Despite the well-established role of lexis in proficiency in the four skills, a great deal of research has focused on the importance of vocabulary breadth and depth in reading. Therefore, the neglect of productive skills has motivated recent calls to inspect the impact of lexical dimensions on writing ability. Using Partial Least Squares…

In this brief report, we present a scoping review of 31 second language (L2) vocabulary research syntheses published in the Web of Science from January 1990 to May 2022. The purpose of this undertaking was to understand what L2 vocabulary research synthesizers have aggregated and the investigative foci they intended to address. It was observed…

Extensive evidence indicates that early vocabulary skills predict later reading development among monolingually developing children. Some evidence suggests that a relationship between vocabulary and later reading also holds across languages among children whose home language differs from the school language. However, these findings have been mixed…

Vocabulary knowledge has been largely viewed as an important component in language learning and language acquisition. Understanding how EFL learners approach vocabulary learning is also considered crucial for language teachers and researchers to develop an effective learning environment that may stimulate high-quality learning outcomes. Studies on…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine whether and how learning American Sign Language (ASL) is associated with spoken English skills in a sample of ASL-English bilingual deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children. Method: This cross-sectional study of vocabulary size included 56 DHH children between 8 and 60 months of age who were…

Although generalized anxiety has increased among college students, it is unclear what effect this has on language anxiety. While language anxiety has been shown to negatively affect second language achievement, its impact at the level of specific linguistic subdomains has not been evaluated. In what follows, we explore what relationship, if any,…

While it has been shown that socioeconomic status (SES) is important for children's literacy development in their first language (L1), less is known about its association with reading in a second language (L2). The present study examined the different effects of SES on the acquisition of reading in Chinese as L1 and English as L2 from ages 7 to…

We investigated the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in the unfolding of vocabulary and text-comprehension skills in language minority bilingual children, who are educated exclusively in their L2. For comparison, a monolingual control group was also tested, consisting of children of the same age and schooling. We administered a synonyms task to…

Developing L2 learners' productive mastery of vocabulary is a challenging task. Recent research has called for greater attention to understanding how receptive vocabulary may be transformed for productive use (Schmitt, 2019). Using a design-based research methodology, this study investigated adult ESL learners' productive oral vocabulary…

Theories of embodied cognition describe language acquisition and representation as dependent on sensorimotor experiences that are collected during learning. Whereas native language words are typically acquired through sensorimotor experiences, foreign language (L2) words are often learned by reading, listening or repeating bilingual word lists.…

Research addressing the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and second language (L2) listening comprehension has been conducted mostly using measures that tap orthographic vocabulary knowledge. The few studies that have used measures that tap phonological modality to delineate the relationship between vocabulary and L2 listening have focused…

In this study, we examined the effect of previewing unfamiliar vocabulary on the real-time reading behavior of first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers. University students with English as their L1 or L2 read passages with embedded pseudowords. In a within-participant manipulation, definitions of the pseudowords were either previewed…

Embodied models of language comprehension assume that words become associated with sensorimotor experiences during word learning. Novel word learning paradigms may provide insight into embodied effects, but studies in this domain have yet to account for how concepts and information known in first language (L1) might influence the sensorimotor…

This study investigates the impact of task-induced involvement and time on task on incidental second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. Utilizing a 3 (task-induced involvement) × 2 (time on task) × 2 (post-test time) research design, three task-induced involvement conditions were employed based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH): reading…

The present study aimed to validate a 70-item Korean bilingual version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) using Rasch modeling. The goal was to assess the applicability of this Korean version of the VST for Korean learners of English in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context by examining validity evidence based on Messick's framework.…