Grammar is an important goal area for children with language impairment. The current article considers the use of General Language Performance Measures (GLPMs) to assess outcomes for this basic goal area and for 3 intermediate grammar goals that contribute to children's developing ability to construct increasingly longer and more complex…

Language proficiency is multi-componential in nature and, according to many SLA researchers and L2 practitioners, is best captured by the concepts of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). Two of the three studies reported in this paper adopted the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2003) as the means to address the question of whether increasing…

Addressing themes from the Douglas Fir Group's (2016) transdisciplinary framework, this paper bridges boundaries between cognitive and social disciplines by showing how social contextual factors can affect the psycholinguistic development of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in learner language. Sociolinguistic and sociocultural frameworks…

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) and task-supported language teaching (TSLT) are often seen as incompatible as they draw on different theories of language learning and language teaching. The position adopted in this article, however, is that both approaches are needed especially in instructional contexts where 'pure' task-based teaching may be…

With the rise of new tendencies and methodologies in the English as a foreign language field, formal grammar instruction has become unnecessary during the last few years. Institutions and educators have made serious decisions in order to promote a language production which is fluent and coherent. Thus, grammar instruction has been partially…

This article introduces a pedagogical intervention that includes a set of creative activities designed to improve the oral and written production of students in the English classroom, especially those who have shown a lack of interest or attention. It was observed that participants initially seemed careless about studying the language. Eventually…

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how complexity, accuracy and fluency interact in early L2 development, when learners' linguistic means are underdeveloped. Learners then resort to rote-learned formulaic sequences to complement their current grammar when it is unable to meet their communicative needs. The interplay between their…

This paper compares two alternative scoring methods--multiple regression and classification trees--for an automated speech scoring system used in a practice environment. The two methods were evaluated on two criteria: construct representation and empirical performance in predicting human scores. The empirical performance of the two scoring models…

Comprehensibility, a major concept in second language (L2) pronunciation research that denotes listeners' perceptions of how easily they understand L2 speech, is central to interlocutors' communicative success in real-world contexts. Although comprehensibility has been modeled in several L2 oral proficiency scales--for example, the Test of English…

This longitudinal study investigates the development of writing proficiency in English as a foreign language (EFL), in contrast to the development of first language (L1) writing proficiency in Dutch L1, in a sample of almost 400 secondary school students in the Netherlands. Students performed several writing tasks in both languages in three…

In this article, we examine current practices in the measurement of syntactic complexity to illustrate the need for more organic and sustainable practices in the measurement of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in second language production. Through in-depth review of examples drawn from research on instructed second language acquisition, we…

In this essay, I argue for viewing mental representation and skill as distinct components of language acquisition. My claim is that language is not a monolithic entity--not a new concept, but one that is often overlooked by instructors and some scholars. I examine language as being (minimally) composed of mental representation and skill.…

The main purpose of this article is to review studies that have investigated the effects of three types of planning (rehearsal, pre-task planning, and within-task planning) on the fluency, complexity, and accuracy of L2 performance. All three types of planning have been shown to have a beneficial effect on fluency but the results for complexity…

This study compared the amount of the second language (L2) use and linguistic gains made by students in three short-term language immersion programs: (1) traditional study abroad, (2) service-oriented study abroad, and (3) foreign language (FL) housing. These were chosen because they represent three distinct program types, providing students with…

Complexity, accuracy, and fluency have proved useful measures of second language performance. The present article will re-examine these measures themselves, arguing that fluency needs to be rethought if it is to be measured effectively, and that the three general measures need to be supplemented by measures of lexical use. Building upon this…