The study intended to describe profiles of three achievement emotions (enjoyment, boredom, anxiety), their associations with each other and with control-value appraisals within the framework of the control-value theory. A total of 2002 Chinese university EFL students from 11 universities in China participated in the questionnaire survey.…

This longitudinal study (data collected from 2019 to 2023) examines the relation between Spanish-English bilingual Latino toddlers' (n=46; F=22; M=24) early gesture production (Mage=18.67 months; SD[subscript age]=1.02) and later language skills (M[subscript age]=36.87 months; SD[subscript age]=0.81). Video recordings at child-age 18-months…

The current study investigates how foreign language enjoyment (FLE), foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and attitude/motivation (AM) of 360 learners of English, German, French and Spanish in a Kuwaiti university was shaped over the course of one semester by three teacher behaviours: frequency of using the foreign language (FL) in class,…

Second language (L2) grammar learning is difficult. Two frameworks--the psycholinguistic lexical bottleneck hypothesis and the neurocognitive declarative/procedural model--predict that faster L2 lexical processing should facilitate L2 incidental grammar learning. We tested these predictions in a pretest-posttest syntactic adaptation study of…

This study adopted a three-wave random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to explore the longitudinal reciprocal relationships between social support and engagement in EFL learning among Chinese high school students. Two samples, including 3505 students (Sample 1 = 1794; Sample 2 = 1711), were tracked with their perceived social support…

This study investigated the relationship between working memory (WM), semantic-encoding (SE) ability, and reading comprehension (RC) within the domain of second language acquisition (L2). 120 L1-Persian EFL learners were placed in three proficiency groups (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) based on their scores on the IELTS test. The…

Recent studies have suggested that language aptitude is a domain-general and flexible trait to acquire foreign languages, regarding various cognitive abilities such as memory systems as its crucial components. Despite a growing interest in working memory, however, much remains unknown about the impact of associative memory on language aptitude.…

This study investigates how speakers of Mandarin interpret negative sentences with the conjunction ("he" 'and'). Our experiments test three predictions that follow from the proposal that the Mandarin conjunction is a positive polarity item (PPI) for both children and adults. On this account, the Mandarin conjunction should be interpreted…

This study examined whether students' perceived social interactions within different learning activities predicted their willingness to communicate (WTC) in second language (L2) classrooms. The sample was 932 undergraduate students from 8 universities learning English as a foreign language. Data of student-perceived social interactions in…

This article compares metalinguistic awareness among emerging bilingual and multilingual learners of English in Norwegian primary school. Participants were 120 students in grades 5-7 (aged 10-13) attending mainstream English classes in Norway and were divided into three groups based on a linguistic background questionnaire: an L1 Norwegian group,…

While it has been shown that socioeconomic status (SES) is important for children's literacy development in their first language (L1), less is known about its association with reading in a second language (L2). The present study examined the different effects of SES on the acquisition of reading in Chinese as L1 and English as L2 from ages 7 to…

Morphological analysis is a form of problem solving to work out the meanings of unfamiliar words by applying knowledge of morphemes. It has emerged recently as an important predictor of reading comprehension. However, while gamification can potentially be used to teach this skill, few studies have examined its use. To address this, a…

Language learner engagement, which is receiving increased attention, has predominantly focused on offline classroom contexts, while learner engagement in language Massive Open Online Courses (LMOOCs) remains under-explored. This study was conducted on a College English MOOC with the purpose of examining learner engagement and its relations with…

In recent years, online courses have become a prevalent mode of study in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university education. Student engagement is widely recognized as a key factor that influences students' quality of learning and academic achievement. This study explored the predictive impacts of self-efficacy, teacher support, and positive…

Immersive learning plays a crucial role in effective second language (L2) acquisition, but many learners face limited opportunities to interact with native speakers. While existing research highlights the importance of immersion in L2 learning, there is still a gap in understanding how Generative AI (GenAI) can provide greater access to such…