Most studies on bilingual children's metalinguistic awareness assess metalinguistic awareness using monolingual tasks. This may not reflect how a bilingual's languages dynamically interact with each other in creating metalinguistic representations. We tested 33 Greek-Italian bilingual children (8-11 years) for metalinguistic awareness using…

Since the early 2000s, neurocognitive research on second language (L2) acquisition has been controversial as to how plastic the human brain is after puberty. Recent studies have extended this debate to first language loss (L1 attrition). This article gives an overview of the first event-related brain potential (ERP) studies on L1 attrition and L2…

This study examined the role of child cognitive abilities for procedural and declarative learning in the earliest stages of second language (L2) exposure. In the context of a computer game, 53 first language Italian monolingual children were aurally trained in a novel miniature language over 3 consecutive days. A mixed effects model analysis of…

In the present study, we sought to advance the field of learner corpus research by tracking the development of phrasal vocabulary in essays produced at two different points in time. To this aim, we employed a large pool of second language (L2) learners (N = 175) from three proficiency levels--beginner, elementary, and intermediate--and focused on…

Orthographic forms (spellings) can affect pronunciation in a second language (L2); however, it is not known whether the same orthographic form can affect both L2 pronunciation and metalinguistic awareness. To test this, we asked 260 speakers of English--first-language (L1) English speakers, L1 Italian and L2 English sequential bilinguals, and L1…

This study investigated the predictions of two approaches to second language acquisition. According to the usage-based approach, learner knowledge results from the strengths and weaknesses of input-driven statistical learning. According to the learner-varieties approach, pragmatic communication principles and language-internal constraints play…

We report on an analysis of spontaneous gesture production in 2-year-old children who come from three countries (Italy, United Kingdom, Australia) and who speak two languages (Italian, English), in an attempt to tease apart the influence of language and culture when comparing children from different cultural and linguistic environments.…

Research into frequency intuition has focused primarily on native (L1) and, to a lesser degree, nonnative (L2) speaker intuitions about single word frequency. What remains a largely unexplored area is L1 and L2 intuitions about collocation (i.e., phrasal) frequency. To bridge this gap, the present study aimed to answer the following question: How…

A large body of empirical research demonstrates that people exploit a wide variety of cues for the segmentation of continuous speech in artificial languages, including rhythmic properties, phrase boundary cues, and statistical regularities. However, less is known regarding how the different cues interact. In this study we addressed the question of…

We use insights and methods from ethnomethodological conversation analysis and discursive psychology to develop an account of embodied word and grammar searches as socially distributed planning practices. These practices, which were produced by three intermediate learners of Italian as a Foreign Language (IFL), occurred massively in natural data…

Questions the extent to which attention differentially affects different parts of language and how this differential effect interacts with increased linguistic knowledge. Subjects were native English speaking learners of Italian. (Author/VWL)

Paper presented at the convention of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Washington, D.C., February 1972. (RS)

Examined the roles of learning method, word frequency, and cognate status in the learning of 80 Italian words by 56 adult Dutch learners previously unfamiliar with Italian. Two learning methods were contrasted: word learning, where the Italian word was presented with its translation in Dutch, and picture learning, where it was presented with a…

Examines the behavior of university students of Italian in Australia as they study the meanings of new Italian words. Repetition of the new words and their meanings was the primary learning strategy employed. Results indicate a need to distinguish between the use of context for "generation" of a new word and the use of context for…

Considers the validity of applying common assessment instruments and scales to assess the language skills of Australian school-age language learners from different first-language backgrounds. Findings reveal a strong relationship between home exposure to the language and the level of performance on the listening and reading components of the…