Investigations into the use of private speech by adult English foreign language (EFL) learners in regulating their mental activities have been an interesting area of research with a sociocultural framework. Following this line of research, 30 advanced adult EFL learners were selected via the administration of Oxford quick placement test and took a…

This study examines whether task-modality (speaking vs. speaking+writing) influences first language (L1) use in task-based English as a foreign language (EFL) learner-learner interaction. Research on the topic has shown that different task-modality triggers different learning opportunities with collaborative speaking tasks drawing learners'…

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) represents an increasingly popular approach to bilingual education in Europe. In this article, we describe and discuss a project which, in response to teachers' pleas for materials, led to the production of a significant bank of task-based primary and secondary CLIL units for three L2s (English,…

In the present study, we examine the effects of prompts and recasts on the acquisition of two new and different grammar structures in a task-based learning environment. Sixty-four 14-year-old 9th grade students (low intermediate) learning German as a foreign language were randomly assigned to three conditions: two experimental groups (one…

Intercultural Communicative Competence is a paramount goal of modern foreign language teaching. It is the ability to communicate in culturally sensitive and contextually appropriate ways with speakers from other cultures. Being able to apologize is one component of this competence. Uttering apologies allows learners to rectify breaches of social…

Situated within second language (L2) research about the acquisition of morphosyntax, this study investigated English L2 speakers' detection and primed production of a novel construction with morphological and structural features. We report on two experiments with Thai (n = 69) and Farsi (n = 70) English L2 speakers, respectively, carried out an…

Second language (L2) researchers are becoming more interested in both L2 learners' knowledge of the target language and how that knowledge is put to use during real-time language processing. Researchers are therefore beginning to see the importance of combining traditional L2 research methods with those that capture the moment-by-moment…

This study investigated how individual differences in linguistic knowledge and processing skills relate to individual differences in speaking fluency. Speakers of Dutch as a second language ("N" = 179) performed eight speaking tasks, from which several measures of fluency were derived such as measures for pausing, repairing, and speed…

This dissertation investigates the acquisition of Spanish diphthongs by adult native speakers of English. The following research questions will be addressed: 1) How do adult native speakers of English pronounce sequences of two vowels in their L2 Spanish at different levels of acquisition? 2) Can OT learnability models, specifically the GLA,…

When speakers describe motion events using different languages, they subsequently classify those events in language-specific ways (Gennari, Sloman, Malt & Fitch, 2002). Here we ask if bilingual speakers flexibly shift their event classification preferences based on the language in which they verbally encode those events. English--Spanish…

This study addressed the potential methodological issues effect of attentional condition on subsequent vocabulary development from a different perspective, which addressed several potential methodological issues of previous research that have been based on psycholinguistic notion of second language learner as a limited capacity processor. The…

Early bilingualism is thought to facilitate language learning [Klein, E. C. (1995). "Second versus third language acquisition: Is there a difference?" "Language Learning", 45(3), 419-466; Cromdal, J. (1999). "Childhood bilingualism and metalinguistic skills: Analysis and control in young Swedish-English bilinguals."…

The development of collocational knowledge is important for foreign language learners; unfortunately, learners often have difficulties producing proper collocations in the target language. Among the various ways of collocation learning, the DDL (data-driven learning) approach encourages the independent learning of collocations and allows learners…

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of different types of language tasks performed in Second Life (SL) on the oral performance of beginners of Chinese as a Second Language (CSL), focusing on oral accuracy. The 30 CSL beginners who participated in this study were randomly divided into two groups (n = 15 per group), required to…

Given that L1A of subject properties in non-null subject languages emerges later than that of null subject languages, this study aims at determining to what extent the same pattern of acquisition is observed in early child L2A in bilingual immersion settings where English and Spanish are both source and target languages. Using an elicited oral…