This study investigated how well second language (L2) readers of English use context to identify proper names as such. It represents a first step in exploring a widely held assumption that L2 readers of English can easily identify proper names by their form and function. The study isolates the issue of function to investigate whether context alone…

This study aimed to investigate the production of stress in English compound nouns and phrasal verbs by L1 Thai learners. Based on the Interlanguage Hypothesis (Corder, 1982; Selinker, 1972), it was hypothesized that (1) there is a positive relationship between English proficiency levels and accuracy in stress assignment in compound nouns and…

This article investigates whether first-language (L1) Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese as a second language (L2) can acquire the knowledge that the reflexive pronoun jibun 'self' within the head noun phrase of Japanese relative clauses cannot refer to the relative clause subject. Successful acquisition would suggest that learners are able to…

The present study investigates third language (L3) learners' processing of Chinese subject and object relative clauses in a supportive context. Using a self-paced reading task, we tested native Italian L3 learners of Mandarin Chinese and native Chinese speakers. The results showed that the L3 learners read significantly more slowly than the native…

When reading scientific text, readers must draw inferences when the author does not make relations explicit; readers also need to pick up on causal relations that the author "does" make explicit. We collected think-aloud protocols from 86 undergraduate biology students reading 7 brief, illustrated passages about the immune system. After…

When reading scientific text, readers must draw inferences when the author does not make relations explicit; readers also need to pick up on causal relations that the author "does" make explicit. We collected think-aloud protocols from 86 undergraduate biology students reading 7 brief, illustrated passages about the immune system. After…

For elementary learners of Japanese, one of the main difficulties in reading is to distinguish words written in kana. This paper reports on a survey of elementary level learners with two different levels of proficiency to investigate the effectiveness of Japanese graded readers with parts of speech color-coded to distinguish nouns, verbs,…

This article examines the use of prompt-based lexical collocations in opinion essays by Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) students. Fifty second-year English majors at a Vietnamese university wrote 100 opinion essays on two topics as progress tests. The AntConc programme (Anthony, 2020) was employed to identify the frequencies of use…

The current study explores the effects of processing demands and proficiency on second language (L2) learners' acceptability judgment of wh-island sentences. A total of 65 adult Korean learners of English and ten native speakers (NSs) of English participated in an experiment that combined self-paced reading and acceptability judgment. They were…

Teaching stand-alone grammar lessons is not as beneficial as instructors think if they want their students to learn how to write. If teachers truly want their students to become better at writing grammatically correct papers they will provide practice in writing, lots of practice. It is only through the practice of writing can students improve…

In recent years corpus linguistics research findings have begun to trickle down into some student language learning texts, both in terms of the focus and the specific material taught. However, when it comes to writing pedagogy, the materials, templates and the models presented to students tend to show a remarkably conservative (and uniform)…

Using an oral sentence production task, we investigated how preschoolers (N = 28) produce agreement with complex noun phrases and compared their performance to college students (N = 32) to determine whether preschoolers produce agreement patterns that are qualitatively similar to adults'. We also conducted corpus analyses to investigate relevant…

It is generally assumed that bare numerals (e.g., "three") have two readings: the "exactly" and the "at least" reading. It has been a matter of debate whether one of these two readings is derived from the other pragmatically. To shed light on this question research has aimed at characterizing the processing demands…

The availability of corpora has greatly strengthened the possibilities of identifying high-frequency lexical items in a more systematic and objective manner than has typically been used for vocabulary instruction. This article adopts a corpus-based approach to accommodate the vocabulary instructional needs of students enrolled in university…

This study investigates the use of DO, HAVE, MAKE, GIVE and TAKE in light verb constructions (LVCs) and their corresponding simplex verb forms in British L1 and Malaysian L2 students' writing. The students' essay sub-corpus of the International Corpus of English (ICE) of Great Britain (ICE-GB) and Malaysia (ICE-Malaysia) formed the data of this…