In light of mixed findings in existing input enhancement research, Issa and Morgan-Short in a 2019 article urged researchers to compare the relative effects of input enhancement that taps into learners' attention to the external format of second language (L2) target forms (e.g. through capitalizing or boldfacing the forms) and input enhancement…

This article explores how leading textbook authors select and instruct vocabulary in beginner and intermediate Chinese textbooks used in the United States. Leading textbook authors were approached; subsequently; four authors completed interviews with pre-designed questions. Grounded theory methodology was used to analyse the interviews, and their…

One of the underrepresented aspects of pragmatic competence development is perceiving and responding to impoliteness acts. The present study reports on a quantitative and qualitative investigation of two international English language teaching (ELT) textbook series published by Oxford and Cambridge University Press; it focuses on the books highly…

If maximal exposure were the key to success in language learning, then adult learners at the university level would be doomed to fail. Not only are they presumably too old to learn additional languages effectively, but target language (TL) input appears to be insufficient, especially when other languages are allowed in class. Nevertheless,…

This article aims to uncover how alignment affects second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition by Chinese-speaking learners of English as they interact with various interaction loads (i.e. input text, peers and video). It also explores how tasks with varying interactional intensity in relation to the interaction loads influence the alignment…

This article reports on two studies, testing how three different types of input (skewed first, skewed random and balanced) affect second language (L2) learning of English present counterfactual (IF-Is) and past counterfactual (IF-IIs) conditionals, two constructions differing in complexity. The experiment included a proficiency test, a pretest, a…

This study investigates the effects of input-based and output-based instructions on the acquisition of second language (L2) request modifiers. Four intact classes were randomly assigned to textual enhancement (TE), input flooding (IF), output-based instruction (OI), and control (CO) groups. The TE group watched some captioned videos on requests…

The present study explores the effects of structured input and traditional instruction on the acquisition of English causative passive forms using online measurements (eye-tracking). Previous empirical research investigating the effects of processing instruction through offline measurements (sentence and discourse) has overall shown positive…

Previous studies demonstrated that the continuation task has great language learning potential and that various task-related factors may affect the extent to which the potential can be exploited (e.g. Wang & Wang, 2015). This study investigates the effect of one understudied factor, the linguistic complexity of the input text, on English as a…

While most empirical studies have investigated the improvement of learners' L2 spoken proficiency via speaking-related interventions, the present study examined the same topic through a different modality: listening. Ninety-five first-year tertiary-level students of English as a second language (ESL) in Hong Kong participated in this three-month…

Collaborative writing (CW) has been proven advantageous to enhance the second and foreign language skills of university students. However, little research to date has explored whether CW practices are fruitful for secondary school learners in foreign language (FL) contexts, a population characterized by low language proficiency levels, and few…

The present study employed a mixed methods quasi-experimental design to investigate the effectiveness of applying motivational strategies and mental imagery (i.e. visionary techniques) to facilitate second language (L2) vocabulary learning. Four treatment sessions were integrated into a six-week language course offered to 150 intermediate students…

This article uses the clitic left dislocation (CLLD) construction in L2 Spanish to investigate whether generative SLA has valuable insights to contribute to language teaching. Although CLLD is a structure that is commonly used by native speakers, as reported anecdotally and in at least one corpus, we found that native-Spanish and native-English…

The purpose of this study was to find out, whether three methods of presenting input, were effective in relation to language aptitude. Persian-speaking learners of English were provided with 20 grammatical collocations (verb-preposition collocations) embedded in authentic passages, lexically/grammatically elaborated passages, and…

This study examined the optimal learning schedule for second language vocabulary within an authentic classroom setting in Hong Kong. Following a pretest, treatment, delayed posttest design, fifty-two primary school students (Cantonese first language) studied 20 English adjectives over two learning episodes under spaced-short (1-day interval) or…