This study investigated how questioning strategies impact language learner performance. Specifically, it explored how questioning strategies influence (i) verb production and subject-verb agreement in the target language, and (ii) learner confidence in completing tasks without translation software. Sixty-eight novice language learners enrolled in…

This study investigates the extent to which (a) Spanish heritage (HL) and second language (L2) writers' linguistic complexity differs across register contexts and (b) Spanish proficiency and writing motivational beliefs differentially affect HL and L2 writers' performance. Participants were 58 HL and 54 L2 Spanish learners who completed two…

One feature of Spanish that presents some difficulties to second language (L2) learners whose first language (L1) is English concerns lexical stress. This study explores one aspect of the obstacle these learners face, weak phonological processing routines concerning stress inherited from their native language. Participants were L1 English L2…

This study investigates the effects of multilingualism and the degree of proficiency in different languages on vocabulary knowledge among Spanish language learners. Participants completed a 160-word meaning recall test designed to measure their knowledge of the 8,000 most frequent Spanish words and a self-assessment questionnaire on their…

Recent studies in the second language acquisition of negation have focused on polarity items and their licensing contexts. Although several studies show a correlation between higher degrees of second language (L2) proficiency and the acquisition of the target L2 structures, less attention has been given to the relation between the acquisition of…

Despite the widespread use and effectiveness of the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) composite score in predicting individual differences in L2 achievement and proficiency, there has been little examination of MLAT subtests, although they have potential for illuminating components of L2 aptitude and the mechanism of prediction. Here we use…

This study examined the relationship between lexical coverage (i.e., the percentage of known word tokens in a text) and second language (L2) reading comprehension. Several studies have suggested that adequate comprehension occurs between 95% and 98% coverage, but no study has investigated beginning-level learners reading under the conditions of…

This article details the challenges and best practices of evaluating second language learners for placement into postsecondary Spanish language courses. The literature on testing for placement purposes in second language acquisition and language testing provides a great deal of insight, but language programs must make many decisions as well that…

This study investigates the effectiveness of the PACE approach (Adair-Hauck & Donato, 2002) for grammar teaching in beginning (novice mid/high) second language (L2) Spanish classes. Even though research has reported instructional benefits for PACE in L2 French (Groenveld, 2011), Alutiiq (Branson, 2015), and ESL (Harris, 2017; Ngo, 2018), to…

This study details the development of a local test designed to place university Spanish students (n = 719) into one of the four different course levels and to distinguish between traditional L2 learners and early bilinguals on the basis of their linguistic knowledge, regardless of the variety of Spanish they were exposed to. Early bilinguals…

The present dissertation intends to investigate the syntactic nature and L2-acquisition of passive sentence structure in two Romance varieties, Italian and Spanish. First, I will present an analytic proposal couched within the Generative Approach (Chomsky, 1957, and subsequent work); from there, and following Perlmutter and Postal's (1977)…

This article uses cognitive measures previously developed within linguistic relativity research to explore the thinking patterns of Yucatec Maya-Spanish bilingual children in the Yucatan peninsula. These measures were designed to detect cognitive patterns associated with specific language patterns. Here, these measures are used to test whether 12…

This study compares the effects of distributed versus massed corrective feedback (CF) on Spanish differential object marking (DOM). Forty-eight Spanish learners completed three communicative tasks with a researcher on three consecutive days, one task per day. Partial recasts were used to reformulate DOM errors. The distributed group (n = 16)…

Study abroad is an important piece of the internationalization of curriculum and is particularly advantageous for second language learners. Many students study abroad to learn a language and the majority of students studying abroad enroll in shorter-term programs. Given their strong representation in the field of study abroad, the following…

The objective of this study was to validate a bilingual Spanish-English version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) considering its potential use as a discriminator between learners in terms of language competence. This version was designed based on the two forms available on one of the creators' websites as well as considering practices recommended…