This article presents the results of experimental data on language production and comprehension. These show that adult learners of Dutch as an additional language, with different language backgrounds, and a L2 proficiency below level A2 (Waystage) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001), use…

The main objective of this study was to investigate the refusal speech act among Omani EFL college students. It examined how they refused in various situations and whether their responses were appropriate in terms of culture and accurate in terms of language. Forty-one English as foreign language (EFL) learners completed a Discourse Completion…

In three experiments, we examine the effects of semantic context and word concreteness on the mapping of existing meanings to new words. We developed a new-word-learning paradigm in which participants were required to discover the meaning of a new-word form from a specific verbal context. The stimulus materials were manipulated according to word…

Adopting a decompositional approach to items in the lexicon, this article reports on an empirical study investigating Chinese speakers' second language (L2) acquisition of English "wh-on-earth" questions (i.e. questions with phrases like what on earth or "who on earth"). An acceptability judgment task, a discourse-completion…

This paper represents some suggestions towards discourse-analytic approaches for ESL/EFL education, with the focus on identifying the textual forms which can contribute to the textual difficulty. Textual difficulty/comprehensibility, rather than being purely text-based or reader-dependent, is certainly a matter of interaction between text and…

Language play and its effects on second language learning have been addressed by many scholars in recent years with instances of language play being identified both inside and outside the classroom. However, only a few have integrated language play with classroom tasks, and they just sufficed to the qualitative analyses of the learners'…

To examine the importance of manual character writing to reading in a new writing system, 48 adult Chinese-as-a-foreign-language students were taught characters in either a character writing-to-read or an alphabet typing-to-read condition, and engaged in corresponding handwriting or typing training for five consecutive days. Prior knowledge of…

Functionally-oriented linguistic theories, such as cognitive grammar (CG), offer nuanced descriptions of the meanings and uses of grammatical features. A simplified characterization of the semantics of the English active and passive voice grounded in CG terms and based on the reference point model is presented, as it is the basis of the…

This paper examines the incidence of verbal concord rule violation in educated Nigeria ESL against the conceptual framework of interference and "intraference". Intraference is a coinage for the "overgeneralization of linguistic material and semantic features" or "intralingual interference". The paper is basically…

This study examines frequency, contextual diversity, and contextual distinctiveness effects in predicting produced versus not-produced frequent nouns and verbs by early second language (L2) learners of English. The study analyzes whether word frequency is the strongest predictor of early L2 word production independent of contextual diversity and…

Romanized transliteration is widely used in internet communication and global commerce, yet we know little about its behavioural and neural processing. Here, we show that Romanized text imposes a significant neurocognitive load. Readers faced greater difficulty in identifying concrete words written in Romanized transliteration (Romanagari)…

Morphological awareness can help learners of a second language (L2) infer and learn the meaning of unknown words. It is, however, unclear how morphological awareness evolves in adult English-speaking learners of instructed L2 Spanish and how this development relates to vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, the manner in which derivational morphology is…

This study investigates outcomes of deliberate learning on vocabulary acquisition in a second language (L2). Acquisition of 48 pseudowords was measured using the lexical decision task with visually presented stimuli. The experiments drew on form priming, masked repetition priming, and automatic semantic priming procedures. Data analyses revealed a…

Adopting a functional perspective that views grammar as a rich resource for making contextualized meanings in a culture- and language-specific way, the article reconsiders the role of explicit grammar instruction in developing communicative abilities of second language learners. It draws on two distinct but complementary research frameworks,…

The present study was an attempt to investigate the differences in the accessibility of phonological, semantic, and orthographic aspects of words in L2 vocabulary learning. For this purpose, a sample of 119 Iranian intermediate level EFL students in a private language institute in Karaj was selected. All of the participants received the same…