International students are an increasingly important population in the United States, growing in both size and contributions. While research has outlined challenges encountered by international students and the importance of campus climate, little research has defined and empirically assessed the friendliness of college and university campuses…

International students often experience significant challenges and difficulties adjusting to their new campus and university environment abroad. As a result, understanding the unique needs of these students has become an important priority for many university administrators and mental health professionals amid growing health concerns faced by…

Cognitive factors have been recognised as important in the interpreting process, but whether they could serve as valid components of interpreting aptitude still awaits further investigation. This study explores the predictive value of cognitive fluency in the simultaneous interpreting (SI) performance of trainee interpreters. Cognitive fluency…

Many factors influencing second language (L2) speech fluency have been widely studied, but the effects of first language (L1) fluency on L2 speech fluency are still relatively poorly understood. In contrast to mostly quantitative previous studies, the present study adopted a mixed methods approach to examining the connections between L1 fluency…

This study examined how longitudinal interaction impacts the development of second language (L2) oral proficiency in relation to learners' different experience and proficiency levels. Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) participated in weekly conversation exchanges with native speakers (NSs) in the USA via videoconferencing…

Throughout the past century, the effects of bilingualism on general cognition have been extensively explored. Studies evolved from a negative to a more positive perspective, but longitudinal assessments of effects of bilingualism are scarce. This study investigated the long-term effect of becoming a bilingual on the development of general…

Speaking a language involves more than simply knowing the linguistic components of the message, and developing language skills requires more than grammatical comprehension and vocabulary memorization. In teaching-learning processes, drama method may have some positive effects on ELL students' speaking fluency and accuracy. This study attempts to…

The current study examined the relationship between overall second language (L2) proficiency and utterance fluency measures for several L2s in order to determine whether utterance measures can be used to predict L2 proficiency. The study measured the speech rate, number of hesitations, number and length of pauses, number and length of runs, and…

The constructs of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) have been used extensively to investigate learner performance on second language tasks. However, a serious concern is that the variables used to measure these constructs are sometimes used conventionally without any empirical justification. It is crucial for researchers to understand how…

Previous task repetition studies have primarily focused on how task repetition characteristics affect the complexity, accuracy, and fluency in L2 oral production with little attention to L2 written production. The main purpose of the study reported in this paper was to examine the effects of task repetition versus procedural repetition on the…

Three studies compared bilinguals to monolinguals on 15 indicators of executive processing (EP). Most of the indicators compare a neutral or congruent baseline to a condition that should require EP. For each of the measures there was no main effect of group and a highly significant main effect of condition. The critical marker for a bilingual…

Although fluency constitutes an essential component of second language (L2) proficiency, there are mixed results and gaps in the literature on how L2 speakers' fluency differs from fluent speech production in a first language (L1). The research reported in this article investigated utterance fluency and cognitive fluency of L1 English…

Lexical access tasks are designed to measure efficiency of lexical access, but task demands and methods vary greatly. Many lexical access tasks do not account for confounding factors including competence in other linguistic abilities. In this study, preschoolers were given two lexical access tasks. In the single-category naming (SCN) task,…

Many study abroad programs require language proficiency, emphasize language learning, or otherwise support the development of language skills for their students. A general assumption underlying this attention to foreign language acquisition is that access to the host culture is increased as students are able to converse with host nationals using…

Research on the effectiveness of short-term study-abroad (SA) programs for improving oral skills has shown mixed results. In this study, 24 L2 German learners (L1 English) provided pre- and post-SA speech samples addressing a hypothetical situation and completed surveys on cross-cultural interest and adaptability; L2 communication affect,…