Although most children learn to communicate in their first language (L1), there is normal and expected variation in their rate of acquisition across all components of the language system. Until recently, most second language acquisition and second language (L2) researchers have assumed that individual differences (IDs) in L1 acquisition are small…

Listener-based judgements of fluency play an important role in second language (L2) communication contexts and in L2 assessment. Accordingly, our meta-analysis examined the relationship between different aspects of utterance fluency and listener-based judgements of perceived fluency by analyzing primary studies reporting correlation coefficients…

This study investigates the role of proficiency in the acquisition of conventional expressions as a pragmalinguistic resource in second-language (L2) Chinese. One hundred and four undergraduates, including 57 learners of Chinese as a foreign language at 3 levels of university instruction and 47 native speakers completed an aural-oral discourse…

The present study explores the independent and interactive effects of task complexity and task modality on linguistic dimensions of second language (L2) performance and investigates how these effects are modulated by individual differences in working memory capacity. Thirty-two intermediate learners of L2 Spanish completed less and more complex…

This study launched an investigation into the extent to which textual enhancement in captions can promote learner attention to and subsequent development in second language (L2) grammar. Using eye-tracking, it also intended to extend research on the relationship between attention and L2 learning. A pretest-posttest experimental design was…

This article explores the identities of a group of elementary teachers who participated in a professional development (PD) project on multilingual language learners. We study how the participating teachers drew on different aspects of their identities to respond to encouragement to increase their attention to students' diverse multilingual…

Examining speech samples from 75 American university students learning 1 of 3 languages (Mandarin, Russian, and Spanish), this article reports on a study of second language (L2) learners' oral fluency development and its relationship with their gains in holistic proficiency ratings during a semester abroad. In study abroad research, there is a…

This cross-sectional study used assessments developed by the Center for Applied Linguistics to examine the oral proficiency of 218 K-8 English-proficient students in 4 Spanish immersion programs. Following a comprehensive review of assessment results for English-proficient immersion learners, the article reports findings from statistical analyses.…

This study suggests that Intermediate High and Advanced speakers produce aspectually valid constructions in Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) in large part because they are doing more than assigning aspect to lexical categories (Lexical aspect hypothesis), but because they are assigning lexicalized meaning to discrete verbs, for example…

This study was an examination of the relationship of lexical richness to the quality of English as a second language (ESL) learners' oral narratives. A computational system was designed to automate the measurement of 3 dimensions of lexical richness, that is, lexical density, sophistication, and variation, using 25 different metrics proposed in…

This article reports on a replication study of a substantial piece of research published in "The Modern Language Journal", carried out by Elaine Matties Phillips in 1992, and entitled "The Effects of Language Anxiety on Students' Oral Test Performance and Attitudes." The aim of both studies was to assess the influence of…

This article reports analysis of data collected from a quasi-experimental study in 2 Canadian late French immersion science classes. We examine if, how, and when the first language (L1) is used when students in the first years of their second language learning talk about complex science concepts. We compare differences in groups following a…

Evaluation of the Russian oral and written proficiency of third-year university students (N=9) suggested a clear relationship between the students' initial oral proficiency ratings and the grammatical accuracy of their written compositions; the lower a student's oral proficiency rating, the greater the average number of written mistakes, and vice…

Assesses the speaking, reading, listening, and writing proficiency of students of Russian after one, two, three, four, and five years of study using tests based on the proficiency scale of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Results indicate that the correlations among the four skills were not strong, suggesting that they…