This study examined the relationship between complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF), using longitudinal data. Conducted from the perspective of complex dynamic systems theory (CDST), this research adopted four CAF general measures to track the development of five Chinese undergraduates' English speech over a 15-week period. LOWESS graphs supported…

The present study investigates the impact of meaningful input on L2 learners' vocabulary use and their fluency in oral performance (immediate and repeat tasks), as well as whether the effects are mediated by learners' prior vocabulary knowledge and working memory. Ninety university students learning English as a foreign language were randomly…

This study was motivated by Truscott's (1996, 2004) scarcely empirically tested claims that written corrective feedback (WCF) processing hinders fluency in subsequent rewriting owing to learners' purposeful avoidance of making mistakes by composing shorter texts at a higher speed. It examined the writing fluency of the texts produced by eighteen…

This study seeks to delve into the potential role of divergent thinking, a component of creativity, in second language learning. Specifically, we compare the use of lexical organization and production strategies of two groups of more and less creative EFL learners in year 12 through an automatic vectorial semantic analysis of their retrieval in…

It is unknown whether and to what extent cognitive individual differences may play different roles in paper versus computer-based second language (L2) writing. This exploratory study is a first attempt to explore this issue, focusing on the effects of working memory and language aptitude on the quality of paper versus computer-based L2 writing…

Research into the potential of collaborative writing is relatively new. Similarly, task repetition (TR), which has been claimed to be a valuable tool for language learning, has been rarely explored in the context of writing. Therefore, little is known about the potential of combining TR and collaborative writing, and even less if we focus on young…

This study examined the effectiveness of interactive activities at facilitating EFL students' production of English relative clauses. Thirty-seven EFL learners in Chile carried out interactive activities designed to elicit relative clauses. Pre- and posttests were used to examine whether carrying out the activities facilitated the students'…

Fluency is an essential part of a language learner's skills. Despite various studies on fluency, little is known about the effects of different pedagogical methods on the development of written fluency. In this paper, we examine how different pedagogical methods affect the development of second language learners' written fluency. Participants in…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of age of onset and type of instruction on ultimate EFL attainment at the end of the period of normal schooling in Switzerland, measured in terms of written fluency, complexity, morphosyntactic accuracy, vocabulary size, and listening skills. Data were gathered from four groups of 18-year-old…

Most current idiom processing models acknowledge, after Gernsbacher and Robertson (1999) that deriving an idiomatic meaning entails suppression of contextually inappropriate, literal meanings of idiom constituent words. While embedding idioms in the rich disambiguating context can promote earlier suppression of incompatible literal meanings,…