Students commonly find specialist scientific language problematic. This study investigated developments in chemical language usage by six "non-traditional" students over the course of 1 to 4 years. The students participated in semi-structured interviews and were asked to explain specific chemical scenarios. Interviews were transcribed…

The way we ask for something, or "request," is hardly the same across all contexts. The degree to which we show politeness in these instances is closely related to a number of contextual factors (Brown & Levinson, 1987), manifested in the linguistic features that we employ (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989; Searle, 1975).…

This article reports an empirical study investigating L2 acquisition of the Mandarin Chinese "shì…de" cleft construction by adult English-speaking learners within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009). A Sentence Completion task, an interpretation task, two Acceptability Judgement tasks, and a felicity…

"Although" is a frequently used subordinating conjunction in English. However, non-nativeness is often observed in Chinese EFL learners' "although" output during pedagogical practice. This paper aims at exploring the characteristics of Chinese EFL learners' "although" employment in Chinese EFL learners' writing. The…

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how complexity, accuracy and fluency interact in early L2 development, when learners' linguistic means are underdeveloped. Learners then resort to rote-learned formulaic sequences to complement their current grammar when it is unable to meet their communicative needs. The interplay between their…

While the number of studies on pragmatic development has been increasing since Kasper and Schmidt's call for more research into this under-researched area (e.g., [Barron, A., 2003. Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics: Learning How to do Things with Words in a Study Abroad Context. Benhamins, Amsterdam; Achiba, M., 2003. Learning to Request in…

The aim of the study is to identify and interpret the exact aspects of Greek interlanguage modification which present deviations from native usage. As such, it is an investigation of Greek ESL university students' request modification and a comparison to British English native speakers. More specifically, it concentrates on the mitigating function…

This study investigated complimenting behavior in three language varieties, British English, Finnish, and the interlanguage of Finish Learners of English. It found that compliments in Finnish tended to be longer and more syntactic than in English and that Finnish learners of English demonstrated appropriate complimenting behavior in English,…

This book provides a practical introduction to questions about bilingualism. It is for parents and teachers who are themselves bilingual, for monolinguals who want to know more, for those with some intuitive understanding of bilingual situations and for those who are starting from the very beginning. The book poses questions that people often ask…