Researchers have studied academic self-concept and its relationship to academic achievement extensively, but not in the Spanish heritage language context. Using measures of reading, writing, and spelling performance, I investigate the relation between self-concept and performance and whether self-concept can predict performance scores. I obtained…

Whether or not to use students' native language (L1) in second or foreign language classes has always been debated by many scholars and researchers. This controversial issue has taken place in the literature with various case studies and findings. The current study investigates into both students and teachers' perspectives on using L1 in foreign…

Chinese idioms are mostly four-character phrases and are called Quadra-syllabic Idiomatic Expressions (QIEs). It has long been reported that learning of Chinese QIEs poses a great challenge for both young L1 speakers and adult L2 learners as the condensed form is often associated with complicated figurative meanings. The present study explored the…

This study investigated the mode of directness of requests and refusals and the background variables that explain this production in two trilingual populations in Israel (i.e. native speakers of Arabic for whom English is an L3, and Hebrew, an L2, and native speakers of Hebrew for whom English is an L2 and another language is their L3). Data were…

The present study examines the multilingual benefit in relation to language learning and mathematical learning. The objective is to assess whether speakers of three or more languages, depending on language profile and personal histories, show significant advantages in language learning and/or mathematical learning, and whether mother tongue…

Previous analyses of the Spanish deictic verbs "venir" "to come", "ir" "to go", traer "to bring" and "llevar" "to take" have drawn upon Fillmore's (1975) series of lectures on deixis in noting that speakers of Spanish forbid the use of the verbs "venir" and…

This article proposes that second language learners can use indirect positive evidence (IPE) to acquire a phonological grammar that is a subset of their L1 grammar. IPE is evidence from errors in the learner's L1 made by native speakers of the learner's L2. It has been assumed that subset grammars may be acquired using direct or indirect negative…

This study contributes to current trends of heritage speaker bilingualism research by examining the syntax of so-called Spanish dative-experiencer predicates ("gustar"-like verbs). Building on previous findings (e.g., Silva-Corvalán 1994; Toribio and Nye 2006), it is hypothesized that Spanish heritage speakers can project an optional…

The present study investigates the link between gender, emotional intelligence (EI), personality traits and self-reported emotional expression in the second language (L2). Data analysis suggests that gender might not influence self-perceived emotional expression in the L2, as the results of the t-test show that both males and females declare…

With increasing arguments and evidence suggesting its benefits, First Language (L1) use (including translation exercise) is experiencing a resurrection in Second Language or Foreign Language (SL/FL) classrooms. One form of L1 use is composing comparable and parallel texts, which can be an important pedagogical resource but which has received…

The perceptual fluency hypothesis claims that items that are easy to perceive at encoding induce an illusion that they will be easier to remember, despite the finding that perception does not generally affect recall. The current set of studies tested the predictions of the perceptual fluency hypothesis with a picture generation manipulation.…

The authors tested theoretically driven predictions as to the ways in which syntactic awareness, or awareness of word order within sentences, might contribute to reading comprehension, the end goal of reading development and instruction. They conducted a longitudinal study of 100 English-speaking children followed from Grade 3 to 4. Children…

The use of home languages has previously been advocated in highly multilingual UK classrooms. However, drawing on the home languages and cultural insight of children who use English as an Additional Language (EAL) may also have important social and academic benefits in contexts where monolingualism is the norm. Conducted in a small local authority…

"Cunt" is currently one of the most offensive words in the English language and is usually censored in the English press and media. The present study looks firstly at differences between 1159 first (L1) and 1165 foreign (LX) users of English in their perceived understanding of the word, its perceived offensiveness and their self-reported…

Mother tongue rhetoric transfer is unavoidable in ESL writings, especially for Iranian ESL learners, since Persian and English language is quite different. The paper discusses the negative transfer of mother tongue rhetoric in Iranian undergraduate ESL learners' writings from the perspectives of choosing rhetorical structure in English and Persian…