The ability to automatically assess the quality of paraphrases can be very useful for facilitating literacy skills and providing timely feedback to learners. Our aim is twofold: a) to automatically evaluate the quality of paraphrases across four dimensions: lexical similarity, syntactic similarity, semantic similarity and paraphrase quality, and…

It is widely accepted that students' thinking drives teachers' teaching. There are many ways to probe students' thinking with speech or with gestures; however, the literature remains relatively distinct, not focused on both. Prior studies focus on probing students' thinking with speech (talk moves). Although Alibali and colleagues (e.g., Alibali…

In the context of German linguistic policies, Heritage Language (HL) education ranges from formal and informal to non-formal offers. Families with migratory backgrounds seeking acquisition and maintenance of the HL frequently resort to educational or maintenance opportunities that are not institutionalized. In the region of Bavaria (Germany), the…

The present study explores the effects of structured input and traditional instruction on the acquisition of English causative passive forms using online measurements (eye-tracking). Previous empirical research investigating the effects of processing instruction through offline measurements (sentence and discourse) has overall shown positive…

New linguistic information must be integrated into our existing language system. Using a novel experimental task that incorporates a syntactic priming paradigm into artificial language learning, we investigated how new grammatical regularities and words are learned. This innovation allowed us to control the language input the learner received,…

Purpose: This study was conducted in a large Midwestern metropolitan area to examine the language environments at home and in center-based childcare for young children who are living in poverty. We compared child language use and exposure in the home and childcare settings using extended observations with automated Language Environment Analysis to…

We developed and validated the Family Reminiscence Scale (FARS) in which adults rate their frequency of reminiscing with their parents about childhood experiences. In three studies, we characterized how FARS was related to adults' recollections of their earliest memories in different cultural contexts. First, we examined the factorial structure of…

We investigated whether bilinguals' integration of a code-switch during real-time comprehension, which involves resolving among conflicting linguistic representations, modulates the deployment of cognitive-control mechanisms. In the current experiment, Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 48) completed a cross-task conflict-adaptation paradigm that…

This study examined the acquisition of preposition placement in English as a second language from a usage-based perspective. German and Chinese learners of English and English native speakers rated the acceptability of English oblique "wh" relative clauses in a magnitude estimation task. Results indicated that acceptability depended on…

Foreign Language educators and researchers still refine meaningful instruction and engagement to motivate secondary education students. This research aims to enhance learning environments and analyze students' exposure to English vocabulary through a collection of culinary videos as Comprehensible Input in English as foreign language (EFL)…

Research in language development has only recently begun to focus on the inherent variability of language. Previous studies have explored at what age children begin to produce variable linguistic forms and how these forms progress through development. While children produce adult-like variation early on, some variable forms take longer to acquire…

Second language acquisition has been observed to be variable in its outcome such that, unlike native speakers, all second language learners do not achieve total success. Second language acquisition is made of macro and micro processes. External and internal (e.g., age, individual differences) factors are assumed to affect language processing in…

With the rapid development of economy and technology, more and more fields are combined with electronic intelligence and artificial intelligence, and language teaching is no exception. As a research hot issue, computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has attracted more and more people's attention. Based on computer-aided technology, teachers can…

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on…

The increasing importance of using movies to enhance second language teaching and learning has been addressed by researchers and educators. A few scholarly studies have effortlessly put forward significant findings on using movies in the area of theoretical bases, pedagogical aspects and learners' perspectives. However, more studies need to be…