When inferring the meaning of unknown words in a second language, learners make use of a variety of cues including the cross-linguistic formal similarities of loanwords and cognates. However, because learners do not always recognize these cross-linguistic relationships, cognate strategy training has been recommended. The present study investigated…

The objectives of this research article were to study the relations of Sanskrit to English, to investigate English words identified as of Sanskrit origin which are loanwords in the Thai language and to explore the effects of using WordWall gamification for English words of Sanskrit origin in Thai learning. The samples consisted of seven master's…

Clipping is a word formation process in which a word is reduced/shortened to one of its parts as in exam, math, grad, lab, Sue while still retaining the same meaning and same part of speech. Clipping is classified into: (i) Initial clipping: phone (telephone), net (Internet); (ii) Medial clipping: fancy (fantasy), ma'am (madam); (iii) back…

This study was an investigation into the aural and written receptive knowledge of the English semantics of English lexis that is loanwords in the Japanese language and the predictive strength of the variables of semantic distance, concreteness/abstractness, polysemy, phonological distance, number of syllables, number of phonemes, number of…

The discussion of African languages as languages of learning and teaching can be traced back to the 1980s. To date, this discussion still continues and efforts to intellectualise African languages have been lax. Here, we present practical South African examples of higher education achievements in African languages that demonstrate the challenges…

A sample of political expressions that have been common in Arab media since the Arab Spring in 2011 was collected from TV newscasts, online news websites and social media pages. Analysis of their structure, denotative and connotative meanings revealed the following features: (i) Use of lexical hybrids ([foreign characters omitted]; (ii) revival of…

This study explores English for specific purposes learners' understanding of technical words in a previously-developed technical word list in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The principal aim was to estimate what kind of technical terms pose problems to TCM learners and might therefore merit special attention in instruction. Of particular…

This non-experimental study gauged the English lexical preferences of 545 native Japanese university students. Specifically, this univariate design collated the frequency of English loanword selection in preference to non-borrowed lexical items. A major focus of the study design was instrument validity, addressing the flaws of two previous studies…

This dissertation explores existing paraphrase pedagogies and the linguistic and rhetorical dimensions of expertly produced paraphrases in order to move both teachers and multilingual writers toward a balanced conception of acceptable academic paraphrase. Pedagogical treatments of paraphrase in a set of writing handbooks designed for students…

This article provides preliminary validity evidence for the shorter Mandarin version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) under the content aspect, technical quality, substantive and generalizability aspect of Messick's (1995) construct validity framework. The shorter version with 177 Chinese university students in three proficiency levels indicates…

This paper reports the investigation on the students' competence in identifying stress patterns of English polysyllabic loanwords, measured in the form of stress marking on a written test, in relation to their actual performance in two oral-reading tasks: (1) reading the target loanwords in English sentences, and (2) reading those words in…

This study introduced the specific purpose translation teaching to Indonesian undergraduate students at Universitas Al-Azhar Medan, Indonesia. The courses were attended by the Business and Economics students who are new to translation. As parallel corpus, bilingual contract documents in Indonesian and English were chosen to help the students to…

Though the topic enjoys a general currency within informal scholarly debate, this is the first linguistic study to explore the nature and extent of the use of English in Omani EIL students' everyday lives. It delineates the social factors that influence this use and offers a data-driven analysis of the most frequently found linguistic patterns and…

English and Arabic have different word formation processes with which translation students must be familiar. Results of a needs-assessment questionnaire showed that junior translation students almost had no knowledge of English word formation processes such as compounding, derivation, back formation, conversion, extension, blending, clipping,…

"Reading in Asian Languages" is rich with information about how literacy works in the non-alphabetic writing systems (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) used by hundreds of millions of people and refutes the common Western belief that such systems are hard to learn or to use. The contributors share a comprehensive view of reading as construction…