The study aimed to explore the evidence of first language (L1) mediation in second language (L2) word associations and the L2 learner-related factors affecting the extent of L1 mediation with the following approaches. First, different from previous research, word association tests (WATs) embraced both receptive and productive word associations in…

This study examined second language (L2) learning difficulty of 13 Chinese grammatical constructions on the basis of teachers' perceptions and associated the L2 learning difficulty of Chinese grammatical constructions with teacher-perceived learner grammatical competence and with the instructional levels. A total of 77 experienced teachers were…

This study investigates the strategies employed by Thai learners of Chinese as a second language (L2) to comprehend metaphors, focusing on how language proficiency shapes their approach. Using a mixed-methods design, 29 participants--ranging from beginner to advanced levels--completed metaphor interpretation tasks and provided self-reports on…

Second language (L2) research on input manipulation has focused mainly on increasing the salience of target structures, but presentation formats of L2 input can be another important aspect for manipulation. This study compared the horizontal, vertical, and adjacent formats for presenting the characters, pinyin, and English meaning of L2 Chinese…

Frequency and proficiency have been found to play an important role in second language (L2) phrasal processing. However, existing research has largely focused on English and other European languages, with other commonly used languages, such as Chinese, being largely disregarded. To fill this gap, we carried out two experiments to investigate how…

This cross-sectional study examines the sociopragmatic use of pitch and fluency features in requests among second language (L2) Chinese learners at two proficiency levels alongside native Chinese speakers. Twenty-eight L2 learners completed a 40-item oral discourse task with two types of request-making situations: (a) a high-imposition request to…

In order to address the needs of the continually growing number of Chinese language learners, the present study developed and presented initial validation of a 100-item Chinese vocabulary proficiency test (CVPT) for learners of Chinese as a second/foreign language (CS/FL) using Item Response Theory among 170 CS/FL learners from Indonesia and 354…

There is a prevailing belief that second language (L2) textbooks should strive for authenticity, aiming to accurately and reliably represent natural language use. However, assessing the authenticity of language textbooks is not a straightforward task, as it requires both a comparison between instructional texts and real-world language use and a…

A handful of second language (L2) studies have explored "bidirectional pragmatic transfer": "forward pragmatic transfer"--the influence of learners' first language (L1) on their L2--and "reverse pragmatic transfer"--the impact of learners' L2 on their L1. This explanatory sequential mixed-methods study investigated…

Current L2 utterance fluency literature tends to operationalize disfluency as isolated, individual features. However, disfluency features often co-occur at one location or across multiple locations in one utterance. This study explores the co-occurrence of L2 disfluency features in a speech corpus from 71 L1 and L2 speakers of English across…

The present study investigates bilinguals' capacity to rapidly establish memory traces for novel word forms in a second language (L2), as a function of L2 linguistic proficiency. A group of Chinese-English bilinguals with various English proficiency levels were presented with a reading-aloud task, consisting of 16 pseudowords and 16 English words…

The present study explored the processing units of high-proficiency second language (L2) Chinese learners in on-line reading in an eye-tracking experiment. The critical aim was to investigate how learners segment continuous characters into words without the aid of word boundary demarcations. Based on previous studies, the embedded words of 2- and…

To explore the washback of the HSK on students learning Chinese as a Second Language (CSL), the study surveyed 1,616 SCL students from 25 different mother tongue backgrounds and interviewed international students studying in China through questionnaire and interview. The following was found in this study: (a) The HSK influenced both the process…

Attaining Advanced proficiency and beyond has been a principal goal for second language learners, practitioners, and researchers. Achieving this level in writing requires producing connected discourse of paragraph-level length and nurturing the ability to arrange various linguistic units to form a unified and cohesive whole. This ability, known as…

This article aimed to explore which factors caused Thai learners' anxiety in an online Chinese course provided by Chinese universities, how Chinese proficiency affected online learning anxiety, and how online learning anxiety influences learning engagement. The participants, i.e., learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL), completed the…