This study attempted to examine the impacts of conceptual and perceptual primes on the word recognition and sentence comprehension of beginner, intermediate and advanced EFL learners. Consequently, 246 EFL learners were recruited for study and categorized into three English proficiency levels. The needed data was collected via Lexical Decision…

Research on recasts has gotten increasing attention from SLA researchers ever since 1990s. However, the studies on the effectiveness of recasts had inconsistent findings and are still debatable in what way recasts facilitate L2 learning. This study aims to examine the effects of recasts on English question production by adopting a pretest,…

This study investigated L1 Chinese learners' acquisition of the English "Noun + Relative Clause (N + RC)" based on Structural Priming (SP)(Bock,1986; Bock & Griffin, 2000) and Lexical Residual Activation (LRA)(Cleland, 2003). It was hypothesized that, based on SP, when L1 Chinese learners were primed by the English "N +…

This article reviews research findings involving visual input in speech processing in the form of facial cues and co-speech gestures for second-language (L2) learners, and provides pedagogical implications for the teaching of listening and speaking. It traces the foundations of auditory-visual speech research and explores the role of a speaker's…

Learners of a nonnull subject language (e.g., English) whose first language (L1) is a null subject language (e.g., Spanish) can show some optionality in the interpretation of overt subject pronouns in the second language (L2). By exposing L2 learners to nativelike interpretations of pronouns in discourse, we aim at understanding how exposure can…

This study investigates how visual context influences second language (L2) long-term structural priming for the Chinese "ba" construction. The experiment consisted of a baseline phase, an exposure phase, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest. L2 Chinese learners (N = 120) were assigned to 1 of 4 groups for the exposure…

Studies on predicative metaphors like "The rumor flew through the office" have not received due attention until recently. Through a behavioural experiment, this study investigates the cognitive mechanisms as well as the effects of familiarity on Chinese EFL learners' comprehension of English predicative metaphors, adopting a two factors…

This instructional intervention investigated the potential for the text reconstruction task "dictogloss" to facilitate the learning of English verb-noun collocations, for example 'carry a risk'. Research has shown that learners have difficulties in using such collocations, but few useful instructional techniques are on offer.…

This thesis examines whether native, heritage, and L2 speakers of Spanish engage a morphological layer of representation in the processing of inflected words, and whether they do so with both regularly- and irregularly-inflected words. Also examined is whether this tendency towards compositional (i.e. morphological rule-based) processing is…

This study focused on an instructional component often neglected when teaching the pronunciation of English as either a second, foreign, or international language--namely, the suprasegmental feature of lexical stress. Extending previous research on collaborative priming tasks and task repetition, the study investigated the impact of task and…

The study aims to investigate to what extent Chinese EFL learners' language use is influenced by English textbooks. Such influence may suggest the existence of lexical priming effects. Based on detailed and systematic analysis of a learner English corpus, in comparison with a textbook corpus, the present study revealed striking similarities of the…

This study investigated whether second language (L2) learners of English could learn to produce stranded prepositions through structural priming. Structural priming is the tendency for speakers to repeat the structure of previously experienced sentences, without intention or conscious awareness of such behaviour, and is thought to be associated…

This study focuses on the pedagogical applications of structural priming research in an English for academic purposes (EAP) context, investigating whether priming activities are an effective tool for eliciting production of target grammatical structures. University students across four EAP classes carried out a total of 6 information-exchange…

This article discusses the impact of lexical range on the learners' ability to communicate in English when taught as a foreign language in bilingual schools, and emphasizes the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction. It draws on data from classroom observation, lexis-retrieval tasks, written and spoken performance in bilingual…

Rapid advances in computing have enabled the integration of corpora into language teaching and learning, yet in China corpus methods have not yet been widely adopted. Corpus Linguistics in Chinese Contexts aims to advance the state of the art in the use of corpora in applied linguistics and contribute to the expertise in corpus use in China.