Reading in L1 shares numerous basic elements with reading in L2, and the processes also differ greatly. Intriguing questions involve whether there are two parallel cognitive processes at work, or whether there are processing strategies that accommodate both L1 and L2. This paper examines how reading in L1 is different from and similar to reading…

Neighborhood density refers to the number of similar sounding words to a target word (Luce & Pisoni, 1998) and influences first language word learning in adults learning English (Storkel, Armbruster, & Hogan, 2006). There are two processes in word learning: lexical configuration and lexical engagement (Leach & Samuel, 2007). Lexical configuration…

This highly practical resource for K-6 teachers is packed with 25 classroom-tested, step-by-step strategies for developing word knowledge. The emphasis throughout is not only on teaching new words, but also on strengthening students' comprehension and long-term vocabulary acquisition. Especially valuable are guidelines for how to differentiate…

In order to explore effective ways to develop Chinese English learners' communicative competence, this study first briefly reviews the advantages of communicative language teaching (CLT) method which widely practiced in the Western countries and analyzes in details its obstacles in Chinese classroom context. Then it offers guidelines for…

Nationalism presents significant challenges to intercultural competence instruction. On the one hand, nationalism promotes the compartmentalization of communities into mutually-exclusive and discretely-defined nationalist entities. In complementary fashion, nationalism also advocates the homogenization of cultural and linguistic practices within…

In 2008 the New South Wales Board of Studies included Hayao Miyazaki's film "Spirited Away" as the prescribed text for the Higher School Certificate Japanese Extension course. A study of the film in this context requires students to engage with the text in three distinct ways: through language, cultural symbolism and relevance, and…

The article is a reflection on the various areas of cognitive linguistic research on metonymy that are of potential relevance for SLA. Three of them are particularly relevant: (1) research on metonymy-guided inferencing; (2) research on metonymy-based lexical polysemy, and (3) research on metonymy-based grammatical constructions. Of the three main…

One of the difficulties in learning Chinese characters is distinguishing similar characters. This can cause misunderstanding and miscommunication in daily life. Thus, it is important for students learning the Chinese language to be able to distinguish similar characters and understand their proper usage. In this paper, the authors propose a game…

English is unquestionably the world language of academia--yet its most notable characteristic, being predominantly used by non-native speakers, has not seriously been taken on board in ESP descriptive studies. The project English as an academic lingua franca (ELFA) based at the University of Helsinki investigates academic discourses, branching out…

This study investigated the possibility that lifelong bilingualism may lead to enhanced efficiency in the ability to shift between mental sets. We compared the performance of monolingual and fluent bilingual college students in a task-switching paradigm. Bilinguals incurred reduced switching costs in the task-switching paradigm when compared with…

The present study investigated L1 transfer effects in L2 sentence processing and syntactic priming through comprehension in speakers of German and Italian. L1 and L2 speakers of both languages participated in a syntactic priming experiment that aimed to shift their preferred interpretation of ambiguous relative clause constructions. The results…

A meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the effects of explicit and implicit instruction on the acquisition of simple and complex grammatical features in English. The target features in the 41 studies contributing to the meta-analysis were categorized as simple or complex based on the number of criteria applied to arrive at the correct target…

The use of definite and indefinite articles in English is well known to be a major point of difficulty for many nonnative English speakers. These difficulties prevail even when the speakers are fluent in most other aspects of English grammar and style. This article investigates the pedagogical and linguistic reasons why article use is such a…

Based on Robinson's (2001a,b, 2003) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan's (1998) Limited Attentional Capacity Model, this study explored the effects of task complexity on the fluency and lexical complexity of 108 EFL students' argumentative writing. Task complexity was manipulated using three factors: (1) availability of planning time; (2) provision…

Often, English-language development (ELD) is taught during a dedicated time of the school day. There is often a mismatch between the content of ELD and the lessons taught during core instruction provided during the remainder of the day. During core instruction, teachers use specially designed academic instruction in English strategies to ensure…