Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) proposed a motivational-cognitive construct of task-induced involvement to account for variation in effectiveness among different vocabulary learning tasks. Building upon their original research, this study consisted of two experiments investigating the involvement load hypothesis in vocabulary learning. Experiment 1…

Most previous studies on topic prominence in second language (L2) acquisition have investigated interlanguage from the direction either of topic prominence to subject prominence or subject prominence to subject prominence. The role of topic/subject prominence typology in L2 acquisition cannot be fully explained until additional studies are…

In Japanese, self-qualification, or a qualifying segment of talk that reduces the force of the speaker's own utterances, is frequently introduced with contrastive markers, such as "demo," "kedo," and "ga." This study explores the relationship between the grammatical and pragmatic competence of Japanese L2 learners by examining their use of such…

This study investigated the relationship of first language (L1) skills in elementary school and second language (L2) learning in high school. Students classified as high-, average-, and low-proficiency L2 learners were compared on L1 achievement measures of reading, spelling, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and listening comprehension…

Reports on study in which students of Hebrew as a second language took four versions of oral proficiency test. Results indicate that different speech styles and topics significantly affected students' scores, and correlational analyses between pairs pointed to low reliability and lack of stability of the test. Urges caution in making decisions…

Questions the extent to which attention differentially affects different parts of language and how this differential effect interacts with increased linguistic knowledge. Subjects were native English speaking learners of Italian. (Author/VWL)

A review of the arguments (including fossilization, improved language performance, and the role of error correction) supporting a focus on linguistic accuracy and grammar during early second language learning found no research evidence showing this approach to be beneficial. (Author/CB)

This study considered the effects of trait emotional intelligence (trait EI; Petrides & Mavroveli, 2007) and sociobiographical variables (age, gender, education level, number of languages known, age of onset of acquisition, context of acquisition, frequency of use, socialization, network of interlocutors, self-perceived proficiency) on…

Examines resolution of referential conflicts in second-language (L2) interaction in two different pairings of L2 learners. Pairs where the higher proficiency member was in the dominant role engaged in little interactive behavior, whereas pairs where the less proficient member was dominant engaged in substantial negotiation and interaction and were…

Examination of differences in the language-learning strategies of monolingual and multilingual adults found no clear evidence that multilinguals were superior in language-learning abilities overall, although they were more able to adjust their learning strategies according to language task requirements. (Author/CB)

Examined second language learners' ability to use their second language knowledge in production, exploring form/meaning relationships. Groups of native English speakers watched video segments four times while recording their own online rendition in Spanish, viewing either repeated or different segments each time. Results indicated that task…

Assumes that adult second language learners cannot achieve the same degree of proficiency in a second language as children learning a second language. An information-processing approach is presented, and the aspects of utilization, faulty or incomplete declarative knowledge, and limited working memory space are used to account for deficiencies in…

A follow-up study contrasted the performance of adult second language learners on phonological perception tasks with their performance in articulatory production. Native speakers of French (N=12) and second language learners of French at two levels of French proficiency were tested on three perception and four production tasks to identify the…

Report of an investigation which examined the relationship between measured English-language proficiency, years of English-language study and the use of English as a medium of instruction for samples of Arabic-speaking Egyptian and Lebanese university students. (Author)

Reports on an experiment designed to test the reliability of the cloze procedure in second language testing, specifically as a measure of overall language proficiency, and as a measure whose results are independent of style. (AM)