Examines the psychometric properties of the Input Anxiety Scale, the Processing Anxiety Scale, and the Output Anxiety Scale, which measure anxiety at the input, processing, and output stages of the foreign language learning process. (Author/VWL)

From perspective of a psycholinguist, discusses three leading questions that have arisen from foundational, descriptive second-language-acquisiton studies: Why are certain L2 constructions learnable and others not?; In considering input requirements, is it fair to say that adult learners can take advantage of metalinguistic information about the…

All second language (L2) learning theories presuppose that learners learn the target language from the speech signal (or written material, when learners are reading), so an understanding of learners' ability to detect and represent novel patterns in linguistic stimuli will constitute a major building block in an adequate theory of second language…

This study investigated second-language (L2) learning to gain a better understanding of learning mechanisms that also operate in child first-language L1 learners. The research was inspired by research on the beneficial effects of child-directed speech CDS. We tried to examine whether such benefits can be observed in the domain of inflectional…

This article takes a microanalytic perspective on the speech and gestures used by one teacher of English as a second language in her intensive English program classroom. Videotaped excerpts from her intermediate-level grammar course were transcribed to represent the speech, gesture, and other nonverbal behavior that accompanied unplanned…

The present study investigated the effects of intensive recasting on second language learners' use of the Japanese aspectual form -te i-(ru) using a time-series design. Four college classroom learners participated in 8 conversational sessions, with the researcher providing recasts during the middle 4 sessions, and 2 of the learners also…

Examined the differential role of comprehension and production practice in second language learning. Discusses the results of a study of 82 first-year students of Spanish as a second language that indicated that relative effectiveness of production versus comprehension practice depended on the morphosyntactic complexity of the structure in…

The research reported here tests the claim made in the Input Processing approach to second language (L2) acquisition that interpreting the meaning of language form is essential for learning. This claim has been put forward as an underlying part of the pedagogical package known as Processing Instruction (PI) (VanPatten, 1996, 2002a, 2004). Two…

Investigated whether beginning adult learners, given auditory stimuli, were equally likely to represent French gender subclasses using phonological, morphosyntactic, and/or semantic representations. Data from adult English speakers learning patterned French and translation equivalent lists indicated that the construct of input for gender learning…

Reviews research on the social interaction and negotiation of second language (L2) learners and their interlocutors. This research illustrates ways in which negotiation contributes to conditions, processes, and outcomes of L2 learning by facilitating learners' comprehension and structural segmentation of L2 input, access to lexical form and…

Two studies investigated the effects of modified interaction on comprehension and vocabulary acquisition among Japanese high school students learning English as a Second Language. The studies found that interactionally modified input resulted in better comprehension and the acquisition of more new words than premodified input. (MDM)

Reviews research findings on second-language (L2) interaction from the perspective of syntactic development. The article argues that better understanding of the role of negotiated interaction in L2 syntactic development requires examining the specific grammatical structures in interaction guided by the criteria of relevance, availability,…

Examines the emergence of the present perfect in the interlanguage of instructed adult learners of English as a Second Language. Findings indicate that adding a new inflection in the tense/aspect system requires establishing new form-meaning associations as well as revising existing ones. (44 references) (Author/CK)

Presents a replication of experiments which found that input practice is better than output practice for comprehension skills, and no worse than output practice for production skills in a second language (Spanish). Findings reveal that these patterns are obscured when the testing time and the morphosyntactic nature of the structure in question…