The current study examined lexical aspects of second language (L2) speech attainment in the foreign language (FL) classroom setting (i.e., several hours of target language input per week). A total of 72 second-year university students with 7 years of FL study and no experience abroad participated in the study. Their spontaneous speech was analyzed…

The aim of this study is to determine the possible relationship between the reality shock expectations and teacher self-efficacy levels of the prospective teachers attending pedagogical formation certificate program. In accordance with this purpose, the study was designed in correlational model among relational survey models, and the study sample…

This study set out to explore levels of religious affect (measured by the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity) and personal affect (measured by the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire) among samples of Catholic students in the Republic of Ireland attending fifth- and sixth-year classes (N = 3015) and Catholic students in Northern Ireland…

In the United States, the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) has steadily grown over the past decades. In the State of Delaware, the growth has been exponential. ELLs' academic underachievement in reading and math has remained a challenge for K-12 educational institutions. It has continued to be necessary to research the causes and…

The purpose of this study was to find out, whether three methods of presenting input, were effective in relation to language aptitude. Persian-speaking learners of English were provided with 20 grammatical collocations (verb-preposition collocations) embedded in authentic passages, lexically/grammatically elaborated passages, and…

This study draws on conceptual and methodological insights afforded within a dynamic systems perspective to explore shifting interrelationships between cognitive capacity and motivational resources in instructed adult second language (L2) learners of Spanish at increasing proficiency. Relationships that emerged showed both stability and…

Individuals with greater cognitive abilities generally show reduced rates of mind-wandering when completing relatively demanding tasks (Randall, Oswald, & Beier, 2014). However, it is yet unclear whether elevated rates of mind-wandering among low-ability individuals are manifestations of deliberate, intentional episodes of mind-wandering…

This article begins by situating modern-day second language acquisition (SLA) research in a historical context, tracing its evolution from cognitive to social to sociocognitive accounts. Next, the influence of the zeitgeist is considered. In this era of rapid change and turmoil, there are both perils and opportunities afforded by globalization. In…

This article aims at shedding light on the emotional intelligence (EI) of gifted and high ability students. We begin by presenting a brief overview of EI theory and research and its relevance to gifted education. We then present theoretical considerations bearing on the nature of the relationship between cognitive and EI. This is followed by a…

These experiments examined the relationship between the neurotrophic factor fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) and individual differences in the expression of conditioned fear. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that rats naturally expressing low levels of contextual or cued fear have higher levels of hippocampal FGF2 relative to rats that express…

According to some accounts, the bilingual advantage is most pronounced in the domain of executive attention rather than inhibition and should therefore be more easily detected in conflict adaptation paradigms than in simple interference paradigms. We tested this idea using two conflict adaptation paradigms, one that elicits a list-wide…

This study took a dynamic approach to second language (L2) comprehensibility, examining how listeners construct comprehensibility profiles for L2 Spanish speakers during the listening task and what features enhance or diminish comprehensibility. Listeners were 24 native Spanish speakers who evaluated 2-5 minute audio clips recorded by three…

A number of longitudinal studies of L2 production have reported frequency effects wherein learners' produce more frequent words as a function of time. The current study investigated the spoken output of English L2 learners over a four-month period of time using both native and non-native English speaker frequency norms for both word types and word…

Under the framework of self-determination theory, choice is a supporting factor for autonomy in the classroom. The provision of choice in the classroom is a distinct feature of higher education, through which students experience a shift from mandatory tasks to those are more learner-controlled. This study explores Chinese master's students'…

Attention may be distracted from its intended focus both by stimuli in the external environment and by internally generated task-unrelated thoughts during mind wandering. However, previous attention research has focused almost exclusively on distraction by external stimuli, and the extent to which mind wandering relates to external distraction is…