Research has noted that virtual reality (VR) environments can lessen language learners' foreign language anxiety (FLA). However, previous research has relied primarily on participants' qualitative opinions, leading to a lack of studies empirically assessing how VR impacts anxiety and, consequently, second language (L2) oral production. This pilot…

Over past decades, there has been a paradigm shift in WL instruction, moving away from traditional, grammar-based programs and toward instruction that promotes student proficiency in the target language. Despite this growing attention to proficiency-based instruction, few studies have investigated the relationship between proficiency-based…

An important part of the grammatical proficiency of students learning Turkish as a foreign language is the use of verb complements in terms of case suffixes used with verbs. The suffixes that determine the relations between nouns and verbs that make up the two main word categories of Turkish are case suffixes. Noun case suffixes, whose main…

The research built on the anthropological approach to text comprehension links philosophical and psycholinguistic perspectives of speech perception. The article analyzes the factors influencing adequate comprehension when perceiving foreign language oral speech, in terms of testees' approximately similar level of language competence and…

Several researchers (e.g., Allen & Paesani, 2010; Maxim, 2009; MLA Report, 2007) argue that the language-literature divide limits language development in many foreign language departments and that the speaking skill is the most affected by this common two-tiered curriculum (Swender, 2003). This study investigates the implementation of the…

The ability to speak in a second language (L2) requires a certain level of linguistic proficiency, but the ability to "live" in a second language requires a certain level of "sociolinguistic" proficiency. L2 sociolinguistic variables present acquisitional challenges for language learners, since informal discourse features are…

Purpose: This study investigated the extent to which comprehension monitoring in children's first and second language predicts reading comprehension. Method: Children's ability to detect inconsistencies in orally presented stories was measured by response to a judgment question about whether the story made sense and by the identification of the…

Feature-based approaches to acquisition principally focus on second language (L2) learners' ability to perceive non-native consonants when the features required are either contrastively present or entirely absent from the first language (L1) grammar. As features may function contrastively or allophonically in the consonant and/or vowel systems of…

This study tested the effects of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French words on the pronunciation of these words by 7- to 8-year-old Catalan children. In a short training experiment with a pre- and posttest design, 28 children either repeated cognate words in French (e.g. French "aspirateur," Catalan "aspirador"…

Foreign language learning is highly interactive and requires opportunities for academic speaking. The focus of this paper is how foreign language undergraduate students experienced this process in an online learning context. Through semi-structured interviews with seven undergraduate French, German and Spanish students, participants highlighted…

Communication strategies (CSs) have been generally viewed as ways in which learners may circumvent, and ideally overcome, communicative difficulties. However, over 40 years of research in this area has been largely confined to theory and experimental studies, and it is not clear to what extent CS research has filtered into contemporary second…

This study builds upon previous research investigating the construct validity of phraseological complexity as an index of L2 development and proficiency. Whereas previous studies have focused on cross-sectional comparisons of written productions across proficiency levels, the current study compares the "longitudinal" development of…

The present study investigated the effects of different types of form-focused instruction (FFI) on the acquisition of French grammatical gender attribution. A quasi-experimental study was conducted with 140 participants in six intact French as a second language (L2) classes. The classes received six 80-minute instructional sessions consisting of…

French Immersion instruction has often focused on the development of oral language as the primary method of early literacy learning. Manitoba Education endorses this focus with its curricular emphasis on oral language acquisition before formal reading and writing instruction. This article examines the role of early years French immersion teachers…

This study examined the effect of benchmarking and peer-assessment activities on second language (L2) French learners' self-assessments of accentedness, comprehensibility, and fluency. The learners, who included 25 L2 French students enrolled in a 15-week university-level French course, recorded two oral presentations at the beginning and the end…