Matthew Patience

Matthew Patience received his MA and PhD from the University of Toronto, and he is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow and Limited Term Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria. His research, based on work in the speech sciences, SLA, and Applied Linguistics, aims to identify and predict sources of difficulty in the acquisition of non-native pronunciation, while also establishing the most effective methods of pronunciation training to overcome such difficulties. Dr. Patience’s postdoctoral work is in partnership with the Hul’q’umi’num’ Language & Culture Society and with Dr. Sonya Bird. The goal is to support the revitalization of Hul’q’umi’num’, a Central Salish language spoken in BC. He is investigating the extent to which individual differences in speech motor skill and perceptual acuity among adult Hul’q’umi’num’ learners predict pronunciation ability, and whether the effectiveness of different pronunciation instruction methods is dependent on these individual skills.