Previous masked translation priming studies, especially those with different-script bilinguals, have shown that cognates provide more priming than noncognates, a difference attributed to cognates' phonological similarity. In our experiments employing a word naming task, we examined this issue for Chinese-Japanese bilinguals in a slightly different…

The positive effects of bi-modal input on language learning are becoming a largely accepted experimental finding. However, experiments looking at bi-modal reading in a foreign language are normally limited by the common experimental situation of classroom-based researchers studying university age participants for the limited timespan of a…

When a newsmaker (i.e., a newsworthy subject) is speaking or being spoken about in a foreign language, quoting requires translation. In such "translingual quoting" (Haapanen, 2017), it is not only the content of the speech but also its translatability that determines newsworthiness. While news media in some countries prefer indirect…

Laufer (1988) introduced the concept of synform errors, where second language (L2) learners confuse a word for a different but similar looking or sounding L2 word. Stubbe and Cochrane (2016) reported that of 1,187 commonly repeated errors on a Japanese to English non-contextual translation test, 461 were synform errors (39%). This study introduces…

One of the many challenges facing Japanese university students studying English is the multi-word phrase. The English language contains a large number of such multiple-word items, which act as single words with a single meaning. This study is concerned with evaluating the efficacy of yes/no checklist tests to assess knowledge of multi-word units.…

This article examines the issue of cognates in frequency-based vocabulary size testing. Data from a pilot study for a cognate-controlled English vocabulary size test was used to assess whether a group of Japanese university English learners (n = 60) were more successful at responding to cognate items than noncognate ones in three 1000 word…