Ten beginning- and intermediate-level French textbooks were examined to determine which factors most influence authors' selection of vocabulary to be learned explicitly. Word frequency, imageability, concreteness, and use of lexical sets were examined, as these factors were shown in previous research to either facilitate or inhibit lexical…

Lexical coverage, i.e. the extent to which words in a text are known, is considered an important predictor of reading comprehension, with studies suggesting 98% lexical coverage leads to adequate comprehension. However, no studies to date have examined how the various lexical coverage percentages suggested in the literature are reflected by the…

This study investigates how working memory (WM) capacity and L2 linguistic knowledge affect L2 literal and inferential reading comprehension, considering the presence or absence of background knowledge. Eighty upper-intermediate to advanced adult English learners participated, completing tasks to assess WM capacity, background knowledge, L2…

Code use, including codeswitching and/or style-shifting, is an important but undertaught aspect of L2 sociolinguistic competence, and an important aspect of L2 learners' translanguaging repertoires. This study examines code use in Arabic--a diglossic language with distinct social uses for the prestige variety (Modern Standard Arabic, MSA) and…

This study investigates how linguistic and nonlinguistic information interacts in second language (L2) sentence processing. Previous studies argued that L2 behaviors might stem from how L2 speakers rely more on one type of information over another. However, direct attempts have not been made to test the (dis)agreement of different information…

Some learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) face difficulties learning Chinese characters (hanzi), particularly if they are from alphabetic language backgrounds such as English. Many CFL students need to develop the ability to self-regulate their learning to cope with the learning of hundreds of characters in the beginner and intermediate…

This paper puts forward a research agenda in the area of explicit and implicit knowledge and learning of second or additional languages. Based on a brief overview of reliable findings as well as open questions in the field, three agenda items are highlighted. First, valid and reliable measures of explicit and, in particular, implicit knowledge and…

The study investigated variation in the depth of vocabulary knowledge of L2 learners at the same vocabulary breadth and the learner-related factors affecting it. Two hundred and thirty-one EFL learners at high and low levels of vocabulary breadth (according to Vocabulary Level Tests) participated in the study. The study tested Vocabulary depth…

Several studies have examined the content of Japanese junior high school textbooks in relation to various frequency-based word lists such as the New General Service List (NGSL) (Browne et al., 2013) (e.g, Nakayama, 2022a,b) and the British National Corpus (BNC) (e.g, Wongsarnpigoon, 2018), and have identified potential issues in terms of lexical…

This study explores how reverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS) affects Thai English learners' evaluations of English speakers and their choices of pronunciation models. Ninety-five first-year Thai English majors were divided into an uninformed group, unaware of speakers' nationalities, and an informed group, knowledgeable of the same. Participants…

Formative assessment is an important dimension of teaching reform, and so introducing formative assessment into teaching is of great importance for transforming students' performance. It is also important to explore teachers' understanding and practices of formative assessment. The present research therefore examined how university English…

Grammatical and vocabulary knowledge (i.e., breadth and depth) are widely acknowledged as key predictors of reading comprehension in a second language (L2). However, it remains unclear how different aspects of vocabulary depth may independently contribute to L2 reading comprehension and how learners' proficiency may moderate the relative…

As creativity plays an essential role in conducting research, this study was an attempt to investigate how EFL researchers conceptualize creativity in their research. To this end, we adopted a descriptive narrative design, collecting, and analyzing the autobiographical narratives of 12 Iranian EFL researchers. The deductive thematic analysis…

This study investigated participants' perceived attitudinal learning in language massive open online courses (LMOOCs). A mixed-method design was used to evaluate the attitudinal learning outcomes of 151 participants who completed the attitudinal learning questionnaire at the middle and end of the course, as well as 10 participants who participated…

Guided by the Simple View of Reading (SVR considers reading comprehension as a product of decoding and listening comprehension) and the self-teaching hypothesis applied to Chinese (Li et al. in Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 24(3):252-263), this research examined (1) whether the SVR is applicable to L2 morphosyllabic Chinese;…