First, we trace the history of second language acquisition (SLA) from early stages in the mid-twentieth century to today. We next consider the status of the field in today's research world with a particular focus on all aspects of methodology and, finally, we take a look at the future and discuss issues related to scientific rigor in light of Open…

We explored how L2 learners of Arabic make use of video-based captions to learn vocabulary. Thirteen students watched a four-minute captioned video twice on a computer equipped with eye-tracking technology. The study included 19 novel words, 2 familiar words with novel meanings, and 2 words with familiar morphological roots (23 total). In this…

The focus in this article is on research in language centers. Four center directors provide examples of the place of research in language centers and focus on how teachers and researchers work together to facilitate large action research projects. The first section describes a survey of instructors in U.S.-based intensive English programs (IEPs).…

The Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA) at Michigan State University (MSU) was awarded a U.S. federally funded two-year grant in 2014 to investigate the status of proficiency, and the promotion of proficiency, in foreign language programs. The grant was awarded to Paula Winke and Susan Gass, as principal investigators. The purpose of…

This study represents program-level action research. A U.S. university Spanish language program had a goal for students to reach the ACTFL (2012) Intermediate Mid level after 2 years. An empirical question that resulted after regular end-of-year testing was whether the students were doing their best on assessments. To investigate this, 253…

Captions provide a useful aid to language learners for comprehending videos and learning new vocabulary, aligning with theories of multimedia learning. Multimedia learning predicts that a learner's working memory (WM) influences the usefulness of captions. In this study, we present two eye-tracking experiments investigating the role of WM in…

This study investigates caption-reading behavior by foreign language (L2) learners and, through eye-tracking methodology, explores the extent to which the relationship between the native and target language affects that behavior. Second-year (4th semester) English-speaking learners of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish watched 2 videos…

This study investigated the effects of captioning during video-based listening activities. Second- and fourth-year learners of Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and Russian watched three short videos with and without captioning in randomized order. Spanish learners had two additional groups: one watched the videos twice with no captioning, and another…

Discusses articles contained in this special issue of the journal, raising issues concerning key terms, with particular emphasis on "incidental." Argues there is no clear way to show that a word has been learned incidentally, if the suggestion is that specific attention is not drawn to that word either by some external force or by the learner.…

Questions the extent to which attention differentially affects different parts of language and how this differential effect interacts with increased linguistic knowledge. Subjects were native English speaking learners of Italian. (Author/VWL)

Replies to an article titled "Programmatic Ahistoricity in Second Language Acquisition Theory." Reviews pertinent literature, concluding that historical awareness is evident in second language acquisition, although not as far reaching as the earlier article suggests. Argues that the attitude of most scholars in SLA toward the past is reasonable…

Explores English-as-a-Second-Language learners and Italian as a foreign language learners perceptions of feedback provided to them through task-based dyadic interaction. Learners received feedback focused on a range of morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological forms. (Author/VWL)

This workbook with teacher's guide provides "hand-ons" experience for second language (L2) acquisition researchers in analyzing second language data. The sample data is organized into language categories including morphology, lexicon, phonology, syntax/semantics, spoken and written discourse, foreigner talk discourse, specific purpose acquisition,…

Implicit negative feedback has been shown to facilitate SLA, and the extent to which such feedback is given is related to a variety of task and interlocutor variables. The background of a native speaker (NS), in terms of amount of experience in interactions with nonnative speakers (NNSs), has been shown to affect the quantity of implicit negative…