País where you listen to a speaker and have to choose what country they're from.
Ignite CASPSLaP: Teaching Spanish and Portuguese pronunciation
This website collects lesson plans and materials that have been presented at the pronunciation-focused Ignite sessions at CASPSLaP (Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology). Materials from the 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 sessions are available.
Strategies for Learning Spanish Pragmatics
This website from the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) is dedicated to strategies for learning pragmatics (i.e., how we convey meaning through communication) in Spanish. They have resources on speech acts such as requests, apologies, service encounters, and more.
YouGlish for Spanish
This site lets you search YouTube for certain words or phrases and takes you to that video at the point your search term is used, with a transcript.
Action English Pictures
This site has a bunch of drawings of people engaged in a range of activities with multiple panels that show how the action progresses. They are a bit dated, but I find them to be useful for practicing narration in my Spanish courses.
Explanations of Spanish grammar from Mango Languages
This page has many different articles that explain how different Spanish grammar points work.
This website from the University of Iowa is extremely useful for teaching Spanish phonetics. It shows how each segment is articulated with an animation and a step-by-step description, and it has video and audio of example words for each segment.
Voices of the Hispanic World
This site from Ohio State has audio and video files of speakers from different regions with transcripts. You can search by country, linguistic feature, language, and conversation topic.
Acceso
The University of Kansas Collaborative Digital Spanish Project (Acceso) is an open-access, digital learning environment designed to promote the acquisition of Spanish and the development of cultural understanding of the varied groups of people who share Spanish as a common language. It has lessons centered around different regions that include both cultural and linguistic information.
Audio Lingua
Here you can listen to and download short audio clips of Spanish speakers talking about various topics. I've used it to find examples of different dialects and for sound files to use for listening activities. You can search by topic and appropriate proficiency level. Many other languages are available as well.
iSpraak
This free website automatically evaluates speaking samples submitted by students and provides them with instantaneous corrective feedback. The instructor sets up the activity by selecting the language of instruction and including a short text for students to read. To help model the pronunciation, iSpraak can generate a target language audio file, or the instructor can provide their own audio prompt. When an activity is made, a special link is created and can be shared directly with students.
Los Acentos del Español
This is a game from El País where you listen to a speaker and have to choose what country they're from.
Ignite CASPSLaP: Teaching Spanish and Portuguese pronunciation
This website collects lesson plans and materials that have been presented at the pronunciation-focused Ignite sessions at CASPSLaP (Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology). Materials from the 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 sessions are available.
Strategies for Learning Spanish Pragmatics
This website from the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) is dedicated to strategies for learning pragmatics (i.e., how we convey meaning through communication) in Spanish. They have resources on speech acts such as requests, apologies, service encounters, and more.
YouGlish for Spanish
This site lets you search YouTube for certain words or phrases and takes you to that video at the point your search term is used, with a transcript.
Action English Pictures
This site has a bunch of drawings of people engaged in a range of activities with multiple panels that show how the action progresses. They are a bit dated, but I find them to be useful for practicing narration in my Spanish courses.
Explanations of Spanish grammar from Mango Languages
This page has many different articles that explain how different Spanish grammar points work.