This paper reports on ongoing research aimed at characterizing a signature pedagogy (Shulman, 2005) of technology-enhanced task-based language teaching (TETBLT). To achieve this goal, we initially identified 15 pedagogical principles and practices distinctive of TETBLT. This initial set of principles and practices were motivated by second language…

This article argues for the possibility and importance of infusing frame semantic insights into task-based lesson planning. "Frame semantics," a cognitive linguistic theory that takes a usage-based view of meaning, ties in with task-based language teaching (TBLT), which emphasizes second or foreign language learning through…

Based on Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, Lakoff's definition and Prince et al.'s classification of hedges, this paper takes New York Times and China Daily from January 23rd to April 8th, 2020 as corpus sources, randomly selects 39 COVID-19 reports, and makes a contrastive study of hedges among them, aiming at exploring the similarities and…

Linguistic meaning is generated by the mind and can be expressed in multiple languages. One may assume that equivalent texts/utterances in two languages by means of translation generate equivalent meanings in their readers/hearers. This follows if we assume that meaning calculated from the linguistic input is solely objective in nature. However,…

Second language acquisition (SLA) research offers valuable insight on how languages are learned and how they coexist and influence each other. Sign language learners offer unique perspectives on SLA, allowing researchers to test theories that are otherwise constrained by access to only one modality. Current literature on sign language learning…

This qualitative phenomenological study examined how 11 international students experienced learning English within an intensive English immersion program, which used an integrated skills approach for language learning. Participants included seven males and four females from Africa, Asia, Central America, Middle East, and South America. Drawing on…

The term "communicative competence" captures the notion that the ability to use language in interaction requires not just control of linguistic form but also awareness of rules of use in different contexts (Hymes, 1972). Communicative competence is a slippery term: different actors in second language (L2) research, education, and…

In this commentary, I discuss why, despite the existence of gradience in phonetics and phonology, there is still a need for abstract representations. Most proponents of exemplar models assume multiple levels of abstraction, allowing for an integration of the gradient and the categorical. Ben Ambridge's dismissal of generative models such as…

There are several theories which tackle predicting the source of third language (L3) crosslinguistic influence. The two orthogonal questions that arise are which language is most likely to influence the L3 and whether the influence will be wholesale or piecemeal (property-by-property). To my mind, Westergaard's Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM) is…

The concept of bias is familiar to linguists primarily from the literature on questions. Following the work of Giannakidou and Mari (Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought: Modality, Mood, and Propositional Attitudes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021), we assume "nonveridical equilibrium" (implying that p and ¬p as equal…

According to the Presupposition-Denial Account, complement set reference arises when focus is on the "shortfall" between the amount conveyed by a natural language quantifier and a larger, expected amount. Negative quantifiers imply a shortfall, through the denial of a presupposition, whereas positive quantifiers do not. An exception may…

Speech is extremely variable along many different dimensions. One source of variability listeners often encounter is accented speech, in which phonological units can systematically differ from the listener's native categories. This dissertation presents five experiments testing how listeners adapt to accent-based phonological variability,…

The world of Carroll's Wonderland narratives, in which language tests its own limits, overlaps with Wittgenstein's world of counterexample, and such convergence becomes most overt in Wittgenstein's example of a nonsensical scale in his "Philosophical Investigations" (§142). Wittgenstein does not find much use for such a scale, but in…

Since its first adoption as a computational model for language learning, evidence has accumulated that Rescorla-Wagner error-correction learning (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) captures several aspects of language processing. Whereas previous studies have provided general support for the Rescorla-Wagner rule by using it to explain the behavior of…

This study explores the bases of achievement invoked by teachers when assessing students' work in the context of a bilingual education program where academic subjects are taught through English as a foreign language. During a professional development seminar, teachers judged samples of students' writing in response to tasks that elicited the three…