Most of the world's population has knowledge of at least two languages. Many of these bilinguals are also exposed to and identify with at least two cultures. Because language knowledge enables participation in cultural practices and expression of cultural beliefs, bilingual experience and cultural identity are interconnected. However, the specific…

Apart from L2 motivation, self-regulation is also increasingly seen as a key variable in L2 learning in many foreign language learning contexts because classroom-centered instructive language teaching might not be able to provide sufficient input for students. Therefore, taking responsibility and regulating the learning processes and positive…

English is today learnt in multitudes of settings worldwide, making it difficult to characterize relationships between motivation and context in generalized terms (Ushioda 2013). In settings where students have extensive encounters with English outside school, a reluctance to invest effort in formal learning has been observed. To investigate ways…

The present longitudinal study examines the interaction of learner variables (gender, motivation, self-efficacy, and first language literacy) and their influence on second language learning outcomes. The study follows English learners of French from Year 5 in primary school (aged 9-10) to the first year in secondary school (Year 7; aged 11-12).…

The study reported in this article investigated the proficiency in French of a group of anglophone adult L2 learners of the language, all of whom reported passing regularly for native speakers of French. Tests were administered to these learners to gauge their proficiency in different aspects of French, including a lexico-grammatical measure. A…

This article examines the conceptions of research held by 505 teachers of English from 13 countries around the world. Questionnaire responses supplemented by follow-up written and interview data were analyzed to understand teachers' views on what research is and how often they read and do it (and why or why not in each case). An understanding of…

The study examines the impact of topic familiarity and passage sight vocabulary on lexical inferencing and retention. Independent variables include (a) a topic familiarity questionnaire, and (b) a passage sight vocabulary test. A repeated-measures design was used with a cross-sectional sample of 35 adult L2 learners of Spanish. Ss read narratives…

Second language acquisition researchers have claimed that feedback provided during conversational interaction facilitates second language (L2) acquisition. A number of experimental studies have supported this claim, connecting interactional feedback with L2 development. Researchers have suggested that interactional feedback is associated with L2…

Previous research on interlanguage pragmatics revealed that, under implicit pragmatic instruction, some learners noticed the target pragmalinguistic features, whereas others receiving the same instruction did not. This suggests possible effects of individual difference (ID) variables on learners' noticing of pragmalinguistic features. Among the ID…

This paper examines the relationships among motivation, metacognition, and proficiency in listening comprehension. Adolescent learners of French (N = 57) completed two questionnaires. A motivation questionnaire tapped student responses to three orientations related to motivation: amotivation, intrinsic, and extrinsic. A metacognitive awareness…

A study in interlanguage pragmatics investigated the effect of three types of rejoinder (positive, negative, absent) on non-native informants' choices of strategies to perform complaints, requests, and apologies. Results show strategy choice differentially affected by rejoinder type, suggesting that findings from studies using different production…

Investigates what can be learned about second language (L2) speech acts using English language multiple choice (MC) instruments and discourse completion tests (DCTs). The study focuses on the primary language (L1) responses of native speakers and the L2 responses given by speakers of Chinese to MC questionnaires and DCTs dealing with the…