This article reports a classroom-based study of the effects of two types of corrective feedback (CF) on the acquisition of 3rd person "-s." One hundred and nine Chinese university students completed three communicative tasks: One group received implicit CF consisting of a single corrective move (implicit recasts), a second group received…

This article offers a methodological synthesis spanning 35 years of instructed second language acquisition research on the efficacy of form-focused instruction. Eighty-eight (quasi-) experimental studies were sampled from six academic journals: "Applied Linguistics," "Language Learning," "Language Teaching Research,"…

This study investigates whether gesture-enhanced recasts lead to better production of the English regular past tense. Fifty-nine low-intermediate ESL students at a US university took part in communicative activities in class, during which they received, respectively, no feedback, verbal recasts, or gesture-enhanced recasts, the latter being a…

This study explored the relative effect of recasts on second language (L2) Korean learners' accuracy development of the object relative clauses (RCs) and the honorific subject-verb (S-V) agreement in Korean and its relationship with language analytic ability (LAA). Forty-five L2 Korean learners participated in the study and five Korean native…

The present study employed a mixed methods quasi-experimental design to investigate the effectiveness of applying motivational strategies and mental imagery (i.e. visionary techniques) to facilitate second language (L2) vocabulary learning. Four treatment sessions were integrated into a six-week language course offered to 150 intermediate students…

This study compared the effectiveness of deductive instruction and guided inductive instruction for developing semantic radical knowledge of Chinese characters. The evaluation was conducted through a quasi-experimental 3-week intervention involving 46 intermediate learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The results indicated that guided…

Prior research showed that interleaved practice (studying multiple skills at once) is more effective than blocked practice (studying only one skill at a time). This study aims to replicate the benefits of interleaved practice on the proceduralization of second language (L2) syntax and further examines the role of working memory (WM) in different…

The purpose of this study was to find out, whether three methods of presenting input, were effective in relation to language aptitude. Persian-speaking learners of English were provided with 20 grammatical collocations (verb-preposition collocations) embedded in authentic passages, lexically/grammatically elaborated passages, and…

Research on second-language (L2) speech acquisition suggests that audio-visual aids could be effective in helping learners acquire difficult L2 speech sounds (Li, 2016a). However, most previous studies have been restricted to laboratory settings rather than the classroom environment. The present study, therefore, was designed to fill this…

This study examined the optimal learning schedule for second language vocabulary within an authentic classroom setting in Hong Kong. Following a pretest, treatment, delayed posttest design, fifty-two primary school students (Cantonese first language) studied 20 English adjectives over two learning episodes under spaced-short (1-day interval) or…

This study investigates the relative effectiveness of two methods for teaching a set of English verb-noun collocations: form-focused instruction (FFI) and concept-based instruction (CBI). The sample comprised 73 Chinese-speaking learners of English taking intermediate English courses, who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an FFI…

Various forms of pre-listening support, such as the provision of vocabulary and topic information, have been used to help second language (L2) learners better understand what they listen to. Results of studies on the effects of vocabulary support have been mixed. Furthermore, there has been little research on the effects of different quantities of…

This study explored the teaching and learning of vocabulary through listening among 137 senior high-school learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in China. It compared different types of Lexical Focus-on-Form delivered to four treatment groups: post-listening vocabulary explanations in the L2; codeswitched explanations; explanations…

The present study aimed to examine whether distributed practice works better than massed practice for proceduralization of grammatical knowledge. Learners of Japanese as a second language were trained on an element of Japanese morphology under either massed or distributed practice conditions. Results showed that massed practice led to accurate…

A teacher's assessment literacy refers to her or his demonstrated understanding of the principles behind selecting and designing tasks, judging student work, and interpreting and using assessment data to support student learning. This study examines the development of the task design aspect of assessment literacy in 12 Chinese language teachers as…