Given the growing importance of English as a lingua franca, this study examines which context (classroom instruction in the students' home country vs. studying abroad in an English-speaking country) better facilitates the acquisition of English by learners of different ages: children, adolescents and adults. Participants (N = 197) completed…

This paper examines the process of acquiring L2s that are closely related to the L1 through data on how adult French speakers learning L2 Spanish in a formal setting develop knowledge and use of past tenses in this L2. We consider the role of transfer and simplification in acquiring mental representations of the L2 grammar, specifically in the…

This study compares the effect of using corpus-based materials and activities for the instruction of pragmatic routines under two conditions: implementing direct corpus searches by learners during classroom instruction and working with teacher-developed corpus-based materials. The outcome is compared to a repeated-test control group. Pragmatic…

This article reports on a study that investigated the role of metapragmatic awareness of L2 learners in Hong Kong, and the impact it has on language choices when addressing requests in English. Simulated open role-plays and retrospective interviews were used to explore the ways in which mainland Chinese undergraduates assess, plan and produce…

Background: Oral language skills are a critical foundation for literacy and more generally for educational success. The current study shows that oral language skills can be improved by providing suitable additional help to children with language difficulties in the early stages of formal education. Methods: We conducted a randomized controlled…

This paper reports a post-hoc analysis of the influence of lexical difficulty of cue sentences on performance in an elicited imitation (EI) task to assess oral production skills for 645 child L2 English learners in instructional settings. This formed part of a large-scale investigation into effectiveness of foreign language teaching in Polish…

This study investigates the combined effects of input enhancement and recasts on a group of Vietnamese EFL learners' performance of constructive criticism during peer review activities. Particularly, the study attempts to find out whether the instruction works for different aspects of pragmatic learning, including the learners' sociopragmatic and…

Turkish students tend to make considerable stress placement errors when pronouncing English polysyllabic words because of the interference of the traditional word stress patterns of their mother tongue. They usually misplace stresses in their utterance, both either as a result of their native pronunciation habits or their lack of stress-placing…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was: (1) to document the design and implementation process of an online video-based pre-arrival course that was intended to cultivate Asian students' willingness to communicate in American Classrooms; (2) to assess the effectiveness of the course by measuring students' oral proficiency and willingness to…

Purpose: Despite strong investment in raising literacy achievement for all children, significant inequalities in literacy outcomes continue to exist among some of the world's most advanced economies. This study investigated the influence of a short, intensive period of phonological awareness (PA) instruction implemented by classroom teachers on…

This article addresses the effect of communicative activity on the use of language and gesture by school-age children. The present study examined oral narratives and explanations produced by children aged six and ten years on the basis of several linguistic and gestural measures. Results showed that age affects both gestural and linguistic…

English-speakers' learning of a French vowel contrast (/schwa/-/slashed o/) was examined under six different stimulus conditions in which contrastive and noncontrastive stimulus dimensions were varied orthogonally to each other. The distribution of contrastive cues was varied across training conditions to create single prototype, variable far…

Studies of semantic context effects in spoken word production have typically distinguished between categorical (or taxonomic) and associative relations. However, associates tend to confound semantic features or morphological representations, such as whole-part relations and compounds (e.g., BOAT-anchor, BEE-hive). Using a picture-word interference…

Rubrics have been widely recognized by writing teachers for its efficiency in facilitating grading and its potential to be instructive. However, its use and value in oral production assessments still remain to be proven. Thus, this qualitative study was designed to explore the students' perceived uses of rubrics and their actual use of rubrics in…

In twenty-first-century language teaching, the class should be student-centered and provide learners with skills that empower them in real-life situations. In this regard, it is commonly said that practice makes perfect. It therefore makes sense for teachers to ask themselves how much their listening activities demand from students and to evaluate…