Morphological knowledge is a complex construct integral to vocabulary breadth and reading comprehension. To understand its complexity, researchers examine its dimensionality. First, this study contributes to this broad topic by investigating whether morphological awareness and affix knowledge, related concepts with a long history of investigation…

This dissertation analyzes the production and perception of lexical stress in trilinguals' first, second, and third languages (L1, L2, and L3) to evaluate how the cue-weighting transfer hypothesis applies to L3 acquisition. According to this hypothesis, acoustic cues to stress have different weights across languages, and results from both…

There has been much debate in assessment research about the inclusion of Global English accents in high-stakes listening tests. This study explored test-takers' attitudes toward the inclusion of different English accents in the Duolingo English Test (DET) 2021 test version and their associations with listening test scores. One hundred sixty…

Derivational morphology (DM) and how it can be assessed have been investigated relatively rarely in language learning and testing research. The goal of this study is to add to the understanding of the nature of DM knowledge, exploring whether and how it is separable from vocabulary breadth. Eight L2 (second or foreign language) English DM…

The current study aims to demonstrate how the lack of a conceptual framework and the inadequate use of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in second language (L2) acquisition validation studies can lead to misconceptions about the nature of data collected via different measurement instruments. To this end, we reanalyzed data from three…

Language learners are underserved if there are unlearned meanings of a word that they think they have already learned. For example, "circle" as a noun is well known, whereas its use as a verb is not. For artificial-intelligence-based support systems for learning vocabulary, assessing each learner's knowledge of such atypical but common…

Purpose: Individuals vary in their ability to learn the sound categories of nonnative languages (nonnative phonetic learning) and to adapt to systematic differences, such as accent or talker differences, in the sounds of their native language (native phonetic learning). Difficulties with both native and nonnative learning are well attested in…

One of the major issues in SLA is developing language tests that could produce good measures of implicit knowledge. This study examines the validity of an English Elicited Imitation (EI) test as a measure of L2 implicit grammatical knowledge. Forty freshman university students in Turkey took a set of language tests: an EI test, two storytelling…

Several previous factor-analytic studies on the construct validity of grammaticality judgment tests (GJTs) concluded that untimed GJTs measure explicit knowledge (EK) and timed GJTs measure implicit knowledge (IK) (Bowles, 2011; R. Ellis, 2005; R. Ellis & Loewen, 2007). It has also been shown that, irrespective of the time condition chosen,…

This study investigated the dimensionality of bilingual phonological awareness (PA) in English and Spanish by replicating a kindergarten model in Grade 1, and presents alternatives to modeling clustered data. English and Spanish tasks were analyzed from previously collected samples totaling 1,586 first grade Spanish-speaking English learners. Four…

Bilingualism is a multi-faceted experience and bilinguals differ in how they use their languages in daily life. Therefore, assessments of bilingualism that consider the role of (social) context are needed when describing bilinguals. In this study, we evaluated how (reliably) the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (LSBQ; Anderson et al.…

Recent research points to the need for a specific research focus on language task engagement because task engagement can lead to increased motivation, persistence, satisfaction, and learner achievement (Early, Rogge, & Deci, 2014; Henri, Halverson, & Graham, 2015; Reeve & Lee, 2014); a major gap in the research in this area is the lack…

High-stakes tasks may prevent language learners from performing successfully due to factors of "communicative stress" (Skehan, 1996, p. 52). Little research, however, has directly examined phonological patterns in learners' performances on low-stakes, medium-stakes, and high-stakes classroom tasks. The current study investigated the oral…

The aim of this mixed methods study is to identify the underlying structure of the construct of Foreign Language Anxiety in integrated listening-to-speak tasks. First, the analysis of the qualitative interviews with six postsecondary ESL learners reveals that anxiety for integrated speaking stems from four different factors: "listening,"…

Researchers and teachers often invoke context to explain their particular research/teaching issues. However, definitions of context vary widely and the direct impact of the context is often unexplained. Based on research showing contextual differences in second language (L2) learner beliefs and interactional behaviors, the current project compared…