Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children need to master at least one language (spoken or signed) to reach their full potential. Providing access to a natural sign language supports this goal. Despite evidence that natural sign languages are beneficial to DHH children, many researchers and practitioners advise families to focus exclusively on spoken…

Cognitive linguists claim that verb-particle constructions are compositional and analyzable, and that the particles contribute to the overall meaning in the form of image schemas. This article examined this claim with a behavioral experiment, in which participants were asked to judge the sensibility of short sentences primed by image-schematic…

The purpose of this article is to question the suitability of the phonics screening check in relation to models and theories of reading development. The article questions the appropriateness of the check by drawing on theoretical frameworks which underpin typical reading development. I examine the Simple View of Reading developed by Gough and…

Since the publication of Clahsen and Felser's (2006) keynote article on grammatical processing in language learners, the online study of sentence comprehension in adult second language (L2) learners has quickly grown into a vibrant and prolific subfield of SLA. As online methods begin to establish a foothold in SLA research, it is important…

Michael Swan and Catherine Walter (see EJ1142765) take issue with the current emphasis in the teaching of listening and reading on higher-order skills-and-strategies training. They argue that L2 learners typically already possess the relevant skills and strategies necessary for listening and reading in L2, and, by implication, can and do deploy…

In this paper, a review of the role of input, output and instruction in second language acquisition is provided. Several pedagogical interventions in grammar instruction (e.g., processing instruction, input enhancement, structured output and collaborative output tasks) are presented and their effectiveness reviewed. A final and overall evaluation…

Previous research on cross-situational word learning has demonstrated that learners are able to reduce ambiguity in mapping words to referents by tracking co-occurrence probabilities across learning events. In the current experiments, we examined whether learners are able to retain mappings over time. The results revealed that learners are able to…

The article focuses on defining how background knowledge impacts on second-language acquisition by giving a brief overview of schema theory, the interaction of the basic modes of information processing. A challenge of dealing with culturally specific texts in second language acquisition is also touched upon. Different research-supported views on…

Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) is a modality of interpreting where the interpreter interacts with the other parties-at-talk through an audiovisual link without sharing the same physical interactional space. In dialogue settings, existing research on VRI has mostly drawn on the analysis of verbal behaviour to explore the dynamics of these…

Discourse coherence is a common phenomenon in linguistic studies, and plays an important role in discourse analysis. As a common and extremely important type of language phenomena, discourse coherence has drawn more and more scholars' attention, but they emphasis on partial discourse coherence, paying a little attention to holistic coherence. The…

This paper critically considers the implications of the growth of English-medium instruction (EMI) globally for idiomaticity in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). We first make the case for idiomaticity in English in terms of its contribution to language processing and use and regarding the challenges and affordances it presents to users of English…

Semantic priming effects at a short prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony are commonly explained in terms of an automatic spreading activation process. According to this view, the proportion of related trials should have no impact on the size of the semantic priming effect. Using a semantic categorization task ("Is this a living…

In recent years, significant advances have been made in intelligent tutoring systems, and these advances hold great promise for adaptively supporting computer science (CS) learning. In particular, tutorial dialogue systems that engage students in natural language dialogue can create rich, adaptive interactions. A promising approach to increasing…

Intelligent tutoring systems for ill-defined domains, such as reading and writing, are critically needed, yet uncommon. Two such systems, the Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART) and Writing Pal (W-Pal) use natural language processing (NLP) to assess learners' written (i.e., typed) responses and provide immediate,…

Traditionally, acquisition of syntactic knowledge and the development of sentence comprehension behaviors have been treated as separate disciplines. This article reviews a growing body of work on the development of incremental sentence comprehension mechanisms and discusses how a better understanding of the developing parser can shed light on two…