This article examines the relationship between collective memory and individual second-language (L2) learning motivation as articulated in a qualitative research study with language revitalization practitioners. These practitioners learn and teach their languages and engage in other activities in order to bring Indigenous or ancestral languages…

The study investigated the effect of task complexity (TC) on second language (L2) learners' affective responses and writing performance and how these were modulated by cognitive and affective individual difference (ID) factors. A total of 412 Chinese 8th-grade English-as-a-foreign-language learners completed a working memory (WM) test, a scale…

This article foregrounds the role of the learner's experienced and expressive body in the process of action-oriented intercultural second language acquisition (SLA), drawing on phenomenological and related research on embodiment. It suggests that processes of perception, cognition, intentionality, and action are fundamentally shaped by the…

This special issue contains reports of research on a variety of variables that are hypothesized to have an impact on how practice affects language learning. This includes spacing of practice opportunities, the provision of feedback, training working memory, and oral versus written input. Each study is complex and clearly contextualized within the…

We investigated how learner factors, such as vocabulary proficiency, strategy use, and working memory, are associated with successful corpus-based second language (L2) vocabulary learning, in which learners are encouraged to analyze and explore large, structured collections of authentic language data (i.e., corpora) to resolve their lexical issues…

While an elicited imitation test (EIT) has been widely used as a measure of oral proficiency in second language acquisition (SLA) research, it is still unclear the extent to which memory capacity impacts EIT performance. In light of this gap, the present study sought to clarify the nature of elicited imitation by examining the relative…

Two studies examined the role of input distribution in English construction learning, by child learners from a Mandarin first-language background, and the extent to which phonological short-term memory and awareness predicted such learning. In the first study, 4th-grade students of Mandarin Chinese (N = 121) learned the English object-cleft…

The present study explores the independent and interactive effects of task complexity and task modality on linguistic dimensions of second language (L2) performance and investigates how these effects are modulated by individual differences in working memory capacity. Thirty-two intermediate learners of L2 Spanish completed less and more complex…

English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) textbooks and internet resources exhibit various formats and implementations of exercises on phrasal verbs. The experimental study reported here examines whether some of these might be more effective than others. EFL learners at a university in Japan were randomly assigned to 4 treatment groups. Two groups were…

The current 2-part study investigated the relative contributions of English language training (ELT) and computerized Cogmed working memory training (WMT) to improvements in English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) proficiency and working memory capacity. In Study 1, Japanese undergraduate EFL learners were randomly allocated to 1 of 3 experimental…

The present study investigated a group of cognitive individual differences considered advantageous in second language learning and their role in language learning under implicit and explicit feedback conditions using both language awareness and language development measures. The study further investigated whether different types of awareness are…