Lexical bundles (LBs) are frequent groups of words that appear repeatedly in different academic texts. A plethora of research has explored their distribution and usage in general, particularly in academic texts. However, to our knowledge, the extent of research investigating LBs in the discussion sections of Medical Research Articles (MRAs) is…

Comparing language tests and test preparation materials holds important implications for the latter's validity and reliability. However, not enough studies compare such materials across a wide range of indices. Therefore, this study investigated the text complexity of IELTS academic reading tests (IRT) and IELTS reading practice tests (IRPrT).…

This brief report provides an analysis of 114 research articles across 27 issues published in the "Journal of Language, Identity, and Education" (JLIE) between 2015 and 2019 (Volumes 14-18). Analyses include word frequencies across titles, keywords, and abstracts; degree of integration of language, identity, and education in the…

The practice of extensive reading (ER) is widely recognised as an effective approach to language acquisition, facilitating vocabulary expansion, text comprehension, and reading fluency. This study examines the role of ER in enhancing these aspects, offering a structured analysis of its impact on language learning. Drawing upon Krashen's Input…

The vocabulary content of the French MFL curriculum in England has received criticism (Häcker, M. 2008. Eleven pets and 20 ways to express one's opinion: the vocabulary learners of German acquire at English secondary schools. "The Language Learning Journal" 36, no. 2: 215-26; Tschichold, C. 2012. French vocabulary in Encore…

The awarding organizations that create and administer high-stakes assessments for beginner-to-low-intermediate 16-year-old learners of French, German, and Spanish in England provide optional topic-driven word lists as guides for teachers and textbook writers. Given that these lists are developed by the awarding organizations, they exert a powerful…

Japanese graduate school students in the field of science and engineering need to read academic research in their second language (L2), and such tasks can be challenging. Studies showed a strong (0.78) correlation between vocabulary size and reading comprehension (McLean et al., 2020), and providing high-frequency word lists could enhance…

Given that formulaic sequences play an important role in enhancing L2 learners' academic writing skills and that phraseological sequences constitute a large proportion of written discourse, the current study was an attempt to draw up a list of key phrase frames--phraseological sequences with a variable slot--in a corpus of research articles (RAs)…

A lack of technical vocabulary is a major problem for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learners in a foreign setting. In this paper, we argue for using word lists to help learners expand their technical lexis repertoire. Therefore, we propose English word lists in three disciplines constructed from compiled corpora--the Tourism Business Word…

In order to provide "a common basis for the elaboration of language syllabuses, curriculum guidelines, examinations, textbooks, etc. across Europe", The Common European Framework for Languages (CEFR) was published in 2001 by the Council of Europe. It has affected the way languages are taught, learnt and assessed and also how foreign…

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between frequency and language acquisition from many perspectives including implicit and explicit instruction, frequency effects on morpheme acquisition in L2, the relationship between frequency and multi-word constructions, frequency effects on phonetics, vocabulary, gerund and infinitive…

This study demonstrates how native and learner corpora can enhance modal verb treatment in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) textbooks used in mainland China. Data analysis compares modal verbs in the textbook and native corpus by referring to distributional features, semantic functions and co-occurring constructions; and the analysis of the…

Age of acquisition (AoA) refers to the age at which people learn a particular item and the AoA effect refers to the phenomenon that early-acquired items are processed more quickly and accurately than those acquired later. Over several decades, the AoA effect has been investigated using neuroscientific, behavioral, corpus and computational…

This article reviews studies on teaching Chinese as a second or foreign language (CSL/CFL) inside and outside Mainland China. In the review process, we analyzed a total of 1358 Chinese language articles and 175 English language articles from CNKI [Chinese characters omitted] and Web of Science, respectively, during the period from 2004 to 2016. By…

English phrasal verbs (PVs) are ubiquitous and often polysemous. These lexical items are thus very important, but also challenging for ESL/EFL learners. Substantial research that can inform instructional approaches to PVs has already been conducted. One strand of this research has focused on identifying PVs that merit prioritization in learning.…