A tension exists between rationalists and empiricists regarding the nature of knowledge: innate then activated/discovered (rationalists) or constructed then invented (empiricists). The assumption is that, to a certain extent, basic knowledge seems to be innate in our mind and develops through experience by thinking processes to construct meanings.…

Grammar teaching and learning is an important component to get mastery over any language. English language is being taught as first, second or foreign language in many countries. Consider whether inductive or deductive teaching is more effective for learning English grammar as a second language is a topic for contemplation. This study aimed to…

We evaluate the impact of gestures during the teaching of vocabulary in a foreign language (FL). Spanish speakers learned words in a FL in four gesture conditions according to the relationship between the meaning of the words and the gestures (congruent gestures, incongruent gestures, gestures without meaning, and no gestures). The participants…

This study investigates the distribution and challenges of verb inflection usage among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at Tadulako University, focusing on regular verb inflection namely the use of suffixes such as -ed, -s, -ing, and -en suffixes as well as irregular verbs such as ablaut, suppletion, and zero modification in tenses and…

Given the importance of collocational knowledge for second language learning, how collocation learning can be facilitated is an important question. The present study examined the effects of three different practice schedules on collocation learning: node massed, collocation massed, and collocation spaced. In the node-massed schedule, three…

Reporting verbs (RVs) are commonly used features in academic texts. While college textbook authors are less likely to be transparent about their views, they frequently employ RVs to signal their attitudes about the claims and findings of others. University students, particularly those placed in transitional reading courses, however, may have…

This study investigated the relative ease or difficulty of grammar commonly taught in intermediate (second-year) German at the university level. Previous studies have investigated the ease or difficulty of specific grammar structures, factors that make it difficult to learn L2 grammar, and teachers' and learners' perceptions of difficult grammar.…

The study compares English dependent prepositions of the verbs agree, apply, and die shown in English language coursebooks and a corpus. It also suggests English prepositional verbs and their dependent prepositions that are suitable for teaching to L1 Thai learners and a method that should be employed for the instruction. The data were collected…

Purpose: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have well-documented verb learning difficulties. In this study, we asked whether the inclusion of retrieval practice during the learning period would facilitate these children's verb learning relative to a similar procedure that provided no retrieval opportunities. Method: Eleven…

Young children are conservative when extending novel verbs to novel exemplars. We investigated whether multiple, simultaneously presented exemplars would aid young children's verb learning, as well as the importance of exemplar variability. Three-year-olds were taught novel verbs, while viewing either one action-scene featuring a novel action…

In order to facilitate the instruction and acquisition of EFL writing, this paper compares the uses of the light verb "get" in English writing by Chinese and L1 undergraduates by drawing on insights from the theory of norms and exploitations (TNE). Corpus pattern analysis (CPA) is conducted to analyze the data taken from two comparable…

Usage-based theory has proposed that learning of linguistic constructions is facilitated by input that contains few high-frequency exemplars, in what is known as a skewed (or Zipfian) input distribution. Early empirical work provided support to this idea, but subsequent L2 research has provided mixed findings. However, previous approaches have not…

The aim of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of teaching English grammar tense based on the concept of two English grammar tenses, past and present. The focus group is EFL/ESL learners of English. Prior research in the area of EFL/ESL teaching reveals that a number of teachers, linguists, and publishers of EFL/ESL texts claim that…

This study investigates the capacity of elementary-level Chinese second language learners to memorize serial verb sentences based on the results of a questionnaire. Our findings show that adult second language learners employ the concept of temporal sequence in language learning, consciously or unconsciously, whether or not the chronological…

This study investigates the effectiveness of the PACE approach (Adair-Hauck & Donato, 2002) for grammar teaching in beginning (novice mid/high) second language (L2) Spanish classes. Even though research has reported instructional benefits for PACE in L2 French (Groenveld, 2011), Alutiiq (Branson, 2015), and ESL (Harris, 2017; Ngo, 2018), to…