Examining the reasons for the increasing number of Iranians learning German and creating of a first theoretical basis for that is the subject of this paper. In this regard, 370 Iranian learners of German from the German Language Institute in Tehran were questioned and their motivations were studied mainly based on the theory of "L2…

The present research examined the changes in Chinese university students' motivation to learn German during a 16-week semester. Analyses of the data showed that both at the beginning and toward the end of the semester, the participants held (fairly) positive attitudes towards German, were motivated to learn the language mainly for integrative and…

Whether or not to use students' native language (L1) in second or foreign language classes has always been debated by many scholars and researchers. This controversial issue has taken place in the literature with various case studies and findings. The current study investigates into both students and teachers' perspectives on using L1 in foreign…

Non-native speakers' sensitivity to discourse-level cues in pronoun interpretation has not been widely researched. We carried out three antecedent-choice questionnaire experiments which investigate the impact of focus on within-sentence pronoun resolution in native and non-native speakers of German and native speakers of Russian. Focus was…

A recent surge of findings on bilingual cognitive advantage has attracted attention from both researchers and the media. An advantage has been demonstrated with regard to, inter alia, inhibiting, switching, monitoring and updating. However, Paap et al. argue that the advantage does not exist or is only limited to executive functioning. Both sides…

The present study examines the influence of ambiguity tolerance on the performance of Iranian GFL-learners (Note 1) at level B1 in the processing of gap-filling-text tests. It is assumed that learners with more tolerance of ambiguity achieve better results in the reading comprehension or in the contextual guessing of the omitted words. 34 GFL…

The conveyance of knowledge of the life cycles performed by fungi and plants with spores is a challenge for teaching in university education. The life cycles of fungi, in particular, can be very complex and difficult to understand. This paper presents the development and implementation of a German and English educational software program,…

Research has shown that observing iconic gestures helps typically developing children (TD) and children with specific language impairment (SLI) learn new words. So far, studies mostly compared word learning with and without gestures. The present study investigated word learning under two gesture conditions in children with and without language…

Cook argued that the learning of a new language leads to a state of multi-competence, with the learner's mind changing in ways that go beyond the linguistic realm. The present study follows Dewaele's suggestion that multilingualism is linked to both cognitive and psychological changes. It explores one particular under-researched relationship,…

The perceptual fluency hypothesis claims that items that are easy to perceive at encoding induce an illusion that they will be easier to remember, despite the finding that perception does not generally affect recall. The current set of studies tested the predictions of the perceptual fluency hypothesis with a picture generation manipulation.…

This paper examines possible psycholinguistic mechanisms governing stem vowel changes of irregular verbs in intermediate English learners of German as a foreign language (GFL). In Experiment 1, nonce-infinitives embedded in an authentic fictional text had to be inflected for German preterite, thus testing possible analogy-driven pattern…

This study investigates 128 Chinese college students to examine the effects of their musical aptitude and musical training on phonological production in four foreign languages. Results show that musically-trained students remarkably possessed stronger musical aptitude than those without musical training and performed better than their counterpart…

Purpose: Our purpose was to explore the validity and reliability of the German Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS-G; Thomas-Stonell, Oddson, Robertson, & Rosenbaum, 2010, 2012), which is an authorized adaptation of the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (Thomas-Stonell et al., 2010) tool, which measures…

Person-environment interactions are the main focus in Actiotope Model of Giftedness. This is a very new approach for Turkey, which generally uses old versions of intelligence test for identification. In Actiotope Model of Giftedness instead of cognitive identification the focus is on the resources (educational and learning capital) that provide…

This article describes the theory-informed design of the "ELENA goes shopping" mobile game and reports on the evaluation of its effectiveness through a design research approach. The game aimed to foster young children's (aged 4-8) interest in a neighboring (geographically proximate) language and to familiarize them with its sounds,…