Since 2013, our research team has discovered that English is no longer "foreign" to Colombian language ecologies. As a follow-up to our initial research on physical spaces, this study provides a more personal dimension of these second language literacies. Through our conceptual framework of "city as literacy" and narrative…

This book is the first to bring together a collection of recent empirical studies investigating languaging, an important construct first introduced by Swain in 2006 but which has since been deployed in a growing number of L2 studies. The contributing authors include both established and emerging authors from around the globe. They report on…

In 2014, in conjunction with doing research in natural language processing and attending a global conference on computational linguistics, the author decided to learn a new foreign language, Greek, that uses a non-English character set. This paper/session will present/discuss an overview of the current state of natural language processing and…

This article explores the implications of Hegel's theories of language on second language (L2) teaching. Three among the various concepts in Hegel's theories of language are selected. They are the crucial role of intersubjectivity; the primacy of the spoken over the written form; and the importance of the training of form or grammar. Applying…

This article reports on a study on the effect of orthography on L1-based phonological transfer in L2 production in 40 novice English-speaking learners of Spanish. In particular, the role of auditory-orthographic training and production and the influence of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences are examined. Data elicited via a picture-naming task…

This empirical study investigated the occurrence of meaning negotiation in an interactive synchronous computer-mediated second language (L2) environment. Sixteen dyads (N = 32) consisting of nonnative speakers (NNSs) and native speakers (NSs) of English performed 2 different tasks using videoconferencing and written chat. The data were coded and…

Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) has been applied to the study of second language acquisition to possibly account for the nonlinear development and variability found within second language development. Characteristics of a dynamic system that make it compatible with examining the developmental trajectory of second language acquisition include…

This paper studies the pragmatic competence of U.S. heritage speakers of Spanish in an attempt to determine (a) the degree of pragmatic transfer from English to Spanish experienced by heritage speakers when producing different types of requests in Spanish; and (b) how to best teach pragmatics to students of Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL).…

The focus of this article is on the written feedback that supervisors say they often give their second language (L2) doctoral students. Little is known about the focus of this feedback and about what supervisors consider as priorities in the early draft writing of dissertation chapters. Given the potentially different priorities and foci of…

Previous studies have suggested that word processing in English as a second language (L2) is affected by first language (L1) orthographic features. However, little is known about what affects L2 Chinese character processing in adult Chinese learners with different L1 orthographies such as Japanese, Korean, and English. With a picture-character…

Taking a psycholinguistic orientation within task-based language teaching scholarship, this study investigated the effects of mode (oral vs. written) and task complexity on second language (L2) performance. The participants were 78 Catalan/Spanish learners of English as a foreign language. Half of the participants performed the simple and complex…

The logographic nature of the Chinese writing system creates a huge hurdle for Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners. Existing literature (e.g., Shen, [Shen, H. H., 2010]; Taft & Chung, [Taft, M., 1999]) suggests that radical knowledge facilitates character learning. In this project, we selected 48 compound characters in eight radical…

The greatest difficulty in reading Arabic script for nonnatives is the absence of short vowels. The correlation of 28 consonants with sounds poses no great difficulty. In Arabic, there are six vowel phonemes which are voiced only by three letters with help of some relevant diacritical marks (?arakat). As the bulk of Arabic publications is written…

This plenary paper showcases current corpus-based research on written academic English, illustrating the tight links that exist between corpus research and pedagogic applications. I first explicate Sinclair's concept of the "lexical approach", which underpins much corpus research and pedagogy. I then discuss studies which focus on…

Written corrective feedback (CF) has been the most heavily researched topic in second language (L2) writing over the past 20 years. As a recent research timeline article in this journal (Ferris 2012; see also Bitchener & Ferris 2012) shows, studies of error correction in student writing have crossed disciplines (composition and rhetoric,…