The current study examined the extent to which first language (L1) utterance fluency measures can predict second language (L2) fluency and how L2 proficiency moderates the relationship between L1 and L2 fluency. A total of 104 Japanese-speaking learners of English completed different argumentative speech tasks in their L1 and L2. Their speaking…

This study investigated the relative contributions of English morphological and vocabulary knowledge to second language (L2) reading comprehension among 100 adult Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. The study also investigated the extent to which the roles of morphological and vocabulary knowledge in L2 reading comprehension…

English as a foreign language students in Japan learned target words in word pairs receptively and productively. Five aspects of vocabulary knowledge--orthography, association, syntax, grammatical functions, and meaning and form--were each measured by receptive and productive tests. The study uses an innovative methodology in that each target word…

This essay mainly discusses the following issue: Do people from different cultures store English words in their minds in different ways; and what elements determine people's mental lexicon? The findings from my experiment showed that cultural factors only play a minor role on this stage. The leading dominants in this light are the linguistic…

In the componential approach to modelling reading ability, a number of contributory factors have been empirically validated. However, research on their relative contribution to explaining performance on second language reading tests is limited. Furthermore, the contribution of knowledge of syntax has been largely ignored in comparison with the…

This study investigates the effect of a cross-cultural bilingual communication project on students' second language learning. A collaborative key-pal project was conducted between Japanese university students learning English and Canadian university students learning Japanese. Ethnographic data were collected from the students' exchanged messages…

This paper describes one college-level English-as-a-Second-Language teacher's use of error analysis in an effort to understand students' problems with reading comprehension and writing. The research was undertaken in a Japanese junior college. Three studies are presented. In the first, 59 students in a general English course listed sentences they…