In this article, we report the results of a study undertaken at the University of Cyprus (2017-2020) in the framework of the research project MapCyArS financed by the Leventis Foundation. The study concerns the design and development of an assessment test to evaluate proficiency in Cypriot Arabic (CA), a severely endangered language spoken in…

A challenge of large-scale oral communication assessments is to feasibly assess a broad construct that includes interactional competence. One possible approach in addressing this challenge is to use a spoken dialog system (SDS), with the computer acting as a peer to elicit a ratable speech sample. With this aim, an SDS was built and four trained…

Do adults learn the same syntactic second language (L2) form explicitly and implicitly simultaneously during meaning-based exposure, and does the type of learning (explicit and/or implicit) affect subsequent performance. In this study, 81 anglophones completed comprehension tasks providing incidental exposure to a semi-artificial language (English…

In the present article, we explore the extent to which previous research on register variation can be used to predict spoken/written task-type variation as well as differences across score levels in the context of a major standardized language exam (TOEFL iBT). Specifically, we carry out two sets of linguistic analyses based on a large corpus of…

Language aptitude comprises cognitive and perceptual abilities that predispose individuals to learn well or rapidly (Carroll 1981; Doughty et al. 2007) and that can interplay with age by moderating its effects on learning outcomes. Although there is agreement regarding the importance of aptitude, findings have been mixed regarding its role in…

Language aptitude remains one of the most understudied predictor variables in L1 attrition research. The current study seeks to address this gap by investigating the effects of language aptitude on L1 retention in late attriters. Forty L1 Spanish-L2 Swedish bilinguals living in Sweden participated in the study, along with 20 functionally…

This study reports a meta-analysis that synthesizes the empirical research on the role of language aptitude in second language grammar acquisition. A total of 33 study reports were identified including 17 predictive studies that investigated the correlations between aptitude and ultimate L2 attainment and 16 interactional studies that examined the…

The study reported in this article investigated the proficiency in French of a group of anglophone adult L2 learners of the language, all of whom reported passing regularly for native speakers of French. Tests were administered to these learners to gauge their proficiency in different aspects of French, including a lexico-grammatical measure. A…

While language aptitude has been investigated actively within second language research, there is a current dearth of research on the effects of aptitude in cases of attrition. The aim of the present investigation was to explore the role of language aptitude for L1 proficiency in speakers who experienced a break with their L1 setting prior to…

The study reported in this paper is an investigation of the nature of speaking proficiency in English as a second language in the context of a larger project to develop a rating scale for a new international test of English for Academic Purposes, TOEFL iBT (Brown et al. 2005). We report on a large-scale study of the relationship between detailed…

This article discusses the effects of repetition (1, 3, 7, and 10 encounters) on word knowledge in a carefully controlled study of 121 Japanese students learning English. The study is innovative and original in several aspects. (1) The study uses 10 tests to measure knowledge of orthography, association, grammatical functions, syntax, and meaning…

This article re-examines the question of what makes some grammatical structures more difficult to learn than others, arguing that this question can only be properly understood and investigated with reference to the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language. Using a battery of tests that were designed to measure…

The study investigates the effect of explicit contrastive analysis and translation activities on the incidental acquisition of single words and collocations. We compared three high school groups of learners of the same L1 and comparable L2 (English) proficiency. Each group represented one instructional condition: meaning focused instruction (MFI),…

A key issue in the field of second language acquisition has been the difficulty of specifying accurate measures of implicit language knowledge. This paper describes the development of an elicited imitation test. Its design differs from that of most other elicited imitation tests in that it (a) requires test takers to focus attention first on the…