The task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach has long drawn data from general learners and developed theories on the basis of those data. In this article, the author explores how to adapt TBLT materials for learners with special educational needs (LwSENs) who have difficulty learning, thinking, and communicating. TBLT conceptualizes…

We studied English-learning children's ability to learn the meanings of novel words from sentences containing truth-functional negation (Exp1) and to use the semantics of negation to inform word meaning (Exp2). In Exp1, 22-month-olds (n = 21) heard dialogues introducing a novel verb in either negative-transitive "("Mary didn't blick the…

Social categories are often defined by the boundaries that they form between individuals. However, many social structures describe "complementary" relationships between individuals, defining both the power that we hold over others and our obligations to them and vice versa. In two studies conducted in the U.S., we investigated a sample…

Flow is an intrinsic motivational state associated with full task engagement, positive affect, and enhanced performance. While research has examined how different language tasks interact with flow experiences, no study has examined learner flow experiences in a wide range of tasks using an experience sampling method to determine how universal…

Most undergraduate students do not have practical experience working with model organisms despite having theoretical knowledge of their importance. This practical was developed to offer students experience working with three species of nematode, including "Caenorhabditis elegans." In the first task, students prepare slides of three…

Ratings of perceptual experience on a trial-by-trial basis are increasingly used in masked priming studies to assess prime awareness. It is argued that such subjective ratings more adequately capture the content of phenomenal consciousness compared to the standard objective psychophysical measures obtained in a session after the priming…

Young children excel at pragmatic inferences known as ad hoc quantity implicatures: they can infer, for example, that a speaker who said "the card with apples" meant the card with "nothing but" apples. However, it is not known whether children take into account the speaker's perspective in deriving such inferences, as adults…

The present study investigates the role of three structural factors ("word order," "case-marking," and "verbal morphology") in the comprehension of the Korean suffixal passive by Korean-speaking children. To measure the relative impact of each factor on the comprehension of the passive, we devise a novel method where…

Background: Bilingualism is widespread and being bilingual is more common than being monolingual. The lifelong practice bilinguals receive from managing two languages seems to lead to a cognitive benefit. Conversely, bilingualism seems to affect language ability negatively due to less use of each known language. Aims: This systematic review aims…

In this study of more than 1,000 typical and at-risk elementary Arabic-speaking students in Oman, we explore relationships between pragmatic (and other) language skills, literacy, cognition, and behavior and the degree to which demography impacts performance on associated tasks. We found, in most cases, that females performed better than males,…

This article describes how to build a classroom community by building representations and visualizations of data related to students' names. The goal of this task was to allow students to get to know each other's identities better by collecting and analyzing data about their names and exploring the connection between names and identities. The task…

Accomplishing a communication task in the real world requires the ability not only to do the task per se but also to manage aspects of the context in which it occurs. For this reason, simulations of target language use contexts have been incorporated into the design of communicative language tests as a way of enhancing the authenticity of…

In the field of second and foreign language education, conscious cognitive models of motivation dominate, while the role of unconscious motivation has not been studied systematically. Expanding the language motivation research to include implicit processes is likely to enrich the field of language learning and open up new contributions to current…

The aim of this task-based needs analysis is two-fold: firstly, to uncover the tasks performed by U.S.-based Spanish-language flight attendants and the associated language needs and, in doing so, to expand the breadth of task-based needs analysis (TBNA) through the application of multiple methods and sources (Long, 2005) and tackling the…

The role of executive function training in supporting child development has been increasingly studied. Executive function is largely related to the prefrontal cortex. The anterior portion of the prefrontal cortex, which is area 10 on the Brodmann map, is essential for the emergence of higher-order executive functions. Accumulating evidence…