Analyses of second language (L2) classroom interaction often categorize joking and other humorous talk by students as disruptive, off-task behavior, thereby rendering it important only from a classroom management perspective. Studies of language play, however, have illustrated that such jocular talk not only allows students to construct a broader…

Vygotsky's work on the acquisition of foreign language words has been criticized for lacking a formal view of language as a system and for taking little interest in questions such as the route and rate of language acquisition. We argue that word meanings really do not constitute a formal system, either in the way they develop, or in the way they…

The past few years saw significant advances in the field of interlanguage pragmatics development since several researchers' call for more studies focusing on the development of pragmatic competence of second or foreign language learners. The existing literature, however, still leaves us an incomplete picture of the nature of the relation between…

This article explores Japanese EFL learners' classroom silence in a Japanese EFL context. The existence of silence in second language learning contexts can be a source of conflict between students and teachers and even among students themselves. It can also be an obstacle to acquiring the target language. In order to tackle this problem and to…

This article reports on an investigation into how learners in a British EFL setting perceive the classroom practice of student-student interaction and why it is perceived in these ways. Adopting qualitative non-experimental methods, I first explored issues leading to the concept of "usefulness" and identified factors that appeared to…

This study focused on the relationship between percentage of vocabulary known in a text and level of comprehension of the same text. Earlier studies have estimated the percentage of vocabulary necessary for second language learners to understand written texts as being between 95% (Laufer, 1989) and 98% (Hu & Nation, 2000). In this study, 661…

The goal of this paper is to discuss language experience in second language (L2) phonological learning, with a particular focus on lexical frequency, attention to form, and ethnic identity as factors that influence the role of language experience. First, several difficulties associated with the study of language experience are discussed. Then,…

This study was designed to identify underlying factors that motivate language learners to read in a foreign language (L2) context. It also examined the relationships between L1 and L2 reading motivation and any differences in reading motivation based on the learners' academic majors and L2 reading proficiency. 259 Korean EFL college students…

This study investigated the effect of the title and ambiguity tolerance on the comprehensibility of a non-text. To this end, ten irrelevant sentences from different texts were put together to make two seemingly cohesive and coherent texts. The two texts were exactly the same except for the fact that one of them carried a title whereas the other…

Presently it is hard to find a thesis which have presented the teaching plan on how to teach the tense to Chinese learners on the spot of learning and even the textbooks in classes cover the subject of tense only in the medium or high level. The author considers that the learners' mistakes on the subject of tense are apt to be fossilized, if they…

Haznedar (2007) argues that longitudinal data from a child learner of English who has Turkish as a first language (L1) constitute a counterexample to the Aspect Hypothesis. In this commentary, we show that her argument is not warranted because the Aspect Hypothesis does not presuppose that tense is defective, contra her claim. However, Haznedar's…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the acquisition of non-contrastive phonetic details of a second language. Reduced vowels in English are realized as a schwa or barred- i depending on their phonological contexts, but Korean has no reduced vowels. Two groups of Korean learners of English who differed according to the experience of residence…

ERPs were used to explore the different patterns of processing of cognate and noncognate words in the first (L1) and second (L2) language of a population of second language learners. L1 English students of French were presented with blocked lists of L1 and L2 words, and ERPs to cognates and noncognates were compared within each language block. For…

The traditional division of conditionals into four main types (zero, first, second, and third) has long been called into question. Unfortunately, the awareness that this description does not reflect conditional patterns in actual usage has not generally been reflected in EFL coursebooks. This article re-examines the arguments for a description of…

Employing the principles of a contextual approach to learner belief research and applying it to a self-directed learning context at a Japanese university, this longitudinal study investigates the complex interplay between beliefs and actions and its contribution to the development of language learning skills. Through the triangulation of various…