This relational survey study aims to determine the relationship between the attitudes of students learning Turkish as a second language towards Turkish culture and their social cohesion. The participants were determined by criterion sampling. 189 international learners studying Turkish at various Turkish universities participated in the study. The…

Previous studies on bilingual children have shown a significant correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) morphological awareness and a unique contribution of morphological awareness in one language to reading performance in the other language, suggesting cross-linguistic influence. However, few studies have compared…

The Bottleneck Hypothesis argues that properties of inflectional morphology explain why second-language learners may face persistent difficulties in articulating meaning in target-language forms. In particular, the acquisition task proves even harder when first and second languages differ in the way they organize the mapping of functional features…

Memorization is essential when new knowledge is based on association with existing knowledge. It is key in acquiring logographic languages, such as Chinese and Japanese. Such languages present challenges to students possessed of alphabet-based mother tongues. To meet these challenges, we discuss a technology-enhanced learning method to address the…

This study aims at testing the generalisability of Marsh's Internal/External (I/E) frame of reference model as well as its Dimensional Comparison Theory (DCT) extension in a sample of United Arab Emirates (UAE) high school students. Relationship between self-concept and achievement in Arabic, English and mathematics were explored. A sample of 990…

By adopting a usage-based approach to language acquisition, this study investigated the emergence and development of L2 constructional knowledge. A total of 19 English verb-argument constructions (VACs) and their associated verbs were extracted from a learner corpus and three verbal fluency tasks, each conducted in L1 and L2 English and L1 Korean.…

We present a proof-of-concept study that sketches the use of compression algorithms to assess Kolmogorov complexity, which is a text-based, quantitative, holistic, and global measure of structural surface redundancy. Kolmogorov complexity has been used to explore cross-linguistic complexity variation in linguistic typology research, but we are the…

This article reports on an investigation into the bilingual development of literacy skills in Portuguese heritage language speakers in Switzerland in which we sought to put Cummins' linguistic interdependence hypothesis to the test. Three predictions were derived from this hypothesis: (1) Literacy skill levels in one of the bilinguals' languages…

This study aimed to clarify the relations between morphological awareness and literacy skills in Spanish and English in young simultaneous bilingual learners. Guided by theoretical perspectives on the associations between morphological awareness and word- versus sentence-level literacy skills, and their transfer between bilinguals' two languages,…

In this dissertation, I investigated how cognitive resources as well as formal, and informal language experience impact language learning in two studies. In the first study (Chapter 2), I examined the learning of Spanish grammatical gender by Chinese international students who were studying abroad in the US. The goal of that study was to uncover…

This article reports the findings of a study in which we investigated the possible effects of word order on the acquisition of case marking. In linguistic typology (e.g. Greenberg, 1963) a very strong correlation has been shown between dominant SOV (subject object verb) word order and case marking. No such correlation exists for SVO (subject verb…

This quantitative study focuses on the relationship between foreign language learners' aptitude and proficiency test scores. Four groups of 136 beginning students received six months of Initial Acquisition Training (IAT) in four different language categories, according to the level of complexity for an English speaker: French (Category I),…

Purpose: This study explored a technological contribution to education made by the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) in the formative assessment field. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to identify the relationship between online formative (Online Diagnostic Assessment; ODA) and summative (Defense…

The present meta-analysis examined the overall average correlation (weighted for sample size and corrected for measurement error) between passage-level second language (L2) reading comprehension and 10 key reading component variables investigated in the research domain. Four high-evidence correlates (with 18 or more accumulated effect sizes: L2…

This study aims to examine the relationship between bilingual experience and children's development of morphological and morpho-syntactic awareness. To capture both universal and language-specific bilingual effects, the study included four groups of participants: English-speaking children from a general education programme, Spanish-speaking and…