While L1 transfer and L2 learnability have been studied extensively in the domain of syntax and the syntax/semantics interface, purely semantic phenomena have received little attention in the L2 literature. This paper presents two experiments examining the relative scope assigned to disjunction and negation by English-speaking learners of Japanese…

This article provides a comprehensive synthesis of research on language attrition to date, with a view to establishing a theoretically sound basis for future research in the domain of second language (L2) attrition. We identify the variables that must be tracked in populations who experience language loss, and we develop a general model for the…

Lack of student motivation is a shared concern by teachers across all content areas, at all educational levels. Unmotivated students exhibit behaviors of being unengaged, distracted, and unwilling to put forth effort. Motivation has been shown to foster a strong sense of self-efficacy, which may lead to personal expectations of successful…

This paper reports on the findings of a study carried out on the advanced and elementary teachers' and students' functions and patterns of code-switching in Iranian English classrooms. This concept has not been adequately examined in L2 (second language) classroom contexts than in outdoor natural contexts. Therefore, besides reporting on the…

This study examined the effectiveness of explicit instruction of metacognitive strategies over a 14-week semester with a group of 40 EFL learners at a private university in Thailand. A metacognitive questionnaire and a reading test were administered at the beginning and at the end of the course to find the changes in both the questionnaire…

This study investigated how English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' types of language for thinking and types of oral elicitation tasks influence their lexical collocational errors in speech. Data were collected from 42 English majors in Taiwan using two instruments: (1) 3 oral elicitation tasks and (2) an inner speech questionnaire. The…

This study proposes a Wiki-based collaborative writing approach to the writing process for EFL (English as a foreign language) learners. A five-stage computer-mediated collaborative writing project including collaborative planning, partitioned drafting, peer-revising, peer-editing, and individual publishing was blended with on-campus English…

This paper explores difficulties students may experience in giving opinions in class, drawing on data gleaned from the administration of questionnaires and interviews to Japanese and British students. The results show that the students from both groups regard highly of giving and exchanging opinions in class; however, there is a marked difference…

Present conceptualizations and measures of self-esteem do not account for linguistic self-esteem, an aspect of the self specifically relevant for bilingual students. This study examines the utility of a newly developed measure of linguistic self-esteem. This novel measure is compared with a commonly used self-esteem measure, two standardized…

This study examines the role of transfer from English in the acquisition of double-que questions in Spanish among 17 heritage speakers in the US. Results from an elicited production task, an acceptability judgment task and a preference task revealed significant difficulties in the production and acceptability of double-"que" questions. In contrast…

The number of pupils who have English as an Additional Language (EAL) in English schools is increasing, with an influx of migrants from Europe. This paper investigates how schools are addressing the needs of these children. Using survey and interviews with teachers and paraprofessionals the identification of personal assumptions and challenges of…

This article presents the results from a mainly statistical and comparative analysis regarding the communicative competences and the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) of German exchange students. The data was extracted from two exhaustive, rigorous and methodical questionnaires related to communicative and ICT competences,…

This paper reports on a pilot project which provided writing support for registered nurses undertaking Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and for pre-registration nursing students. Both groups of students have English as a second language (ESL). The aims of the project were to extend the scope of the available writing support within the…

This study seeks to determine the possible interactions between listening proficiency and the state of strategic self-awareness; second, and more importantly, to investigate the effects of learned strategies on listening comprehension and recall; and finally to describe the most common real-time listening comprehension problems faced by EFL…

There has been a continuous debate over a long period over the issue of using the learner's mother tongue in teaching the second language. We have two schools in this regard--monolingual approach and bilingual approach. Those advocating the monolingual approach have claimed that learning is determined by the quantity of exposure to the target…