Competent L2 writing has been described in research in terms of an increasing incidence, variety, and length of clauses; a countervailing compactness and tightness with reduced number of clauses even as clause length expands; and various interrelationships between syntactic realizations of texts and the genres they represent. These partly…

The study investigated the effect of task complexity (TC) on second language (L2) learners' affective responses and writing performance and how these were modulated by cognitive and affective individual difference (ID) factors. A total of 412 Chinese 8th-grade English-as-a-foreign-language learners completed a working memory (WM) test, a scale…

Although most children learn to communicate in their first language (L1), there is normal and expected variation in their rate of acquisition across all components of the language system. Until recently, most second language acquisition and second language (L2) researchers have assumed that individual differences (IDs) in L1 acquisition are small…

This study proposed a set of measures for assessing noun phrase (NP) complexity in second language (L2) Chinese writing and compared the predictive power of these measures for L2 Chinese writing quality to that of a set of syntactic complexity measures based on the topic-comment unit (TC-unit). Our data consisted of 101 narratives written by…

This study explores the lexical profile of essays written by 48 advanced learners of second language (L2) Russian who participated in the Russian Overseas Flagship, an intensive year-long study abroad program designed to help students reach Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Level 3 proficiency in all skills. Using the lexical frequency profile…

Syntactic complexity is an important measure of second language (L2) writing proficiency (Larsen--Freeman, 1978; Lu, 2011). Large-grained indices such as the mean length of T-unit (MLTU) have been used with the most consistency in L2 writing studies (Ortega, 2003). Recently, indices such as MLTU have been criticized, both for the difficulty in…

Research has painted a pessimistic picture of students' second language (L2) writing skills in secondary education. One innovative tool that may help students foster their L2 proficiency, including writing ability, is in-class debate. Debate is commonly associated with oral communication and argumentation skills. However, debate may also offer…

Current quantitative methods in second language (L2) acquisition have proven useful in examining how phraseological unit production changes over time. However, these methods are limited in that they do not allow for the analysis of individual differences in those changes. This study demonstrates the potential for Latent Curve Modeling, a type of…

One of the central considerations in the validity argument for the TOEFL iBT is the relationship between the language on the exam and the language required for university courses. Corpus linguistics has recently been shown to be an effective way to explore this relationship, which can also be considered as an aspect of authenticity. Applying…

This study examined the extent to which 40 students enrolled in upper level foreign language literary/cultural studies content courses showed evidence of incidental language learning over the course of a semester. Students completed a cloze passage and provided both writing and speaking samples at the beginning and end of the semester. In…

The study addresses the degree of transfer of literacy dimensions of academic proficiency (AP), that is, reading comprehension and writing, across three languages--Russian (L1), Hebrew (L2), and English (L3)--and investigates whether a common conceptual source underlies the linguistic and cognitive operations of the trilingual learner (Grosjean,…

In this article, we analyze the relationship between studies in second language acquisition and studies in bilingualism as areas that have been traditionally ignored but which share some common perspectives. Then we look at new trends in both areas that are compatible with a holistic perspective in the study of multilingualism. Based on these…

The issue and commentary papers in this "Perspectives" column address one use of assessments--speaking and writing proficiency assessments based on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL, 2012) Proficiency Guidelines--as a means for establishing and maintaining one important competency standard for world…

This article describes the technologies in use for second language learning, in relation to the major language areas and skills. In order, these are grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, pronunciation, listening, speaking, and culture. With each language area or skill, the relevant technologies are discussed with examples that illustrate how…

This study was a comparison of the changes in English writing behavior of 7 Japanese university students (the study-abroad group) who spent 4 to 9 months in English-speaking countries with those of 6 counterparts majoring in British and American studies (the at-home group) who remained in Japan. The study aimed at confirming the results of Sasaki…