This study utilizes a moving window technique to investigate how individual cognitive resources (operationalized in terms of reading span scores) might modulate the extent to which native English speakers and Chinese second language (L2) learners of English utilize plausibility information to recover from an initial misparse in the processing of…

The study investigated how second language (L2) learners self-assessed word knowledge on a page of text taken from a graded reader. The case study subjects were five Thai high school learners of English. They were asked to assess their word knowledge using a page of continuous text. Data gained through observation, interviews, self-assessment and…

This paper examines how transliteration can be used as a bridge to learning for children who are studying more than one script. The focus is on second and third generation British Bangladeshi children aged 7-11, attending London primary schools and learning to write in Bengali at community-run after-school classes. An action research project…

Applying Kachru and Nelson's model of English spread and their categorisation into Inner/Outer/Expanding Circles, this content analysis of English as a Foreign Language textbooks used in Japanese junior high schools investigates which countries were introduced and further studies how Japan's domestic diversity was constructed in those textbooks.…

One of the key premises of Response to Intervention (RTI) is that it seeks to move away from focusing on a within-child deficit to an asset-based approach that promotes improving the instructional context. Although RTI holds promise, there remain many challenges that are associated with the complex interaction between the pedagogical and…

Purpose: This study examined whether English-only vocabulary instruction or English vocabulary instruction enhanced with Spanish bridging produced greater word learning in young Spanish-speaking children learning English during a storybook reading intervention while considering individual language characteristics. Method: Twenty-two…

For more than a decade now, a great deal of research has been done on the topic of written corrective feedback (CF) in SLA and second language (L2) writing. Nonetheless, what those research efforts really have shown as well as the possible implications for practice remain in dispute. Although L2 writing and SLA researchers often examine similar…

This article describes the social, linguistic and academic integration processes of immigrant students in an area of low-density immigration in Quebec, Canada. Interviews were conducted with 15 secondary school students who had been in the country for 2 months to 4 years, in order to get a wide sampling of their experiences of the process of…

This study explored the beliefs of "non-native English speaking" teachers about the usefulness and appropriacy of varieties such as English as an International Language (EIL) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), compared with native speaker varieties. The study therefore addresses the current theoretical debate concerning "appropriate" target…

Following Cabrelli et al. (What the start of L3 tells us about the end of L2: N-drop in L2 and L3 Portuguese, BUCLD, 2008), Iverson (Competing SLA hypotheses assessed: Comparing heritage and successive Spanish bilinguals of L3 Brazilian Portuguese, Mouton de Gruyter, 2009) and others, I argue that the L3 initial state is an important tool in…

This study investigates the issue of crosslinguistic influence in the domain of subject realization in Turkish in simultaneous acquisition of Turkish and English. The use of subjects in a null subject language like Turkish is a phenomenon linked to the pragmatics-syntax interface of the grammar and, thus, is a domain where crosslinguistic…

Research in the field of third language acquisition has consistently identified two key factors which have an effect on the ways in which the two known languages may influence the acquisition of a third. These factors are language distance (typology) and language status (more specifically, second language, L2, or non-native language status). To…

Despite recent attention to the library needs of adolescent English language learners (ELLs), 70% of eighth grade ELL students scored below basic proficiency in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) compared to only 26% of their native English-speaking peers. Since the majority of reading done in the content areas…

This paper reports findings from a case study of the amount of explicit vocabulary focus (EVF) that occurred in a week of classes for one group of upper intermediate students in an intensive English program (IEP). To assess EVF, instruction from a total of 25 hours of classes was analyzed to see if the number of EVF events was more connected with…

This paper examines the status-unequal requests of 89 advanced mixed-L1 learners and 87 British English native speakers elicited by a written discourse completion task. Significant differences were observed in all three dimensions analysed: internal and external modification, and perspective. The data demonstrate learners' overuse of zero marking…