Possessive determiners (PDs) "his" and "her" are challenging for L2 learners to acquire, and this difficulty has been attributed to several factors, including negative L1 transfer effects (White et al., 2007). What researchers have not yet considered is how PDs are acquired by learners whose L1 predicts positive transfer…

The present study investigated how Cantonese speakers learning English as a second language (L2) would comprehend English irony and whether their L2 proficiency and use would moderate their irony processing. Thirty Cantonese speakers with differing English proficiency (intermediate vs advanced) were asked to complete an irony comprehension task in…

Research on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes has yielded mixed results regarding their impact on students' language learning, drawing attention to the role of CLIL teachers. This study draws on teacher language awareness research to explore secondary subject content teachers' language-related pedagogical practices when…

The current study examined how two groups of native speakers--monolingual Canadians and multilingual Singaporeans--differentially perceive foreign accentedness in spontaneous second language (L2) speech. The Singaporean raters, who had exposure to various models of English and also spoke multiple L2s on a daily basis, demonstrated more lenient…

This paper contributes to the literature on the transferability of grapho-morphological awareness (GMA) for second language (L2) learners by analysing L2 learners' knowledge of morphology in reading. GMA helps readers to identify grammatical categories, infer meanings of unfamiliar words, and access stored lexical information. Previous research…