Few, if any, researchers would deny the existence of the developmental stages of language learning. However, there are questions about the applicability and the importance of the stages in pedagogy. Up to this point, these questions regarding the ESL (English as a second language) stages have never been addressed in a Japanese post-secondary…

Heritage language speakers struggle in European classrooms with insufficient material provided for second language (SL) learning and assessment. Considering the amount of instruments and pertinent studies in English SL, immigrant students are better prepared than their peers in Romance language settings. This study investigates how factors such as…

In the present investigation, 15 first term university students were faced with 80 context-based idioms in English (L2) and Swedish (L1) respectively, 30 of which were in the source domain of animals, commonly used in both languages, and asked to explain their meaning. The idioms were of varying frequency and transparency. Three main research…

Strategic text processing was investigated for English as a foreign language learners who processed and recalled a text when they read for expression, for image, and for critique. The results indicated that, although the amount of content recall (i.e., products of comprehension) was similar, the relative contributions of second language (L2)…

So far, the comprehension and production language modes have typically been studied separately in generative second language acquisition research, with the focus shifting from one to the other. This article revisits the asymmetric relationship between comprehension and production by examining the second language (L2) acquisition of the noun phrase…

This study concerns the effect of letter position on the retention of words by EFL learners. Given the fact that everyone has a mental lexicon, we would suggest that words are possibly organized in alphabetical order, then it would be likely for the learners to retain the words easily when exposed to the first letters of given words. The study…

Previous research has demonstrated that being bilingual from birth is advantageous for the development of skills of social cognition, executive functioning, and metalinguistic awareness due to bilingual children's extensive experience of processing and manipulating two linguistic systems. The present study investigated whether these cognitive…

The paper presents a descriptive account of a Morphological Processing Spelling Approach (MPSA), which substitutes a more conventional spelling instruction, proposed for developing primary school students' metamorphological knowledge and strategies in English as a foreign language. For the application of the MPSA, seven dictation texts were…

This study explored native English speakers' interpretations of second-language Spanish sentences featuring an animate subject and an ambitransitive verb (e.g., "Escuchan bien los ninos" "The children listen well"). First- (N=37), third- (N=39), and fifth-semester (N=23) participants heard eight subject-verb (SV) and eight verb-subject (VS)…

Lindstromberg and Boers (2008a, 2008b) have reported experiments with adult learners of English which revealed a comparative mnemonic advantage afforded by word combinations that display sound patterns such as alliteration ("green grass") and assonance ("home phone"). These findings are relevant for TESOL, given the fact that English phraseology…

The results of Fast ForWord® training on English decoding-related skills were examined. Finnish fifth-grade students were identified as having reading fluency problems and poor skills in English as a foreign language learned at school and were randomly assigned to either a training group (TRG) or a control group. The TRG ("n"?=?13)…

This study investigated bilingual advantages at additional languages learning by comparing early, highly proficient bilinguals to monolinguals' learning of an additional language in adulthood. The study used both behavioral and neurocognitive measures (event-related potentials) and tested subjects along the trajectory of learning from low to high…

Han's (2009, 2013) selective fossilization hypothesis (SFH) claims that L1 markedness and L2 input robustness determine the fossilizability (and learnability) of an L2 feature. To test the validity of the model, a pseudo-longitudinal study was designed in which the errors in the argumentative essays of 52 Iranian EFL learners were identified and…

Language learners with high working memory capacity have an advantage, all other factors being equal, during the second language acquisition (SLA) process; therefore, identifying a pedagogical intervention that can compensate for low working memory capacity would be advantageous to language learners and instructors. Extensive research on the…

The current study compared the effectiveness of computer-delivered task-essential practice coupled with feedback consisting of (1) negative evidence with metalinguistic information (NE+MI) or (2) negative evidence without metalinguistic information (NE-MI) in promoting absolute beginners' (n = 58) initial learning of aspects of Latin…