The present study implements a corpus-assisted approach with data-driven learning (DDL) in the EFL classroom to investigate its effectiveness in learning target grammatical collocations (verb-, adjective-, and noun-preposition collocations) of Thai undergraduate students and to examine the extent to which the students incorporate the collocational…

Native Arabic speakers used idiomatic expressions such as idioms, formulas, and collocations, in their daily communications. In learning Arabic as a second language (L2), effective communication requires "the ability to understand and use idioms appropriately and accurately in a variety of sociocultural contexts, in a manner like that of…

This study analyzed semantic errors in the written compositions of first-year BSEd English students. 86 participants were asked to write a narrative essay and provide feedback on their writing difficulties and language learning needs. The collected data were statistically analyzed. Semantic errors were categorized into 8 types: code-switching,…

In this article, we describe an online English collocation explorer developed to help English L2 learners produce correct and appropriate collocations. Our tool, which is able to visually represent relevant correct/incorrect collocations on a single webpage, was designed based on the notions of collocation clusters and intercollocability proposed…

The present study investigated the effects of construction-based instruction on Korean English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' production of the English argument structure constructions. Within the theoretical framework of construction grammar (Goldberg, 1995), the authors presented college students with English constructions in a…

While it is known that heritage speakers diverge from the homeland baseline, there is still no consensus on the mechanisms triggering this divergence. We investigate the impact of two potential factors shaping adult heritage language (HL) grammars: (1) cross-linguistic influence (CLI), originally proposed for second language acquisition (SLA), and…

There has been little research investigating how mode of input affects incidental vocabulary learning, and no study examining how it affects the learning of multiword items. The aim of this study was to investigate incidental learning of L2 collocations in three different modes: reading, listening, and reading while listening. One hundred…

Contemporary EAP research and teaching academics constantly elaborate new and better methods and re-evaluate those in use to facilitate students' academic growth. The article considers some options for teaching EAP to undergraduates highlighting the results of the experimental study conducted in the context of higher education in Russia and…

This study is intended to help English foreign language learners avoid a type of syntactic ambiguity in sentences resulting from prepositional phrases (PPs). The students are guided to make use of the features of both adverbials and adjectivals in resolving this type of ambiguity. The movability of adverbials and the use of relative clauses…

This study explores how Korean-to-English machine translation (MT) systems (e.g., Google Translator, NAVER Papago) deal with Korean passive structures. Cross-linguistically, Korean and English passives show different ways to construct passive-voice sentences from active structure. English passives including with [to be + past participle] may have…

One of the important components in second language (L2) development is to produce clause-level units of form-meaning pairings or argument structure constructions. Based on the usage-based constructionist approach that language development entails an ability to use more diverse, more complex, and less frequent constructions, this study tested…

This paper studies the two English synonymous words "little" and "small," and their Thai equivalents n??j4 and lek4. In addition to monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, British National Corpus, Thai National Corpus and an English-Thai parallel corpus were used in this study. It is found that "little" and…

Emergentist, usage-based L2 research has witnessed that emphasizing formulaic sequences as entry points in meaning-based instructional contexts contributes to the development of linguistic comprehension and production. Related studies have thus far striven to find the most effective methods of highlighting these word strings. This study explored…

The present study explores lexical collocations and their relation to speaking proficiency of Taiwanese EFL college students learning English for academic purposes (i.e., EAP). The data is obtained from 92 English majors at a national university of science and technology in southern Taiwan. The results show that: (a) direct collocation instruction…

Many students who study English as a foreign language (EFL) often find it challenging to paraphrase while writing from source texts. Lacking such an ability can lead to different meanings as well as copying another person's ideas, words or work. However, little research has been done to integrate tool consultation to assist students in…