Although lexical diversity is often used as a measure of productive proficiency (e.g., as an aspect of lexical complexity) in SLA studies involving oral tasks, relatively little research has been conducted to support the reliability and/or validity of these indices in spoken contexts. Furthermore, SLA researchers commonly use indices of lexical…

Recent studies in the second language acquisition of negation have focused on polarity items and their licensing contexts. Although several studies show a correlation between higher degrees of second language (L2) proficiency and the acquisition of the target L2 structures, less attention has been given to the relation between the acquisition of…

This paper describes an investigation of the relationship between students' writing knowledge and second language writing performance. Metacognitive and metalinguistic knowledge contribute significantly to writing performance. As a foreign language, 78 undergraduate students took a writing knowledge class and a writing proficiency test. The…

Despite much attention having been paid to foreign language (FL) reading and related variables such as self-efficacy, relatively few studies have focused on young learners, and even fewer on storybooks, arguably the commonest genre read by children worldwide for language learning. As FL learning commences at a young age in many contexts globally,…

This longitudinal case study investigated the developmental trajectories of two participants enrolled in an ITA oral communication course at Purdue University. The course provides language support to the ITA population who play a crucial role in higher education programs in the U.S. (Gorsuch, 2016). Over four months (i.e., one semester), I…

It is generally agreed that first language (L1) morphological awareness, the ability to reflect upon, analyze and manipulate morphemes and morphological structure of words, can transfer and facilitate second language (L2) reading subskill acquisition. However, the facilitative role of L1 morphological awareness is unclear in the literature…

The study examined the impact of a first language's summarizing skill and second language vocabulary size on summary performances in a second language. A total of 40 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners from a Japanese university with a mixed level of English language proficiency were asked to write a summary in English (i.e., their…

Many overseas students in Higher Education in the UK struggle to understand the compulsory texts for their course, and obtain lower scores for their modules than their monolingual peers. While the existence of this achievement gap is well established in the literature, little is known about the ways in which overseas students in HE with limited…

The present study investigated the association between vocabulary size and depth of Iranian EFL learners at different language proficiency levels. Additionally, the extent that this relationship could be different for low-and high-word-frequency bands was probed. In so doing, the Word Associates Test (WAT), the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), the…

While the use of machine translation (MT) in the classroom has been explored from various perspectives, the relationship between language proficiency and MT use regarding learners' behaviors and beliefs remains unclear in the research literature. This study focused on four Japanese learners with various language proficiencies from a fourth-year…

This study examines the influence of pre-departure proficiency on English as a second language (L2) oral development after a semester studying abroad in two distinct learning contexts. The data analysed were collected from tertiary level students (N = 33) who undertook an ERASMUS exchange semester in a European country where English was either the…

Speech fluency has been extensively researched as a core construct for second language (L2) speaking assessment. Despite the broad consensus on its multifaceted nature, few researchers have empirically explored the dimensionality of this construct. Operationalizations of fluency vary across research and practice, using both holistic and…

The sentence repetition (SR) test is considered as a promising diagnostic tool for detecting language proficiency in monolingual learners, but less is known about its potential to identify dual language learners' (DLLs) linguistic proficiency. Considering that challenges with language learning, such as developmental language disorders (DLDs), is…

The goal of this study was to assess the relationships between computational approaches to analyzing constructed responses made during reading and individual differences in the foundational skills of reading in college readers. We also explored if these relationships were consistent across texts and samples collected at different institutions and…

The present study aims to reveal the effects of test type, pronunciation and proficiency levels of the students on speaking test scores. A total of 147 Turkish EFL students consisting of 38 beginner, 36 elementary, 37 pre-intermediate and 36 intermediate levels participated in the study. Presentation as planned, and paired speaking test as…