Evidence from the contemporary translation services market and many centuries of translation practice demonstrate that translation into a non-native language (L2 translation) can be performed effectively, despite the once-strong resistance to it on the grounds of it being perceived as unprofessional and inherently deficient. L2 translation is in…

Following Richards's (2015) ideas of using movie clips, videos, and games as valuable technological tools for language learning, the present study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of using novel extracts and computer game cutscenes based on the same story to develop the vocabulary knowledge of English as a foreign language (EFL)…

In phonetics research, language alternation--including code switching (speaker-initiated) and cued switching (researcher-prompted)--can be used as a tool to investigate various aspects of speech production and perception in bilingual or multilingual speakers (Bullock & Toribio, 2009a). Studies on the production of voice onset time (VOT) during…

To date, a growing number of studies have shown that domain-general auditory processing, which prior work has linked to L1 acquisition, could explain various dimensions of naturalistic L2 speech proficiency. The current study examined the generalizability of this topic to L2 speech learning in classroom settings. The spontaneous speech samples of…

The study intends to see the interlanguage morphological structure observed in communicative tasks of ten Indonesian learners of English as a Foreign Language. To achieve this purpose, Qualitative method with quantified data is employed in this study embracing the cross-sectional approach. The data are taken from the utterances produced by 10…

Recurring expressions and idiolectal speech patterns are often used by the scriptwriters of sitcoms to portray the personality of some of the characters. These expressions, which in many cases end up becoming popular, are so significant that they need be kept in the translated versions of these series. A corpus-based script analysis method that…

This study examined contributions of lexical factors to native-speaking raters' assessments of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) of second language (L2) speech. Extemporaneous oral narratives elicited from 40 French speakers of L2 English were transcribed and evaluated for comprehensibility by 10 raters. Subsequently, the samples were…

Late second language (L2) learners often struggle with L2 prosody, both in perception and production. This may result from first language (L1) interference or some property of how a second language functions in a late learner independent of what their L1 might be. Here we investigate prosody's role in determining information structure through…

The Simple View of Reading (SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990) has a longstanding history as a model of reading comprehension, but it has mostly been applied to native English speakers. The SVR posits reading comprehension is a function of the interaction between word-level reading skills and oral language skills. It has been…

First language (L1) attrition in adulthood offers new insight on neuroplasticity and the role of language experience in shaping neurocognitive responses to language. Attriters are multilinguals for whom advancing L2 proficiency comes at the cost of the L1, as they experience a shift in exposure and dominance (e.g., due to immigration). To date,…

Although language experience is a key factor in successful foreign language (FL) learning, many FL learners fail to achieve performance levels that were predicted on the basis of their FL experience. This retrospective study investigated early cognitive and linguistic correlates of learning English as a foreign language (FL) in a group of…

Recent studies reported reductions of well-established biases in decision making under risk, such as the framing effect, during foreign language (FL) use. These modulations were attributed to the use of FL itself, which putatively entails an increase in emotional distance. A reduced framing effect in this setting, however, might also result from…

Using a self-paced reading task, the study aimed to investigate (a) whether English learners in Taiwan immediately resolve main verb versus reduced relative clause ambiguities in a similar way as native English speakers and (b) whether the learners at various English proficiency levels show diverse profiles. With analyses and syntheses of reading…

Word association responses in first-language (L1) Spanish and second-language (L2) English were investigated by means of response latencies and types of associative response produced. The primary aims were to establish whether (a) some response types are produced more often or faster than others, (b) participants' L2 response time profiles mirror…