The current study investigated gender (control) and number (target) agreement processing in Northern and non-Northern Norwegians living in Northern Norway. Participants varied in exposure to Northern Norwegian (NN) dialect(s), where number marking differs from most other Norwegian dialects. In a comprehension task involving reading NN dialect…

This study examines the effects of the continuation task and the model-as-feedback writing task (MAFW) on English as a foreign language (EFL) vocabulary learning. Three classes of intermediate-level Chinese EFL learners were randomly assigned to a continuation group, a MAFW group, and a control group. Three aspects of vocabulary knowledge --…

The system of second person singular forms of address (2PS) in Medellín, Colombia is tripartite consisting of "tú, vos," and "usted," while also including the existence of a dual "usted." The current study compares usage of the intimate "usted" versus the distant "usted" with data from an oral…

In Canada, the federally funded Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program follows a task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach using the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB). Aligned with other communicative language approaches, TBLT de-emphasizes systematic instruction of the morpho-syntactic elements of language. Although TBLT…

This study undertook iconicity ratings and conducted transparency experiments on Israeli Sign Language (ISL). Experiment 1 compared the iconicity ratings of 520 lexical signs of ten Deaf ISL signers and thirteen hearing non-signers. Ratings were found to be affected by language knowledge, lexical class, and type of iconic mapping, as well as by…

This study delves into the syntactic parsing abilities of children and infants exposed to Catalan as their first language. Focusing first on ages 3 to 6, we conducted two sentence-picture matching tasks. In experiment 1, 3 to 4-year-old children failed in identifying singular third-person subjects within null-subject sentences, although they…

For children, Object Relative (OR) clauses can be late acquired across a number of languages (e.g., this is the goat that the cows are pushing), and production of non-standard ORs that include resumption is often attested (e.g., Italian; French; English). In addition, starting at age 6, children start adopting passive subject relatives (SRs)…

This study examines the comprehension of verbal passives by children acquiring European Portuguese, in particular with respect to the predictions of the Universal Phase Requirement (UPR) and the Universal Freezing Hypothesis (UFH) regarding children's performance with different types of predicates. Both hypotheses entail the prediction that…

This article explores the potential for using a modified dictogloss task to improve ESL learners' use of genre-appropriate conventions and genre-appropriate style in the context of genre-based instruction for writing. Dictogloss has been traditionally used to enhance learners' focus on lexical and grammatical features through discussions during…

Previous research has shown that linguistic cues such as mental and modal verbs can influence young children's judgments about the reliability of informants. Further, certain languages include grammatical morphemes (i.e. evidential markers), which clarify the source of information coming from testimony (e.g., Bulgarian, Japanese, Turkish).…

This study investigates the grammatical skills of typically developing Oromo-speaking preschool-age children and lays the foundation for a language assessment tool for Oromo, a Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia. The current study used a standard picture-based elicitation task that evaluated children's accuracy in producing grammatical…

This study compared the effects of task repetition only (TR), task repetition with grammatizing (TR+GR), and grammatization with no task repetition (GR) on 94 EFL learners' oral task performances. Participants' productions were measured both in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency as well as receptive knowledge (measured by an error…

The adoption of task-based language teaching (TBLT) has gained prominence recently, especially in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) writing to teenagers. While much research centered on teachers' attitudes, perceptions, and implementation, learners' voices seem unheard in the literature. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate…

This study examined the extent to which textual enhancement incorporated into the post-task stage of task-based reading lessons can promote development in second language (L2) grammatical knowledge. The participants were 49 child language learners who participated in task-based reading lessons in their own classroom contexts. They were randomly…

This study is aimed to identify the effects of task complexity on first language (L1) use and the functions it may serve when two groups of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) work on collaborative tasks. Twenty-four pairs of Chinese EFL learners from two universities were assigned to a lower-proficiency and a higher-proficiency group,…