Although lexical diversity is often used as a measure of productive proficiency (e.g., as an aspect of lexical complexity) in SLA studies involving oral tasks, relatively little research has been conducted to support the reliability and/or validity of these indices in spoken contexts. Furthermore, SLA researchers commonly use indices of lexical…

Second language (L2) teachers may shy away from self-assessments because of warnings that students are not accurate self-assessors. This information stems from meta-analyses in which self-assessment scores on average did not correlate highly with proficiency test results. However, researchers mostly used Pearson correlations, when polyserial could…

Despite the widespread use and effectiveness of the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) composite score in predicting individual differences in L2 achievement and proficiency, there has been little examination of MLAT subtests, although they have potential for illuminating components of L2 aptitude and the mechanism of prediction. Here we use…

Widespread use of the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) in L2 studies of individual differences implicitly assumes that L2 aptitude is a distinct cognitive facet. There is considerable evidence for prediction from L1 abilities to L2 learning. In this longitudinal study, L1-MLAT-L2 relations were examined in 307 US secondary students based on…

Previous research identified that studying texts in a second language (L2) as opposed to the first (L1) results in substantially weaker recall. We hypothesized that use of advance organizers (AOs) might attenuate this L2 recall cost by supporting L2 users in the construction of more solid memory representations. One hundred Dutch-English…

This study is a replication and extension of Morgan-Short et al.'s (2018) investigation into the role of attention in input processing by L1-Polish learners of L2-Spanish, with proficiency and language of assessment explored as two key methodological factors. Our aims were twofold: to investigate learners' comprehension in different conditions…

Elicited Imitation Tests (EITs) are commonly used in second language acquisition (SLA)/bilingualism research contexts to assess the general oral proficiency of study participants. While previous studies have provided valuable EIT construct-related validity evidence, some key gaps remain. This study uses an integrative data analysis to further…

In this study, we propose a hypothesis that domain-general auditory processing, a perceptual anchor of L1 acquisition, can serve as the foundation of successful post-pubertal L2 learning. This hypothesis was tested with 139 post-pubertal L2 immersion learners by linking individual differences in auditory discrimination across multiple acoustic…

Higgins's (2000) regulatory fit theory proposes that a fit between one's regulatory state and strategic means for reaching a goal increases motivational strength and engagement. This study investigates how regulatory fit affects the L2 acquisition of lexical stress in an authentic learning context. Ninety EFL students were assigned to either gain…

The current study examined the extent to which cognitive fluency (CF) contributes to utterance fluency (UF) at the level of constructs. A total of 128 Japanese-speaking learners of English completed four speaking tasks--argumentative task, picture narrative task, reading-to-speaking task, and reading-while-listening-to-speaking task--and a battery…

Elicited imitation (EI), a short-cut measure of global proficiency in second language (L2) research, requires participants to listen to sentences and repeat them as closely as possible. To support instrument sharing and assessment of L2 proficiency for longitudinal and crosslinguistic research, we created a parallel form of an EI task (EIT) for L2…

This study explored the latent profiles of self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies (cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational regulation) endorsed by Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) readers in a high-stakes testing environment, and also their associations with individual factors (gender, grade, reading proficiency, and motivational…

This study investigated the constructs underlying second language (L2) word association (WA) with regard to three dimensions of lexical competence--size, organization, and accessibility--and the lexical performance of speech. One-hundred and thirteen Japanese learners of English completed a computer-delivered oral WA task along with three…

We investigated age-related decline in adult learning of Dutch as an additional language (Ln) in speaking, writing, listening, and reading proficiency test scores for 56,024 adult immigrants with 50 L1s who came to the Netherlands for study or work. Performance for all four language skills turned out to decline monotonically after an age of…

Although researchers argue that studying semantically related words simultaneously (semantic clustering) inhibits vocabulary acquisition, recent studies have yielded inconsistent results. This study examined the effects of semantic clustering while addressing the limitations of previous studies (e.g., confounding of semantic relatedness with other…