Native speakers strongly disprefer novel formulations when a conventional alternative expresses the same intended message, presumably because the more conventional form competes with the novel form. In five studies, second language (L2) speakers were less influenced by competing alternatives than native speakers. L2 speakers accepted novel…

This exploratory study aimed to examine whether early exposure to Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) provides facilitation in word-knowledge development in collegiate CHL learners by comparing word-level subskills, including oral vocabulary knowledge, print vocabulary knowledge, morphological awareness, and lexical inferencing ability, between…

We compare translations of single words, made by bilingual speakers in a laboratory setting, with contextualized translation choices of the same items, made by professional translators and extracted from parallel language corpora. The translation choices in both cases show moderate convergence, demonstrating that decontextualized translation…

This investigation examines Thai college students' motivational goals for learning the English language. Thai student volunteers (N = 1387) from two types of educational institutions participated in this survey study which combined measures of goal orientations based on two different goal constructs and motivation models. Results of two-step…

Phonetic skills and vocabulary size were investigated in 37 toddlers identified with specific expressive language impairment and 20 comparison toddlers. Results indicate significant differences in numbers of consonant types and tokens, although the most frequently present consonants were consistent across groups. No predictive relationship emerged…

Presents the theory of general language proficiency and looks at the construct validation of cloze tests and C-tests. Describes the defects of classical cloze procedures. Gives an example of the C-Test and discusses its empirical validity. Concludes that C-tests are authentic tests of the construct of general language proficiency.

Although the Italian system of address pronouns is relatively complex, scant attention is paid to the issue in L2 manuals designed for English-speaking learners of Italian. After showing that Italian L2 manuals are not necessarily accurate in the limited detail they provide, we examine specifically the frequent claim that so-called informal…

Children with specific language impairments (eight learning Italian, eight learning English as a first language) were studied for grammatical deficits. Italian-speakers used noun inflections, verb inflections, copula forms more than English-speaking counterparts, matched by utterance length. Articles were used similarly. Results were consistent…

Recent research indicated that a field dependent cognitive style, often culture-based, can cause problems for learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). English language ability and learning styles, and field dependence (FD), and field independence, were tested in 157 adult Korean and Japanese ESL learners in university and…

Drawing on recent psychological and neurological research on how individual differences might interact with learning a particular language, the study examines how psycholinguistic research and theory can help in assigning military personnel to language training and to a given language. Using the Defense Language Institute's Defense Language…