This article provides a conceptual review of the principles of input spacing as they might relate specifically to oral task repetition research and presents some of the common methodological considerations from the broader input spacing literature. The specific considerations discussed include the interaction between intersession intervals and…

This article responds to calls for greater inclusivity in second language acquisition research and, more specifically, to calls to explore further the impact of first language literacy on second language oracy (e.g., Tarone et al., 2009). We conducted a partial replication of Foster and Skehan's (1996) influential study of task complexity,…

This longitudinal study examines the effects of a pre-study abroad (SA) pedagogic intervention and subsequent SA experience on second language (L2) Mandarin fluency. It explores two temporal aspects of oral fluency--planning time and speech rate--along with one performance measure, duration of response. Additionally, L2 contact data were included…

This article discusses the dynamic nature of childhood bilingualism by analyzing oral speech from returnee heritage speakers (HSs) of Portuguese, who grew up in Germany, but moved to Portugal in childhood/adolescence. The first dataset from 14 speakers showed that the length of exposure to German predicted the rate of (in)accurate production of…

Fluency is an important part of research on second language learning, but most research on language proficiency typically has not included oral fluency as part of interactions even though natural communication usually occurs in conversations. The present study considered aspects of turn-taking behavior as part of the construct of fluency and…

We conducted a multisite replication of Yang and Lyster's (2010) study investigating the effects of recasts and prompts on learning English regular and irregular past tense. Our study was conducted with intact high school and vocational school classes in Italy and Bosnia. Our participants were young adolescents (14-15 and 16-17 years old), a…

In an exploration of the effects of task-repetition practice on fluency development, English-as-a-foreign language learners performed three oral narrative tasks involving six-frame cartoons for 3 consecutive days. They engaged in task-repetition practice under either a blocked (Day 1: A-A-A; Day 2: B-B-B; Day 3: C-C-C) or an interleaved (Day 1:…

This article introduces the nonmedievalist reader to the multilingual landscape of England 700-1400. Building on recent work exploring in particular the relationships among English, French, and Latin in medieval England, it discusses a series of "multilingual moments" from a range of sources, including letters, poems, travel writings,…

We meta-analyzed the effectiveness of incidental second language word learning from spoken input. Our sample contained 105 effect sizes from 32 primary studies employing meaning-focused word-learning activities with 1,964 participants with typical cognitive functioning. The random-effects meta-analysis yielded a mean effect size of g = 1.05,…

This study investigated how adult second language (L2) learners of Mandarin Chinese use knowledge of phonological and lexical statistical regularities when acoustic information is insufficient for word recognition. A gating task was used to test intermediate L2 learners at two time points across a semester of classroom learning. Native Mandarin…

There remains considerable disagreement about which factors drive second language (L2) ultimate attainment. Age of onset (AO) appears to be a robust factor, lending support to theories of maturational constraints on L2 acquisition. The present study is an investigation of factors that influence grammatical and lexical complexity at the stage of L2…

This study investigated how adult second language (L2) speakers of French with near-native proficiency realize verbal negation, a well-known sociolinguistic variable in contemporary spoken French. Data included 10 spontaneous informal conversations between near-native speakers of French and native speakers (NSs) closely acquainted with them.…

This study examined the relationship between oral fluency and use of multiword sequences (MWSs) across four proficiency levels (Low B1 to C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference). Data came from 56 learners taking the speaking test of the Test of English for Educational Purposes, and our analysis obtained different measures of fluency…

Answering calls to map college-level proficiency development (Modern Language Association, 2007) and longitudinally chart language learning (Barkaoui, 2014; Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), we mapped the oral proficiency growth of 1,922 lower-division college students of Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish (in the second, third, or fourth semester of…

Research in adults has shown that novel words are encoded rather swiftly but that their semantic integration occurs more slowly and that studying definitions presented in a written modality may benefit integration. It is unclear, however, how semantic integration proceeds in children, who (compared to adults) have more malleable brains and less…