Although stress is frequently claimed to impede foreign language (FL) reading comprehension, it is usually not explained how. We investigated the effects of stress, working memory (WM) capacity, and inferential complexity on Spanish FL readers' inferential processing during comprehension. Inferences, although necessary for reading comprehension,…

The present study adopted a cognitive linguistic framework--Talmy's (1985, 1991, 2000) typological classification of motion events--to investigate how second-language (L2) Chinese learners come to express motion events in a targetlike manner. Fifty-five U.S. university students and 20 native speakers of Chinese participated in the study. A…

The study examined whether individual differences in high school first language (L1) reading achievement and print exposure would account for unique variance in second language (L2) written (word decoding, spelling, writing, reading comprehension) and oral (listening/speaking) proficiency after adjusting for the effects of early L1 literacy and…

With Chinese native-speaker data as the baseline, this study investigates the use of the morphosyntactic particle DE by learners of Chinese as a second language. The general patterns are as follows: (a) DE tends to be deleted more in informal speech than in formal settings; (b) higher proficiency and longer residence in China--more interactions…

This study examines the effects of learning context and age on second language development by comparing the language gains, measured in terms of oral and written fluency, lexical and syntactic complexity, and accuracy, experienced by four groups of learners of English: children in a study abroad setting, children in their at-home school, adults in…

This article analyzes whether the distribution of the hours of classroom practice has any effect on students' foreign language gains by comparing two types of EFL (English as a foreign language) programs: one in which the hours of instruction are distributed in long sessions over a short period (intensive course) and another in which the students…

A common practice in classroom discourse is the IRF sequence (teacher initiation-student response-teacher feedback; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; cf. IRE in Mehan, 1979). Based on a single case analysis from an adult English as a second language (ESL) class, this article demonstrates how one ESL student manages, in close coordination with the…

The current study compared the effects of two second language (L2) instruction types--processing instruction (VanPatten, 2004) and traditional output-based instruction--on the development of the Spanish past subjunctive among U.S. Spanish heritage language speakers and traditional L2 learners. After exposure to instruction, both the heritage…

The experiment investigated the benefit to second language (L2) sentence comprehension of priming word meanings with brief visual exposure to first language (L1) translation equivalents. Native English speakers learning Mandarin evaluated the validity of aurally presented Mandarin sentences. For selected words in half of the sentences there was…

Studies about bilingualism and second language acquisition (SLA) have a long tradition within linguistic and psycholinguistic research. The contributions from psycholinguistic research are crucial to the improvement of neurolinguistic models. This importance stems from the fact that psycholinguistic research is posing more specific questions than…

This study investigated second language (L2) lexical development in the spontaneous speech of six adult, L2 English learners in a 1-year longitudinal study. One important aspect of lexical development is lexical organization and depth of knowledge. Hypernymic relations, the hierarchical relationships among related words that vary in relation to…

This article explores the influence of the learning environment on the second language acquisition of Swedish. Data were collected longitudinally over 1 year from 35 university students studying Swedish in Malmo, Sweden, and in Melbourne, Australia. Three areas were investigated: grammar, pragmatics, and lexicon. The development of grammar was…

Although many researchers have examined the effects of anxiety on second language learning in recent years, the specific sources and effects of language anxiety have not yet been clearly established. Moreover, few studies have specifically examined anxiety from the learner's perspective. Although previous interview and diary studies have pointed…

This article presents a selective overview of studies that have investigated how advanced adult second language (L2) learners process morphologically complex words. The studies reported here have used different kinds of experimental tasks (including speeded grammaticality judgments, lexical decision, and priming) to examine three domains of…

This study investigates the source of second language (L2) learners' low use of conventional expressions--one part of pragmalinguistic competence--by investigating the relationship between recognition and production of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Two tasks--an aural recognition task and an oral production task--were completed by 122…