The main goal of this tutorial is to promote the study of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) across different languages of the world. The cumulative effect of these efforts is likely to be a set of more compelling and comprehensive theories of language learning difficulties and, possibly, of language acquisition in general.…

In this article, we compare holistic, analytic and cross-linguistic measures of assessment in writing considering the whole linguistic repertoire of multilingual writers. We explore different ways to look at their three languages by focusing on the relationships between these languages rather than looking at each language in isolation. We analyse…

We assessed the effect of bilingualism on metacognitive processing in the artificial language learning task, in 2 experiments varying in the difficulty to segment the language. Following a study phase in which participants were exposed to the artificial language, segmentation performance was assessed by means of a dual forced-choice recognition…

Purpose: Using a blocked cyclic picture-naming task, we compared accuracy and error patterns across languages for Spanish-English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Method: Pictured stimuli were manipulated for semantic similarity across two (Same and Mixed) category contexts. Children's productions were…

Adjective- noun order errors are a common occurrence throughout all levels of English language students. Based on professional experiences, existing literature and revisiting what some may consider archaic methodologies, this reflective article aims to analyse adjective-noun order errors among Colombian learners of English, understand why it…

The reversal error is a prevalent phenomenon that consists of reversing the relationship between two variables when writing equations from comparison in verbal language. A study with 169 Basque/Spanish bilingual pre-service teachers examined whether this error is mainly due to the students' tendency to employ a direct-translation strategy based on…

The purpose of this paper is to present an experimental study on summative assessment in translation teaching. The paper emphasises the need to use, as an alternative to traditional assessment (i.e. the translation of a text under exam conditions), multidimensional assessment based on a range of criterion-referenced and competence-based assessment…

This paper explores whether language typology plays any role in lexical availability and spelling accuracy in L2 English. Two groups of adult speakers were compared: a group of native speakers of a language typologically distant from English with a logographic writing system (Chinese; n = 13) vs. a group of native speakers of a language…

Studies of second language learning have revealed a connection between first language transfer and errors in second language production. This paper describes an action research study carried out among Chilean university students studying English as part of their degree programmes. The study focuses on common lexical errors made by Chilean…

Two randomised control experiments examined spelling outcomes in a repeated measures design (pre-test, post-tests; 1-day, 1-month follow-up, 5-month follow-up), where students learned Spanish irregular words through (1) immediate feedback using self-correction, (2) visual imagery where children imagine and represent words using movement, and (3)…

This study investigates the use of the Spanish subjunctive in bilingual children with and without specific language impairments (SLI). Using an elicitation task, we examine: (i) the potential of the subjunctive as a grammatical marker of SLI in Spanish-English bilingual children, (ii) the extent to which degree of bilingualism affects performance,…

This study compares Spanish morphosyntax error types and magnitude in monolingual Spanish and Spanish-English bilingual children with typical language development (TD) and language impairment (LI). Performance across groups was compared using cloze tasks that targeted articles, clitics, subjunctives, and derivational morphemes in 57 children.…

Some have argued in favor of translation in the L2 classroom (Danchev, 1983; Levenston, 1985; Ballester Casado, 1991; Newson, 1998; Malloy, 2001; Bonyadi, 2003; Colina, 2006; Kulwindr, 2005; Petrocchi, 2006; House, 2008), while others have argued against it (Sweet, 1899/1964; Jespersen, 1901/1904; Lado, 1957, 1964; Gatenby, 1967; Sankey, 1991),…

With the purpose of understanding plausible reasons as to why Hispanics learners of Spanish, or heritage language learners (HLL), tend to obtain lower grades than their non-Hispanic counterparts (L2) in the same courses, forty-four students of Spanish (17 HLLs and 27 L2s) provided written production once a week for a period of six weeks. The data…

Generalised access to the Internet and globalisation has led to increased demand for translation services and a resurgence in the use of machine translation (MT) systems. MT post-editing or the correction of MT output to an acceptable standard is known to be one of the ways to face the huge demand on multilingual communication. Given that the use…