Existing work on the acquisition of polarity-sensitive expressions (PSIs) suggests that children show an early sensitivity to the restricted distribution of negative polarity items (NPIs), but may be delayed in the acquisition of positive polarity items (PPIs). However, past studies primarily targeted PSIs that are highly frequent in children's…

Previous research has documented positive effects of pre-task planning on task-based performance, commonly analyzed in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency, in an L2. However, the sources of planning have rarely been examined in the research of task-based language teaching. The present study explored EFL learners' oral performance across the…

This experimental study examined the effect of answering strategic adjunct questions (AQs) on L2 reading comprehension and strategy use. Participants were 124 Chinese intermediate advanced EFL learners from a large public university in China. Of them, 24 and 100 participated in the pilot study and formal study, respectively. Participants read two…

Groupwork has become ubiquitous in language education, with the clear benefits of interaction and output on language acquisition. A body of research has investigated this interaction in pairs and small groups, and there is an increased understanding that individual group context is a key factor in determining the behavior of students. This article…

aaaPlural marking differs across languages. Some must mark plurality using an overt morpheme (e.g. English, Russian), while others mark it optionally (e.g. Korean) or lack an explicit plural morpheme (e.g. Chinese). This crosslinguistic difference in plural marking has received much attention in research exploring language transfer in the context…

Domain restriction is a pervasive if often neglected part of discourse comprehension. Speakers and authors implicitly limit the domain of discourse of quantifiers (e.g., "everyone") and noun phrases (e.g., "the girls"). Our previous research shows that an initial temporal or locative prepositional phrase (PP), which introduces…

15-month-olds behave as if they comprehend filler-gap dependencies such as "wh"-questions and relative clauses. On one hypothesis, this success does not reflect adult-like representations but rather a "gap-driven" interpretation heuristic based on verb knowledge. Infants who know that "feed" is transitive may notice…

This study represents the inaugural attempt at assessing the authenticity of the tasks encompassed in the IELTS Speaking Module. The evaluation is conducted from the vantage points of applied linguistics and general education, and serves to enhance comprehension of authenticity and authentic assessment. In order to achieve this objective, an…

Recent scholarship in multiliteracies-oriented pedagogies has advocated for greater attention to fostering 'textual thinking', understood as forms of literacy that consider the complexities of semiotic choices made by authors, and their underlying meanings, rhetorical purposes, and cultural contexts. This kind of engagement with texts calls upon…

The constructed responses individuals generate while reading can provide insights into their coherence-building processes. The current study examined how the cohesion of constructed responses relates to performance on an integrated writing task. Participants (N = 95) completed a multiple document reading task wherein they were prompted to think…

The constructed responses individuals generate while reading can provide insights into their coherence-building processes. The current study examined how the cohesion of constructed responses relates to performance on an integrated writing task. Participants (N = 95) completed a multiple document reading task wherein they were prompted to think…

Tender Shoots is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) for parents aimed at improving preschool children's oral language skills relevant for later reading. Parents of 72 preschool children (M = 50 months) were randomly assigned to either a Rich Reading and Reminiscing (RRR) condition, a Strengthening Sound Sensitivity (SSS) condition, or an…

According to previous studies of theory of mind (ToM), social environment and cultural background affect individuals' cognitive ability to understand other people's minds. There are cross-group differences in ToM. The present study aimed to examine whether social environment and culture affect the ToM in Uygur and Han groups and whether the…

While it is known that heritage speakers diverge from the homeland baseline, there is still no consensus on the mechanisms triggering this divergence. We investigate the impact of two potential factors shaping adult heritage language (HL) grammars: (1) cross-linguistic influence (CLI), originally proposed for second language acquisition (SLA), and…

Despite a high score in Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and a fluent command of English in non-academic contexts, international graduate students may find themselves struggling to write academic papers, perhaps almost immediately after they begin graduate education. Although graduate faculty can see variations on student papers, they…