The articles in this special issue provide a complex picture of acquisition in bilinguals in which the factors that contribute to patterns of performance in bilingual children's two languages are myriad and diverse. The processes and contours of development in bilingual children are influenced, not only by the quantity, quality, and contexts…

Studying how children learn words in a foreign language can shed light on how language learning changes with development. In one experiment, we examined whether three-, four-, and five-year-olds could learn and remember words for familiar and unfamiliar objects in their native English and a foreign language. All age groups could learn and remember…

It is well established that learners transfer sounds from their first to their second language when speaking (see Major, 2008, and references therein). Recent work also indicates that learners may transfer their perception of sounds from the first to the second language. In some cases, errors in production and perception are explicitly corrected…

This article offers an extended definition of prosody by examining the role of prosody in the production and comprehension of L2 spoken language from mainly a cognitive, interactionalist perspective. It reviews theoretical and empirical L1 and L2 research that have examined and explored the relationships between prosodic forms and their functions…

The proficiency dimension of the learning-oriented assessment (LOA) framework addresses the specific linguistic and content knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) possessed by L2 learners -it is the substance, or the "what" of teaching and learning. It raises questions such as: What do learners know? What are they expected to know? What…

Second Life is one of the many three-dimensional virtual environments accessible through a computer and a fast broadband connection. Thousands of participants connect to this platform to interact virtually with the world, join international communities of practice and, for some, role play groups. Unlike online role play games however, Second Life…

Do you know how to change your relationship status on Facebook? What about your language status? In most web 2.0 contexts, music preference or relationship status are more important than information about one's linguistic repertoire. In language learning communities and affinity spaces (Gee, 2004), however, language status is forefronted. This…

To establish an evidence base for future computer-assisted language learning (CALL) design, CALL research needs to move away from CALL versus non-CALL comparisons, and focus on investigating the differential impact of individual coding elements, that is, specific features of a technology which might have an impact on learning (Pederson, 1987).…

The aim of this study was twofold: we investigated (a) the effect of two types of captioned video (i.e., on-screen text in the same language as the video) on listening comprehension; (b) L2 learners' perception of the usefulness of captions while watching L2 video. The participants, 226 university-level students from a Flemish university, watched…

Anthony Bruton, Miguel Garcia Lopez, and Raquel Esquiliche Mesa's "Incidental L2 Vocabulary Learning: An Impracticable Term?" (2011) offers some constructive criticism regarding the conventional terminology used in second language (L2) acquisition research and language pedagogy. Although the author finds much of their evidence reasonable and is…

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has become a well-known term for foreign language teachers and language researchers. A little more than a decade ago, it was a term unheard of in most staff rooms or professional conferences. This paper seeks to define CLIL and to look into the reasons that have propelled it to widespread adoption.…

A number of resources provide psycholinguistic researchers with information about the words that the typical child or adult knows in a variety of languages. What is currently not available is a resource that provides information about the words that a typical adult learning a foreign language knows. We created such a resource for Spanish: The…

Although the number of emergent bilinguals (EBs), also known as English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. K-12 schools is growing at an increasing rate, K-12 mainstream teachers remain predominantly white and monolingual and receive little training for working with such learners. In addition, many states mandate "English-only" policies…

Innovation in Language Teaching Methodology should address the needs and demands of the 21st century learners and the birth of Mobile Aided Language Learning created abundant possibilities for the field of language education. This study investigates the effect of the Mobile Application: Moodle in teaching ESL learners. A quasi-experimental…

The current study examined the effects of text-based relational (i.e., cohesion), propositional-specific (i.e., lexical), and syntactic features in a source text on subsequent integration of the source text in spoken responses. It further investigated the effects of word integration on human ratings of speaking performance while taking into…