Whereas scholars have extensively researched the pedagogical potential of 4/3/2 activities (i.e. increasing time pressure in task repetition) for enhancing second language (L2) fluency, its impact on L2 accuracy remains unclear. To help L2 learners improve both fluency and accuracy, the present study examined the effects of adding accuracy…

Despite a voluminous literature addressing English language teaching, the explorations focused on knowledge-building are rather limited in number. This is particularly the case with China's tertiary English education. Unlike existing research, this study investigated Chinese college English teachers' knowledge-building about rhetorical figures by…

Very few studies have investigated second language (L2) knowledge of word parts. The present study was set to measure L2 recognition of 35 English prefixes and the factors that might predict scores. The form and meaning sections of Sasao and Webb's Word Part Levels Test were administered to 152 Arabic learners of English as a foreign language…

This study investigated the intensity and efficacy of automated corrective feedback (CF) in a tutorial CALL (computer-assisted language learning) environment during form-focused drills as compared with those of instructor CF on free writing in the classroom. The English simple past tense, a previously learned target structure, was selected as the…

This study is a conceptual replication of Ellis' 'Measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language: A psychometric study', published in "Studies in Second Language Acquisition" (2005), aiming to establish the importance of including belief statements (hypothesized to increase processing demands) in the design of Elicited…

If maximal exposure were the key to success in language learning, then adult learners at the university level would be doomed to fail. Not only are they presumably too old to learn additional languages effectively, but target language (TL) input appears to be insufficient, especially when other languages are allowed in class. Nevertheless,…

This study explores whether middle-school students can exploit explicitly addressed crosslinguistic lexical similarities between German and English to learn vocabulary more efficiently. Across six weeks, 260 Swiss German learners of English as a foreign language (17 classes) completed three vocabulary learning tests (T1, T2 and T3). Additionally,…

This study investigated the extent to which second language (L2) learners benefited from proactive form-focused instruction (FFI) targeting French grammatical gender attribution and the degree to which L2 learners' attention control and working memory predicted their learning gains. A total of 102 L2 learners received either proactive FFI…

Research into vocabulary knowledge often differentiates between breadth (how many words a person knows) and depth (how well the words are known). Both theoretical categories are essential for understanding language learners' lexical development, but how the different aspects of vocabulary knowledge interconnect has not received the same attention…

English language teachers who work with children in schools need knowledge about how English works to construct and present knowledge. This article discusses three aspects of that knowledge: understanding variation in the registers needed to engage in different classroom tasks, being able to identify language features used in the disciplinary…

The current era of globalization and emergence of English as an international language (EIL) has brought about new opportunities for L2 pragmatic learning and teaching. The common view of pragmatic learning as an approximation to native-likeness is changing towards conceiving pragmatic ability as a tool to interact with people of different…

Lexical inference through reading is considered an important method for vocabulary building; however, empirical research has not consistently offered strong evidence of the application of lexical inference in second language vocabulary learning. A recently burgeoning line of research focuses on second language (L2) lexical inference of compounds…

This article uses the clitic left dislocation (CLLD) construction in L2 Spanish to investigate whether generative SLA has valuable insights to contribute to language teaching. Although CLLD is a structure that is commonly used by native speakers, as reported anecdotally and in at least one corpus, we found that native-Spanish and native-English…

Most second language researchers agree that there is a role for corrective feedback in second language writing classes. However, many unanswered questions remain concerning the linguistic features to target and the type and amount of feedback to offer. This study examined essays by 151 learners of English as a second language (ESL), in order to…

Research on corrective feedback (CF), a central focus of second language acquisition (SLA), has increasingly examined how teachers employ CF in second language classrooms. Lyster and Ranta's (1997) seminal study identified six types of CF that teachers use in response to students' errors (recast, explicit correction, elicitation, clarification…