Background: Bilingual assessment is particularly difficult in the very first period of children's second language (L2) exposure. This exploratory, longitudinal study examined L2 learning after 1 and 2 years of L2 exposure by young immigrants and how it is affected by their age at first exposure to the L2 (AoE). Method: Participants were 18…

Spelling errors are typically thought of as an "effect" of a word's weak orthographic representation in an individual mind. What if existence of spelling errors is a partial "cause" of effortful orthographic learning and word recognition? We selected words that had homophonic substandard spelling variants of varying frequency…

Our study examines written corrective feedback generated by two online grammar checkers (GCs), Grammarly and Virtual Writing Tutor, and by the grammar checking function of Microsoft Word. We tested the technology on a wide range of grammatical error types from two sources: a set of authentic ESL compositions and a series of simple sentences we…

The current study investigated whether shared phonology across languages activates cross-language meaning when reading in context. Eighty-five bilinguals read English sentences while their eye movements were tracked. Critical sentences contained English members of English-French interlingual homophone pairs (e.g., "mow"; French homophone…

Written expression is an essential skill to actively function in today's society. For many learners, especially those with a learning disability (LD), writing can be a source of frustration. Technology in its various forms, holds promise to assist students in this area. The current study examines the role that tablet technology, specifically,…