This dissertation offers a Cognitive Grammar-based approach to teaching cases to L2 German and Russian students and examines the impacts of various methods of case instruction in beginning German and Russian language classes. A CG-based explanation of cases was already proposed by some CG theorists (i.e., Langacker 1987, 1991; Smith 1987, Janda…

We examined the relationship between the quality of second language (L2) learners' language awareness (as shown through dialogue journal entries) and the quality of their L2 pronunciation (as assessed through listener-based ratings of accentedness, comprehensibility, and fluency). The participants were 10 students enrolled in a 13-week…

In order to achieve full native-like competence in a second language, speakers must also acquire sociolinguistic awareness in that language. This paper reports the results of a study investigating the acquisition of sociolinguistic awareness among immigrant Polish adolescents learning English in the UK. This paper asks whether Polish-born…

How can we teach science to English language learners (ELLs) when even our native English speakers have trouble reading the textbook? To help science teachers meet this challenge, this article presents six text-comprehension strategies used by English for Speakers of other Languages (ESOL) teachers: metalinguistic awareness development,…

This article examines sensitivity to structural parallelism in verb phrase ellipsis constructions in English native speakers as well as in three groups of advanced second language (L2) learners. The results of a set of experiments, based on those of Tanenhaus and Carlson (1990), reveal subtle but reliable differences among the various learner…

Corrective feedback has been discussed mainly in second language acquisition contexts, but less has been done concerning corrective feedback in foreign language settings. In this descriptive study, conducted at a Mexican university, our aims were to identify the perceptions of instructors of English as a foreign language about corrective feedback…

In this paper, both a cognitive and a sociocultural theoretical perspective are used to bring together findings from two studies that investigated the effects of instruction designed to enhance the potentially positive effect of peer interaction on L2 development. Despite differences between the studies' learning contexts, participants' age, and…

The present study investigates learning gains resulting from collaborative consciousness-raising (CR) tasks. For this purpose, text reconstruction and text repair tasks, two varieties of CR, were adapted from previous CR studies and administered to EAL (English as an Additional Language) learners in a women's university in South Korea. We…

Using a sociocritical approach to the study of language and literacy and discourse analysis, this article examines student initiated challenges in a sheltered English course with two types of English learners: native+, ESL students; and, recently, arriving ESL students. The analysis draws on 19 hours of video-recorded observations of…

This paper suggests that a dynamic systems theory (DST) provides an adequate conceptual metaphor for discussing multilingual development. Multilingual acquisition is a nonlinear and complex dynamic process depending on a number of interacting factors. Variability plays a crucial role in the multilingual system as it changes over time (Herdina &…

SLA researchers agree that explicit knowledge and learning play an important role in adult L2 development. In the field of cognitive linguistics, it has been proposed that implicit and explicit knowledge differ in terms of their internal category structure and the processing mechanisms that operate on their representation in the human mind. It has…

The self-report questionnaire has served as the primary tool for investigating language maintenance in hundreds of communities over the past 40 years. More recently, it has been employed to investigate language shift amongst first-generation communities where one of the most useful indicators of generational change is the reported pattern of…

This study is an investigation of the extent to which francophone learners of English as a second language (ESL) are aware of the differences between French and English question formation and how such awareness relates to their L2 performance. Three tasks were administered to 58 grades 5 and 6 francophone ESL learners. In a grammaticality…

Student self-transcription can greatly enhance the power of tasks to promote language learning, for it allows students to re-examine their experience freed from the pressure of performing the task itself, so they can notice and reflect on the language used and encountered. This is a powerful step in language development because it allows for…

Bilingual German fourth-graders are expected to develop greater linguistic awareness than monolingual children and therefore should habitually apply different text-processing strategies compared with German monolingual fourth-graders when comprehending and recalling a text. Bilingual children are expected to process texts from the bottom up, from…