This study investigates whether native Hmong speakers' first language (L1) lexical tone experience facilitates or interferes with their perception of Mandarin tones and whether training is effective for perceptual learning of second (L2) tones. In Experiment 1, 3 groups of beginning level learners of Mandarin with different L1 prosodic background…

This study tracks the development of syntactic complexity in the writing of two beginning German as a second language learners with English as a first language over four semesters of collegiate language study by using developmental profiling techniques applied to an annotated learner corpus. The focus of the investigation is on individual…

This study examined variability in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners' development of the Chinese numeral classifier system from a dynamic systems approach. Our data consisted of a longitudinal corpus of 657 essays written by CFL learners at lower and higher intermediate levels and a corpus of 100 essays written by native speakers (NSs)…

This study investigated the multiple roles of morphological awareness in reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking language minority (LM) learners and their native English-speaking (NE) peers. Sixth-grade students (N = 137; 82 LM, 55 NE) were assessed on English measures of derivational morphological awareness, morphologically complex academic…

This study examines semantic sense and form-meaning connection across the bilingual's languages as factors behind translation priming asymmetry, which refers to semantic priming between translation equivalents with L1 (first language) primes and L2 (second language) targets, but the lack of it in the reverse direction. In Experiment 1, many-sense…

This article aims to offer an alternative to traditional participation frameworks used to analyse teacher/pupil talk in the classroom. Within curricular areas where learners are encouraged to articulate their own meaning and be creative in their use of language, a traditional participation framework, such as Initiation, Response, Follow-up, may…

This article reports on a study of Western male English language teachers and considers the ways in which their identities were shaped in relation to discourses of masculinity and heterosexuality. The article first argues that masculinity and heterosexuality have remained unmarked categories in research on TESOL teacher identities. It then draws…

Foreign language telecollaboration refers to virtual intercultural interaction and exchange projects between classes of learners in geographically distant locations. While research findings on telecollaboration have confirmed its valuable contribution to students' foreign language, intercultural and electronic competences, a preliminary research…

With more than 64,500 members, the Bangladeshi community in London is one of the largest in the UK. Originating from a wave of immigration during the 1970s, a considerable part of the community now consists of a second, UK-born generation. This explorative study seeks to address, first, the extent of the intergenerational language shift from…

Virtual intercultural communication is of great interest in intercultural research. How can a researcher gain access to this field of investigation if s/he does not or only partially speaks the languages used by the subjects? This study is an example of how categories relevant to research can be accessed through in-depth interviews. The interview…

Research capacity building has become a prominent theme in higher education institutions across the world. To build research capacity, it is necessary to identify areas of challenges academics face within the academia. This case study focuses on Chinese teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) academics with the purpose of identifying factors…

The purpose of the pilot study, which is a part of a larger project on ESL writing involving freshmen college students in the Philippines, is to explore the relationship between writer's performance, writer's resources, and writer's idea generation process. To measure the writer's performance, diagnostic essays of 85 Filipino freshmen engineering…

This dissertation examines the discourse produced by beginning learners of Spanish using social media. Specifically, it looks at the use and development of interactional resources during two video-mediated conversations. Through a combination of Conversation Analysis tools and quantitative data analysis, the use of turn-taking strategies, repair…

For Chinese doctoral students, English is the most essential subject when studying in U.S. universities and living life in the U.S. Using English not only promotes academic success, but also helps them to pursue better job opportunities and a better life in the U.S. The purpose of this study was to explore Chinese doctoral students' English use,…

This study investigated the acquisition of the Spanish clitic se by English native speakers in passive, middle, and impersonal constructions. Little research has been done on this topic in SLA within a UG framework (Bayona, 2005; Bruhn de Garavito, 1999). VanPatten (2004) proposed the Processing Instruction (PI) model arguing for the necessity of…