Structural priming studies in production have demonstrated stronger priming effects for unexpected sentence structures (inverse preference effect). This is consistent with error-based implicit learning accounts that assume learning depends on prediction error. Such prediction error can be verb-specific, leading to strong priming when a verb that…

Contrastive focus, conveyed by prosodic cues, marks important information. Studies have shown that 6-year-olds learning English and Japanese can use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension: focus used in a "contrastive context" facilitates the identification of a target referent (speeding up processing), whereas focus used…

The research on interpreting aptitude has focused on the abilities, skills and personal traits of individuals in order to predict their future interpreting performance. However, an important variable between the personal characteristics and success of trainee interpreters in interpreter training, which is instructional practices, is overlooked.…

The debate on how to understand such expressions of multiplication entailing "times" as "n times more than" and "increase (by) n times" has been on and off in China since the 1980s. A review of literature seems to suggest that despite early-stage divergence in understanding, there is a general consensus among the…

This study investigates pragmatic development among Chinese EFL learners, with reference to accuracy improvement in grammar. Sixty college students in mainland China were pre- and post-tested on their pragmatic and grammatical comprehension and production over one academic year. Their test results were compared with those of 14 native English…