Characteristics of vocabulary lists as well as study and test translation direction may affect the ease of learning second language (L2) vocabulary. We examined immediate and delayed test performance of first language (L1) English speakers learning a fixed set of L2 vocabulary placed on lists formed by crossing semantic relatedness (unrelated vs.…

This study investigates how aspects of collocational proficiency affect the ratings that expert examiners give to second language (L2) English learner essays. Lexical proficiency is a multi-faceted phenomenon and certain aspects of it are particularly impactful on human judgements, including lexical sophistication and accuracy. However, the…

Writing is a skill that has increased in significance for both researchers and classroom teachers due to changes in recent standards. Currently, many high school English Learners (ELs) are struggling to master this priority skill. A strategy that has been shown to be effective for adolescent writers is Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD).…

As one type of the most extensively used sentences, English questions are must-learn grammatical structures for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). However, it is commonly seen that English learners across proficiency levels produce ungrammatical English questions. To determine the source of learners' erroneous production, we…

The present study examined whether early immersive L2 exposure in a foreign language learning context can yield long-term advantages in L2 morpho-syntactic sensitivity. Participants were 40 Korean university students with high English proficiency, who had either attended an English kindergarten or begun learning English in a classroom, and a…

The purpose of the current dissertation is to map the relationships between first language (L1), writing quality, and syntactic complexity, accuracy, lexical complexity, and fluency (CALF) in second language (L2) writing. CALF are characteristics of language production that have been of significant interest in L2 writing research for the past few…

Generalization is the ability to apply regularities to novel instances, for example, correctly guessing that the plural for the novel English word 'wug' should be 'wugs'. Early language learners make overgeneralization errors like 'mouses', applying regularities beyond their attested uses. Theories concerned with the question of how learners learn…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine how 2 methods known to improve naming impairment in aphasia (i.e., retrieval practice and errorless learning) affect lexical access. We hypothesized that instances of naming during retrieval practice use and strengthen item-specific connections in each of 2 stages of lexical access: Stage 1,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop and pilot a novel treatment framework called "BEARS" (Balancing Effort, Accuracy, and Response Speed). People with aphasia (PWA) have been shown to maladaptively balance speed and accuracy during language tasks. BEARS is designed to train PWA to balance speed-accuracy trade-offs and…

This study explored the impact of contextualized practice on second language (L2) learners' production of wh-questions in the L2 classroom. It examined the quality of practice (correct vs. incorrect production) and the contribution of declarative knowledge to proceduralization. Thirty-four university-level English as a foreign language learners…

This study examined accuracy on syllable-final (coda) consonants in newly-learned English-like nonwords to determine whether school-aged bilingual children may be more vulnerable to making errors on English-only codas than their monolingual, English-speaking peers, even at a stage in development when phonological accuracy in productions of…

The aim of the present study is to compare the writing products of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university students using accuracy and grammatical complexity as measures. It also aims at examining the development of the morphological, syntactic, lexical, spelling, and punctuation errors committed by these learners when writing in English.…

The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine spelling acquisition in French children with developmental language disorder (DLD) over a school year. Through a fine-grained spelling error analysis, we investigated whether spelling profiles could be established in the DLD population. This study comprised three groups: a typically developing (TD)…

This study investigates pragmatic development among Chinese EFL learners, with reference to accuracy improvement in grammar. Sixty college students in mainland China were pre- and post-tested on their pragmatic and grammatical comprehension and production over one academic year. Their test results were compared with those of 14 native English…

The current study longitudinally examined the influence of aptitude on second language (L2) pronunciation development when 40 first-year Japanese university students engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms over one academic year. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited at the beginning, middle,…