This article reports the results of an experiment designed to investigate the effectiveness of pinyin (a phonic transcription system) in learning vocabulary of Chinese as a second language from the perspective of cognitive load theory. In the reported experiment, the learning effects of the vertical and horizontal layouts of characters, pinyin,…

The study examined differences in reading achievement and mastery skill development among Grade-6 students with different language background profiles, using cognitive diagnosis modeling applied to large-scale provincial reading test performance data. Our analyses revealed that students residing in various home language environments show different…

This article investigates an argument-adjunct asymmetry in English as a second language (ESL) learners' acquisition of inversion in "wh"-questions. A generative approach (DeVilliers, 1991; Stromswold, 1990) claims that inversion is acquired earlier in argument "wh"-questions than in adjunct "wh"-questions, the asymmetry resulting from their…

This cross-sectional study examined the effect of general proficiency and study-abroad experience on pragmatic comprehension in second-language English. Participants were 25 native English speakers and 64 Japanese college students of English divided into three groups. Group 1 (n = 22) had lower proficiency and no study-abroad experience. Group 2…

This study investigates the role of components of intercultural competence in the use of intercultural mediation behaviors. Through the use of the Revised Intercultural Mediation Measure, an instrument revised by the authors, 291 Anglophone and 161 Francophone participants in Canada were asked to indicate their likelihood of employing various…

This study examined whether the observed effectiveness of recasts is influenced by the type of outcome measure used and whether different aspects of working memory are differentially associated with learners' performance on the various outcome measures. The participants were 90 learners of English as a foreign language, who were randomly assigned…

This study explored learning and generalization of parts of the Russian case-marking paradigm, an inflecting-fusional system in which affixes simultaneously mark several grammatical features (case, gender, number, animacy). In Experiment 1, adult English speakers (N = 43) were exposed to nouns with transparent gender marking in the nominative case…

A classroom study was designed to test the hypothesis that explicit knowledge is used by second-language (L2) learners in a free written response task if that knowledge is present. Eighty-one 12-18-year-old learners of Dutch as an L2 took part in a computer-assisted language learning experiment receiving either explicit or implicit instruction…

Informed and inspired by neo-Vygotskian theory, this article outlines a study exploiting a contemporary conceptualization of Wells's (2002) joint activity system model as an exploratory framework for examining and depicting the social-cultural-historical contradictions in second-language (L2) learners' joint activity. The participants were a pair…

It has been argued that languaging plays a crucial role in learning a second language (L2). The effects of languaging, especially oral languaging (e.g., collaborative dialogue, private speech), have been tested on the learning of L2 knowledge domains. This study explored the effects of written languaging by asking 24 Japanese learners of English…

This study reports on a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of corrective feedback in second language acquisition. By establishing a different set of inclusion/exclusion criteria than previous meta-analyses and performing a series of methodological moves, it is intended to be an update and complement to previous meta-analyses. Altogether 33 primary…

This study examines the relationship between learners' production of modified output and their working memory (WM) capacity. The task-based interactions of 42 college-level, native English-speaking learners of Spanish as a foreign language were examined. A relationship was found between learners' WM test scores and their tendency to modify output.…

Given that this special issue is devoted to the acquisition and processing of inflectional morphology by second language (L2) learners, the question in the title may appear redundant. However, recent research on first language (L1) and L2 morphological processing has challenged basic assumptions about the status of inflectional morphology in…

The present study investigated the effects of two categories of interactional feedback--recasts and elicitations--on learning linguistic forms that arose incidentally in dyadic interaction. The study also identified implicit and explicit forms of each feedback type and examined their subsequent effects immediately after interaction and after 2…

Drawing on current theories in personality, second-language (L2) oral ability, and psychometrics, this study investigates the extent to which self-consciousness and assertiveness are explanatory variables of L2 oral ability. Three hundred sixty first-year Japanese university students who were studying English as a foreign language participated in…