There is a current 'theory crisis' in language acquisition research, resulting from fragmentation both at the level of the approaches and the linguistic level studied. We identify a need for integrative approaches that go beyond these limitations, and propose to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of current theoretical approaches of language…

Multiple approaches -- including observational and experimental -- are necessary to articulate powerful theories of learning. Our field's key questions, which rely on these varied methods, are still open. How do children perceive and produce language? What do they encounter in their linguistic input? What does the learner bring to the task of…

In this article, I advocate for an enriched view of children's linguistic input, with the aim of building sustainable and tangible links between theoretical models of language development and families' everyday experiences. Children's language experiences constrain theoretical models in ways that may illuminate universal learning biases. However,…

Children need to learn the demands of their native language in the early vocabulary development phase. In this dynamic process, parental multimodal input may shape neurodevelopmental trajectories while also being tailored by child-related factors. Moving beyond typically characterized group profiles, in this article, we synthesize growing evidence…

Video summarization is a method of deducing the content of video content for generating a summary in video format. The generated summary should have the significant segments of raw video. Recently, the content of video has been rapidly increasing, thus automatic video summarization is beneficial for individuals who want to keep time and learn more…

In acquiring a native language, the input children receive, to an unneglectable extent, shapes the rate of acquisition and the ultimate achievement. This in turn has cascading effects on many aspects of later development, including but not limited to language. Providing optimal input for early language development, therefore, is of major interest…

Phrasal verbs present persistent challenges for second language (L2) learners due to their figurative meanings, multiple interpretations, and variable word order. This article reviews five strands of research that contribute to effective phrasal verb instruction: corpus-based studies, which identify what to teach, and four instructional…

The introduction and a theoretical summary of language anxiety research (Chapter 1) are followed by four chapters: Chapter 2 presents a meta-analysis of the widely used "Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale"'s (Horwitz, et al., 1986) factorial structure; Chapter 3 reports on a validation study of the Hungarian version of MacIntyre…

We select three word segmentation models with psycholinguistic foundations -- transitional probabilities, the diphone-based segmenter, and PUDDLE -- which track phoneme co-occurrence and positional frequencies in input strings, and in the case of PUDDLE build lexical and diphone inventories. The models are evaluated on caregiver utterances in 132…

In Krashen's theory of second-language acquisition he claims that there is distinction between language acquisition and language learning, a distinction which other second-language acquisition researchers have called "perhaps the most important conceptualization" in the field and which has made possible the most productive models of SLA.…

An underexplored question, and one with potentially far-reaching implications for the practice of written corrective feedback (WCF), is whether to mark a wide range of errors (comprehensive feedback) or to focus on a few error types (focused feedback) in learners' L2 writing. Despite limited evidence, it is argued that comprehensive WCF is…

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stephen Krashen developed Monitor Theory--a group of hypotheses explaining second language acquisition with implications for language teaching. As the L2 scholarly community began considering what requirements theories should meet, Monitor Theory was widely criticized and dismissed, along with its teaching…

Neural network models have recently made striking progress in natural language processing, but they are typically trained on orders of magnitude more language input than children receive. What can these neural networks, which are primarily distributional learners, learn from a naturalistic subset of a single child's experience? We examine this…

Among the various challenges that adult and other late language learners face on their journey to achieving nativelike proficiency, chunking has been identified as one of the most difficult tasks to master. Language users are able to derive and utilize chunks during language processing -- both in the first (L1) and the second language (L2) -- yet…

Languages have played a significant role in the shaping of theological and religious leaders. Historically consisting mostly of biblical and ancient languages, contemporary theological education includes the study of modern foreign languages for research and ministerial purposes. If written and spoken communication in a variety of languages is a…