Over the past 15 years, the L2 motivational self system (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009) has been a dominant framework in the field of second language (L2) motivation. Yet, since the model's introduction, there has been a theoretical discordance between the two components associated with future self-images (the ideal L2 self and the ought-to L2 self) and the…

The use of linking or glottalization contributes to the characteristic sound pattern of a language, and the use of one in place of the other may affect a speaker's comprehensibility and fluency in certain contexts. In this study, native speakers of Czech, a language that is associated with a frequent use of glottalization in vowel-initial word…

Although Japan spends vast amount of money every year on English education and Japanese university students study and are exposed to oral English for several years, there still persists a hesitance to use and speak English. This paper looks at educational policy in Japan and the adoption of the native-speaker model in Japan. Although the…

Research on linguistic variation suggests that usage patterns are deeply embedded in native and non-native speakers' knowledge of grammar. This study explores the transfer of these variable sociolinguistic patterns at the initial stages of third language acquisition. We elicited narratives in Portuguese from two mirror-image groups of sequential…

This study aimed to investigate the timecourse and neural underpinnings of the coding of radical positions in Chinese character reading. To isolate effects of radical positions, four types of pseudocharacters were created in which the constituent radicals appeared in positions varying in probability of occurrence, that is, Unique, Dominant,…

The goal of the present study was to extend the models explaining the missing-letter effect (MLE) to an additional language and orthography, and to test the role of phonology in silent reading in Arabic. We also examined orthographic effects such as letter position and letter shape, morphological effects such as pseudo-prefixes, and phonological…

Second language (L2) request production has long been a central area of inquiry in interlanguage pragmatics, including how L2 learners mitigate their requests and whether such strategies correspond to or differ from those of first language (L1) speakers. Methodologically, such research often involves elicited speech and tends to isolate the speech…

The number of heritage language learners in American universities is increasing each year. Similar to monolingual students, this subgroup of learners is required to complete university level "foreign language" coursework, which can be a source of anxiety. Particularly, this subgroup of learners may experience high levels of anxiety due…

In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present…

The globalization trend has raised various issues in the field of English language teaching (ELT) for both language teachers and learners (Norton, "TESOL Quarterly" 31(3):409-429, 1997). Since the reality of English as an international language (EIL) has started to emerge, the traditional native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS)…

With a background in the teaching of Spanish in the US and the teaching of English abroad, the authors had spent a great deal of time contemplating both linguistic diversity and the internationalization of college campuses. Considering that we found ourselves studying TESOL and had an opportunity to design our own English language course for…

This paper describes a project that aimed to leverage the students' interest and experience of technology and multimodal environments to develop their academic writing skills and second language learning. Students were expected to follow a model, research a topic, and craft a digital video tutorial on an aspect of academic writing which would form…

Here we report findings from a cross-sectional study of morphosyntactic processing in native German speakers and native English speakers enrolled in college-level German courses. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while participants read sentences that were either well-formed or violated German subject-verb agreement. Results showed that…

The aim of the study was to elucidate whether and how reliance on a second language impacts the learning of new information under very basic learning conditions. The paradigm used to investigate this issue required individuals to learn a series of associations between numerals and particular letter strings. Participants were two groups of…

Among various study topics of advanced second language (L2) learners, mental lexicon shares a unique significance. This paper will introduce a comparative experiment between advanced Chinese English as a Second Language (CESL) learners and English as first language (EL1) speakers. The research question of the study is whether advanced CESL…