Second language learners constitute a significant and expanding portion of the global population and there is a growing demand for tools that facilitate language learning and instruction across various levels and in different countries. The development of large language models (LLMs) has brought about a significant impact on the domains of natural…

Writing well is a challenge. The challenge is magnified when writing is not in the writer's first language. Noncredit community college teachers in open-entry open-exit classes have the additional challenge of creating an instructional environment which assists English as a Second Language students develop writing skills often in tandem with…

In the field of Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA), written corrective feedback (WCF) has been shown to play a facilitative role in improving written accuracy (e.g., Ashwell, 2000; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Ferris, 2006; Sheen, 2007; Bitchener, 2008; Liu & Brown, 2015). However, studies that examine the effects of different types…

There is an ongoing debate as to whether written corrective feedback (WCF) is effective for the improvement of adult second language (L2) writers' accuracy. Ever since Truscott (1996, 1999) began arguing against grammar correction in L2 writing courses, researchers have challenged his position (i.e. below). Although most of these studies show WCF…

The optimal timing of feedback on formative assessments is an open question, with the cognitive processing window theory (Doughty, 2001) underlying the interaction approach suggesting that immediate feedback may be most beneficial for language acquisition (e.g., Gass, 2010; Polio, 2012) and two educational psychology hypotheses conversely…

This dissertation investigates whether and how learners' heritage language (HL) background and explicitness of feedback influence second language (L2) pragmatic development of Korean referent honorifics through conversational interaction. Specifically, this study focuses on HL learners versus non-heritage language (NHL) learners and recasts versus…

For several decades, research in instructed second language acquisition (SLA) has focused on identifying the facilitative role that interaction plays in second language (L2) development (e.g., Gass, 1997; Long, 1996; Pica, 1996). Within this area of interest, a considerable amount of attention has been directed toward the feedback that learners…

Second language acquisition research into the effects of corrective feedback has investigated a variety of learning targets using a wide range of implicit and explicit feedback types (Li, 2010). To date, however, its linguistic focus has been limited to theoretically noticeable surface features (Carroll, 2001; Schmidt, 2001), and researchers have…

The problem: Many previous studies have pointed out that EFL learners tend to face communication breakdowns with native speakers because their traditional classroom and textbooks are not able to provide learners with sufficient pragmatically appropriate input (Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; Rose, 1994, 1997). On the contrary, they are exposed to rich input…

Previous studies revealed mixed results in terms of the relative effects of implicit and explicit feedback: some found that explicit feedback worked more efficiently than implicit feedback; others found no difference between the two feedback types. These contrasting results called for further investigations into this issue, particularly examining…