This article investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of two expressions of the semantic feature [definite] in Russian, a language without articles, by English and Korean native speakers. Within the Feature Reassembly approach (Lardiere, 2009), Slabakova (2009) has argued that reassembling features that are represented overtly in the…

Grammar can be viewed both as knowledge and as ability. When viewed as knowledge, the focus is on rules for sentence formation. When viewed as ability, the focus is on how grammar is used as a resource in the creation of spoken and written texts. Twelve principles are proposed as the basis for a pedagogy that focusses on acquiring learning to use…

Construction grammar (CG) has been proposed as an adequate grammatical formalism for building intelligent language tutoring systems because it is highly compatible with the learning strategies observed in second language learning. Unfortunately, the lack of computational CG implementations has made it impossible in the past to corroborate these…

This study investigates the combined effects of task-based careful online planning and the storyline structure of a task on second language performance (complexity, accuracy and fluency). Sixty intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to four groups (n = 15). Participants were asked to perform two tasks with different degrees of storyline…

The present study analyses errors on present simple tense among adult Arab English language learners. It focuses on the error on 3sg "-s" (the third person singular present tense agreement morpheme "-s"). The learners are undergraduate adult Arabic speakers learning English as a foreign language. The study gathered data from…

This paper aims to review the theoretical concept of interlingual interference of the mother tongue, Thai to the target language, English and intralingual interference found in EFL student writing in Thai context with the attempt to define the existence of errors according to their sources. This review article also exemplifies some frequent errors…

This study compares the development of three different types of bilingual/second language children in their acquisition of gender-marking on adjectives in Dutch to investigate whether there is evidence for age-of-onset effects in early childhood as proposed by Meisel (2009). The three groups of children are: simultaneous bilingual children,…

Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language (TFL) has gained importance recently and several studies are carried out in this field. Especially, learners of linguistically different communities (Byelorussian/Russian) are observed to make errors while learning Turkish. If making errors is an integral outcome in learning a TFL, then to what extent is it…

In an attempt to contribute to existing research on Generation 1.5 students, the current study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to compare error patterns in a corpus of Generation 1.5, L1, and L2 community college student writing. This error analysis provides one important way to determine if error patterns in Generation 1.5 student…

Directive feedback is one of strategy to check students' grammatical error in writing. This strategy is used by the lecturer in PETA (Principle of Effective Teaching and Assessment) course during third semester. This research used case study to investigate whether directive feedback could improve students' writing skill. Besides that, it also…

This corpus-based study examined the usage, mastery and developmental pattern (Norwati, 2004) of English prepositions of place, "in" and "on" across three different academic levels namely Form 4, Form 5 and College students. The Malaysian Corpus of Students Argumentative Writing (MCSAW) was used as the source of data in…

It is inevitable that learners make mistakes in the process of learning a foreign language. Despite this fact, what is questioned by language teachers is why students go on making the same mistakes even when such mistakes have been repeatedly pointed out to them. Yet, not all mistakes are the same and sometimes they seem deeply ingrained, but at…

While Ghanaians in urban and rural settings are multilingual, English is the language of Ghanaian newspapers, politicians, the courts, much of television and radio in the metropolitan centres of the country. Indeed, urban Ghanaian adolescents have expanding opportunities to use English, the only official language of Ghana, even when not in school.…

This project was designed to try to investigate the difficulties EFL learners would have in learning to use hedging as a rhetorical device in academic writing. The participants were 136 native Cantonese-speaking EFL students who enrolled in the one-year course "English for Academic Purposes" offered by a language centre at a university…

This study examines 29 journal abstracts that were completed reviews for publication in the year 2012. It was done to investigate the number (percentage) of abstracts that involved with errors, the most erroneous part of the abstract, and the types and frequency of errors. Also the purpose expanded to compare the results with those of the previous…