Concept-based language instruction (C-BLI) is a pedagogy guided by sociocultural theory, which has been shown to be effective in facilitating second language learning. Typical activities include materialization by using a schema for a complete orienting basis of an action (SCOBA) and languaging, through which learners' internalization of…

While an elicited imitation test (EIT) has been widely used as a measure of oral proficiency in second language acquisition (SLA) research, it is still unclear the extent to which memory capacity impacts EIT performance. In light of this gap, the present study sought to clarify the nature of elicited imitation by examining the relative…

Learner corpus studies using syntactic complexity as a construct for characterizing learner proficiency have found that higher proficiency permits learners to produce more complex syntactic structures. However, the majority of previous studies have focused on writing, almost exclusively with adult second language (L2) learners. Given the…

This study examines first language (L1) English transfer in the acquisition of plural noun semantics in second language (L2) Arabic. Drawing on previous research on the L2 acquisition of plural noun interpretation, the study presents and discusses new production data of specific and generic definite plurals by English-speaking learners of Arabic…

This study investigates the role of proficiency in the acquisition of conventional expressions as a pragmalinguistic resource in second-language (L2) Chinese. One hundred and four undergraduates, including 57 learners of Chinese as a foreign language at 3 levels of university instruction and 47 native speakers completed an aural-oral discourse…

This study reveals hitherto overlooked effects of age of onset (AO) in immersive school contexts, using multiple measures over time so as to focus on fluctuations and trends in individual data. The second language (L2) English development was studied in 91 children who received 50-50 content and language integrated learning (CLIL) instruction in…

This study investigates the influence of the semantic heaviness of verbs (i.e., heavy or light verbs) and language proficiency on second language (L2) learners' use of constructional information in a sentence-sorting task and a corpus analysis. Previous studies employing a sentence-sorting task demonstrated that advanced L2 learners sorted English…

The current 2-part study investigated the relative contributions of English language training (ELT) and computerized Cogmed working memory training (WMT) to improvements in English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) proficiency and working memory capacity. In Study 1, Japanese undergraduate EFL learners were randomly allocated to 1 of 3 experimental…

This study contributes to the literature on second language (L2) learners' revision behavior by describing what, when, and how often L2 learners revise their texts when responding to timed writing tasks on the computer and by examining the effects of task type, L2 proficiency, and keyboarding skills on what and when L2 learners revise. Each of 54…

This study compares Arabic L1, L2, and heritage speakers' (HS) knowledge of plural formation, which involves concatenative and nonconcatenative modes of derivation. Ninety participants (divided equally among L1, L2, and heritage speakers) completed two oral tasks: a picture naming task (to measure proficiency) and a plural formation task. The…

One of the central considerations in the validity argument for the TOEFL iBT is the relationship between the language on the exam and the language required for university courses. Corpus linguistics has recently been shown to be an effective way to explore this relationship, which can also be considered as an aspect of authenticity. Applying…

The encoding of goal-oriented motion events varies across different languages. Speakers of languages without grammatical aspect (e.g., Swedish) tend to mention motion endpoints when describing events (e.g., "two nuns walk to a house") and attach importance to event endpoints when matching scenes from memory. Speakers of aspect languages…

This study investigated the effects of input-based and output-based practice on the development of accuracy and speed in recognizing and producing request-making forms in L2 Chinese. Fifty American learners of Chinese with intermediate level proficiency were randomly assigned to an input-based training group, an output-based training group, or a…

This study investigates contextual features surrounding the use of a first language (L1) in a Japanese university English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) course during peer interaction in the extended preparation phase leading up to two oral presentation tasks (OP1 and OP3), performed seven months apart. Interaction data were analysed in terms of the…

This project investigates whether learners of Russian perceive the sociocultural weight of the two personal pronouns for "you", "ty" (informal/intimate) and "vy" (formal/polite) when they listen to native speech. Research on address pronoun use shows it to be an important sociocultural variable and, while there is some general consistency in use,…