Throughout an educational career, literacy skills become more elaborated. However, little is known about the development of reading and writing skills in foreign languages in adolescents. In this contribution, we focused on the development of language skills in the foreign languages English and French in Germany as measured by a C-Test. Hereby, we…

This study investigated the effect of input-based tasks on the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar by beginner-level learners of L2 French and reported the introduction of task-based teaching as an innovation in a state secondary school. The experimental group (n = 19) completed a series of focused input-based language tasks, taught by their…

Languages differ in their preferences for particular intensifying constructions. While intensifying adjectival compounds (IACs) (e.g. "ijskoud, ice-cold") are productively used to express intensification in Dutch and English, in French this construction is hardly productive. Consequently, French-speaking learners may encounter…

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has expanded in Europe, favored by the large body of research, often showing positive effects of CLIL on L2 development. However, critical voices have recently questioned whether these positive findings apply to any language, given that most research focuses on English. Taking into account this…

It is widely assumed that the British are poorer modern foreign language (MFL) learners than their fellow Europeans. Motivation has often been seen as the main cause of this perceived disparity in language learning success. However, there have also been suggestions that curricular and pedagogical factors may play a part. This article reports a…

This article reports research into the development of vocabulary in lower-intermediate level learners of French as a foreign language in Year 12 in 20 schools in the south of England. The focus of attention is the role of less common, or non-basic, vocabulary at a stage in students' learning when they have just moved to a much more advanced…

In examining reading comprehension in a second language (L2), I have demonstrated that the prevailing metaphor of transfer of skills is misleading, and that what happens is access to an already existing general cognitive skill. There is evidence in first language (L1) and in L2 that accessing this skill when reading in an alphabetic language…