Tested preschool monolingual speakers of Spanish and English in their native countries on classification of familiar objects through a task assessing strategies in a free sort, a sort with instructions to use natural gender, and one for the Spanish speakers with instructions to use grammatical gender. Results suggest that instructional context and…

Investigates effect of task type on resultant candidate discourse and input of the interlocutor. The experimental design ensured an information gap in one of the interview tasks for prospective immigrants to Australia. Findings indicate that candidate discourse differs in quantity and quality between situations when an information gap exists and…

This study investigated whether giving learners an opportunity for oral output has any positive effect on the L2 learners' acquisition of a grammatical form. Twenty-four adult ESL learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an output group, which engaged in a picture description task that involved input comprehension and output…

This study explored the effect on vocabulary retention of vocalizations involving three cognitive processing depths ("repetition," "manipulation," and "generation"). Eight participants in an English for academic purposes (EAP) context encountered five unknown words when working alone and five different words when working in pairs. In each…

This study investigated the relationship among input, interaction, and second-language production among 16 native-nonnative dyads. The results indicated that both modified input and interaction initiated by the native speaker lead to greater comprehension by the nonnative speaker, as measured by task performance. (Contains 48 references.) (MDM)

Examines whether there is a strong relationship between second language learners' noticing of benefactive auxiliary verbs and their use in communication. Participants were university students who had acquired Japanese at home without receiving any formal instruction. Data were collected in face-to-face interviews, an interpretation task with 20…

Investigated incidental language-learning by subjects using multimedia as a self-study and mandatory component of an undergraduate module. Language items recalled and reused while subjects were engaged in a meaning-focused task were compared with those in two multimedia applications for evidence of incidental learning. Analysis compared language…

Offers additional means of evaluating parent speech by examining frequencies of individual nouns, verbs, and descriptors, and examining the learning task presented to children. Study one examines transcripts from the CHILDES database of English-speaking parents' speech to children at five developmental levels; study two examines 50 transcripts of…

This paper reports an experiment that addresses whether manipulating foreknowledge of output tasks leads to differences in reading behaviour, text comprehension and noticing of language form. Three tasks are used: reading for memorization, reading for retelling and reading for visualization. Reading for memorization and reading for retelling are…

Background: Dyslexia is now generally acknowledged to involve difficulties in phonological processing. However, the links between reading difficulties and speech difficulties remain unclear. Method: In the present study, 17 children with speech difficulties between the ages of four and six were compared to children with a family history of…

Two studies investigated the effects of modified interaction on comprehension and vocabulary acquisition among Japanese high school students learning English as a Second Language. The studies found that interactionally modified input resulted in better comprehension and the acquisition of more new words than premodified input. (MDM)

Research in first language and second language (L2) comprehension has demonstrated that both learner and input variables contribute to the ease with which a message is understood. Questions remain, however, as to how these variables affect the way L2 learners process linguistic form during comprehension. This study examines how one learner…

This study examines the contribution of children's linguistic ability and mothers' use of mental-state language to young children's understanding of false belief and their subsequent ability to make belief-based emotion attributions. In Experiment 1, children (N = 51) were given three belief-based emotion-attribution tasks. A standard task in…

The present study evaluates the relative effectiveness of two types of input-based instruction, consciousness-raising instruction (the consciousness-raising task only) and consciousness-raising instruction with feedback (the consciousness-raising task + reactive explicit feedback) for teaching English polite requestive forms, involving 45 Japanese…

The present study evaluates the relative effectiveness of two types of input-based instruction, structured input instruction (a structured input task only) and structured input instruction with feedback (the structured input task + reactive explicit feedback) for teaching English polite requestive forms, involving 45 Japanese learners of English.…