Second language listening has historically proved to be a difficult skill. Strategy instruction studies have sought to bring about improvements in subjects' listening but with mixed results. This lack of success might be due to the nature of listening strategy theory and its influence on conceptualizations of listening strategy instruction. The…

This study examines the relationship between how learners of Japanese as a second language perceive the learning of "kanji" (i.e., the logographic characters shared with Chinese) and their ability to learn novel "kanji" words using morphological and contextual information. Eighty college students learning Japanese as a foreign language completed a…

Reports on a two-phase study of second-language learner use of listener feedback, particularly their use of clarification questions in native speaker-nonnative speaker discourse. (29 references) (JL)

This study investigates advanced Japanese language learners' abilities to infer unknown "kanji" (Chinese character )words while reading authentic Japanese texts. Data obtained from 42 English L1 students indicate that, first, although they can guess the meanings of unknown "kanji" words in context, they frequently make erroneous guesses or fail to…

This article describes the development and validation of a listening questionnaire designed to assess second language (L2) listeners' metacognitive awareness and perceived use of strategies while listening to oral texts. The process of instrument development and validation is described, along with a review of the relevant literature related to…

Since listening comprehension presupposes an orderly conversion of running speech into discrete linguistic units, certain restoration processes must apply. An approach is provided to explain the metamorphosis that language undergoes from dynamic speech representations to citation form strings, under listening conditions. Some performance…

The performance of native and nonnative Hindi-Urdu speaking children (N=131) and adults (N=30) in the comprehension of the Hindi-Urdu correlative constructions was analyzed. Results indicated that Hindi-Urdu correlative constructs are acquired relatively late by both native and nonnative speakers, suggesting that language universals are available…