This study reports on a self-paced reading experiment in which native and non-native speakers of English read sentences designed to evaluate the predictions of usage-based and rule-based approaches to second language acquisition (SLA). Critical stimuli were four-word sequences embedded into sentences in which phrase frequency and grammaticality…

The two main components of Processing Instruction (PI) are Explicit Information (EI) and Structured Input (SI). Most researchers have concluded that the SI is more responsible for learner gains than the EI (Benati, 2004a, 2004b; VanPatten & Oikennon, 1996; Wong, 2004). However, some researchers have found that EI does significantly impact…

This article examines the second language acquisition (SLA) of Spanish dative clitics in clitic doubling (CLD) structures that are closely related to the double object construction (DOC) in English and Dutch. It also addresses the question of how adult English and Dutch speakers learning L2 Spanish in a formal setting develop knowledge and use of…

This article examines the effect of phonological context (singleton vs. clustered consonants) on full phoneme segmentation in Hebrew first language (L1) and in English second language (L2) among typically reading adults (TR) and adults with reading disability (RD) (n = 30 per group), using quantitative analysis and a fine-grained analysis of…

This study examined the effects of task types on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. To this end, 130 (70 female and 60 male) EFL learners were randomly assigned to one of six tasks of learning 30 target words. The design of the tasks was based on the involvement load hypothesis (ILH)…

This article reports the findings of a study in which we investigated the possible effects of word order on the acquisition of case marking. In linguistic typology (e.g. Greenberg, 1963) a very strong correlation has been shown between dominant SOV (subject object verb) word order and case marking. No such correlation exists for SVO (subject verb…

Research on form focused instruction has provided support for the use of collaborative tasks in which learners focus their attention on formal aspects of language and consciously reflect on their own language use (i.e. produce language-related episodes or LREs). A strand of research on LREs in different educational contexts examines the effect of…

Different from other studies on the metaphor analysis of pre-service teachers and their cognition on teaching, the present study adopted a larger perspective and investigated their conceptualization of the dynamics of the practicum, namely teaching practice, mentors, supervisor, students, lesson plan and materials. 35 pre-service teachers were…

The main objective of this study was to investigate theories and practices of writing. To achieve this objective, qualitative data were collected using qualitative content (document) analysis, observation, and interview. The participants of the study were selected from North Shoa Zone Preparatory Schools. Five sections for observation and ten…

This article records and evaluates a student's learning journey in two modules on an MA (Education) English Language Teaching (ELT) programme: an Oracy and ELT Pedagogy module and an Educational Technologies module. The notions of 'exploratory talk' and 'task-based learning' are explored using a single case study with material drawn from the…

Despite a growing amount of research on collaborative dialogue during task performance, little attention has been given to the occurrence of collaborative dialogue across task modality and its impact on language development. To expand our current understanding of task modality effects on learning opportunities, we examined the process of engaging…

This study examines several linguistic factors as possible contributors to perceived word difficulty in second language learners in an experimental setting. The investigated factors include: (1) frequency of word usage in the first language, (2) word length, (3) number of syllables in a word, and (4) number of consonant clusters in a word. Word…

Exploring opportunities by which learners can internalize new knowledge and consolidate existing knowledge has long been a point of interest in English as a foreign language research. This study investigated how meta-talk opportunities on discourse markers created by four task types including text reconstruction, dictogloss, translation and jigsaw…

This study investigates how second language (L2) fluency is influenced by two factors: Pre-task planning and content familiarity. Planning was adopted as a between-participant variable, combined with content familiarity as a within-participant variable, in a 2 × 2 split-plot factorial design. Nineteen measures of fluency phenomena, constituting…

Although many educators have recently discussed the positive effects of flipped learning, there is little empirical evidence about whether this approach can actually promote students' English learning. This study was undertaken in four sections of the same College English 1 (E1) course over two consecutive semesters at a South Korean university. A…