The United States government is perennially in need of employees with proficiency in critical foreign languages to communicate with foreign counterparts and maintain relationships worldwide. In order to fulfill this need, the government devotes significant resources training federal employees to advanced levels of language proficiency through…

This study investigates the impact of task-induced involvement and time on task on incidental second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. Utilizing a 3 (task-induced involvement) × 2 (time on task) × 2 (post-test time) research design, three task-induced involvement conditions were employed based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH): reading…

This longitudinal study explored the roles of item- and learner-related variables in L2 learners' development of productive collocation knowledge (L1 = Dutch; L2 = German; NLearners= 50). Learners' form recall knowledge of 35 target collocations was measured three times over a 3-year period. The item-related variables investigated were L1-L2…

Research has indicated the importance of vocabulary knowledge and background knowledge in second/foreign language (L2) listening comprehension. However, previous studies treated these two factors separately, and no study has examined the simultaneous contribution of these two factors to L2 listening comprehension. Therefore, the aim of this study…

While pedagogical translanguaging has been shown to have substantive positive impact on student learning outcomes internationally, adult education has not yet widely embraced the concept. This paper introduces the idea of translanguaging, the concept of encouraging students to rely on their existing linguistic knowledge when learning a new…

Despite increasing number of studies on incidental vocabulary learning through viewing in a foreign language, glosses, which have been proven to have facilitative effects in incidental vocabulary learning via other modes of input, have remained underexplored in audiovisual input. The current study investigates the effects of (1) traditional gloss…

Though the empirical findings of the past studies in the literature have offered strong support to the significant role of language knowledge and background knowledge in reading comprehension, this issue has not been explored with regard to specific purposes tests in the Iranian higher education context. Therefore, this study aimed at exploring…

This study introduced an app, called Smart UEnglish, for helping EFL conversation practices in authentic contexts. These conversation practices were categorized into 'designed talk' and 'free talk', based on the content of an English textbook and authentic ambient environment that includes such things as transportation, weather and scenic…

To investigate the skill transfer and the effects of practice schedules in the learning of second language syntax, 129 intermediate-level English learners were divided into six groups, based on practice format (input vs. output practice) and practice schedule (blocked vs. interleaved vs. hybrid [blocked + interleaved]). Analyses revealed that the…

A growing number of studies have stressed the significance of foreign language anxiety in foreign language learning. However, these studies have generally demonstrated foreign language anxiety to be associated with foreign language achievement not with 21st century skills particularly decision-making strategies. Based on this, this study aims to…

This study explores how syntactic complexity and lexical complexity vary in argumentative essays written by L2 learners of English at B2 and C1 CEFR proficiency levels. We approach both syntactic complexity and lexical complexity from a multi-dimensional perspective, examining syntactic complexity at different levels (i.e., global, clausal, and…

Background: Teachers and clinicians may struggle to provide early identification to support multilingual children's language development. Dynamic assessments are a promising approach to identify and support children's language development. Aims: We developed and studied a novel word learning task that is dynamic and language neutral. It makes use…

Uganda Baptist Seminary (UBS) is accredited by the Ugandan National Council for Higher Education and teaches church leaders from Uganda and its surrounding seven countries. The required language of educational instruction is English, although the students come from a multitude of different native languages. This research stems from a need to…

Reading research has recognized the strong relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension. However, we are still perplexed by the precise nature of how readers access and retrieve word meanings while reading. We have not reached a consensus on "what it means to know a word" (e.g., Anderson & Nagy, 1991; Nation, 2001) or…

Digital learning has become an inevitable trend with many benefits for students' learning performance and motivation. However, Virtual Reality, a pervasive mode of digital learning nowadays, has incurred ambivalence among teachers over the years due to its high cost and other technical concerns. Panoramic image VR (PIVR) is a cost-efficient…