This study compares Spanish morphosyntax error types and magnitude in monolingual Spanish and Spanish-English bilingual children with typical language development (TD) and language impairment (LI). Performance across groups was compared using cloze tasks that targeted articles, clitics, subjunctives, and derivational morphemes in 57 children.…

In this research study I explore: (a) beliefs Korean ESL readers have about reading in L1 and L2 prior to the Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) sessions, (b) how their beliefs about reading affect the way they read in L1 and L2 and their evaluation of themselves as readers in L1 and L2 reading, and (c) change of their beliefs about reading and…

Learners' beliefs about foreign language learning have been stressed in educational research because they are regarded as fundamental to learners' progress (e.g. Altan, 2012; Russell, 2009; Rieger, 2009; Kormos & Csizér, 2008;). This paper deals with the results of a research project conducted among first-year English language majors studying…

Due to the lack of span test for the use in language-specific and cross-language studies, this study provides L1 and L2 researchers with a reliable language-independent span test (math span test) for the measurement of working memory capacity. It also describes the development, validation, and scoring method of this test. This test included 70…

This dissertation provides a language processing perspective on the study of second language acquisition (SLA) of tense and aspect. Of special interest are the universal vis-a-vis language-specific dimensions of temporal and aspectual semantics involved. According to the Aspect Hypothesis (AH, e.g. Andersen & Shirai, 1994), the initial…

The present longitudinal case study investigated the development of fluency, complexity and accuracy--and the possible relationships between them--in the written production of L2 French. We assessed fluency and complexity in five intermediate learners by means of conventional indicators for written L2 (cf. Wolfe-Quintero et al. 1998), while…

This paper presents findings from a study investigating young Swedish learners' extramural (out-of-school) contact with English. In contemporary Sweden, the influx of English is great and research has shown that extramural contact with English correlates positively with students' proficiency in English (Olsson, 2011; Sundqvist, 2009; Sylvén,…

This study contributes to L2 writing research which seeks to tie predictions of the Limited Attentional Capacity Model (Skehan, 1998; Skehan & Foster, 2001) and Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2001, 2005, 2011a, 2011b) to models of working memory in L1 writing (Kellogg, 1996). The study uses a quasi-experimental research design to investigate…

It has been proposed that external interfaces are vulnerable to residue optionality, whereas pure syntax and internal interfaces are acquirable in second language (L2) acquisition (Sorace, 2005, 2011; Sorace and Filiaci, 2006). The proposal was tested in this article through the interpretation of overt and null embedded arguments in L2 Chinese…

This study, which is part of a large-scale study of using objective measures to validate assessment rating scales and assessment tasks in a high-profile school-based assessment initiative in Hong Kong, examined how grammatical complexity measures relate to task type and analytic evaluations of students' speaking proficiency in a classroom-based…

Reading fluency has attracted the attention of reading researchers and educators since the early 1970s and has become a priority issue in English as a first language (L1) settings. It has also become a critical issue in English as a second or foreign language (L2) settings because the lack of fluency is considered a major obstacle to developing…

As US classrooms approach a decade of response to No Child Left Behind, many questions and concerns remain around the education of those labeled as English language learners, in mainstream, English as a Second Language, and bilingual education classrooms. A national policy context where standardized tests dominate curriculum and instruction, and…

This study uses data from the child and adult components of the 2001 Canadian Aboriginal Peoples Survey to examine what factors are related to speaking an Aboriginal language and how speaking an Aboriginal language is related to school outcomes. Even after controlling for child and family factors (age, sex, health status, household income, number…

This article reports analysis of data collected from a quasi-experimental study in 2 Canadian late French immersion science classes. We examine if, how, and when the first language (L1) is used when students in the first years of their second language learning talk about complex science concepts. We compare differences in groups following a…

This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify differences in the neural processes underlying direct and semidirect interviews. We examined brain activation patterns while 20 native speakers of Japanese participated in direct and semidirect interviews in both Japanese (first language [L1]) and English (second language…