Investigates factors influencing Japanese university students' expository writing in English. Quantitative analysis revealed that students' second-language (L2) proficiency, first-language writing ability, and metaknowledge were significant in explaining L2 writing ability variance. An explanatory model for writing ability in English as a Foreign…

A study of native and non-native English speakers' production of vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables found that non-native speakers had most difficulty with four-syllable words, producing a first-syllable vowel of variable quality, failing to reduce the second-syllable vowel, and failing to produce appropriate durations for vowels…

Research measured grade 5-7 children (n=73) for intelligence; reading comprehension and both static and working memory in the first (L1) and second language (L2); and linguistic knowledge in L1. Results support the notion that increased speed of basic processing in L2 facilitates higher-level processes involved in linguistic and oral communication…

Reviews research findings on second-language (L2) interaction from the perspective of syntactic development. The article argues that better understanding of the role of negotiated interaction in L2 syntactic development requires examining the specific grammatical structures in interaction guided by the criteria of relevance, availability,…

Two experiments tested whether the orthography of readers' first or second language affected their reading time and comprehension in each. English and Hebrew bilingual graduate students and faculty read texts translated into both Hebrew and English. The English native speakers read the English texts significantly faster than the native Hebrew…

The research reported here tests the claim made in the Input Processing approach to second language (L2) acquisition that interpreting the meaning of language form is essential for learning. This claim has been put forward as an underlying part of the pedagogical package known as Processing Instruction (PI) (VanPatten, 1996, 2002a, 2004). Two…

Discusses an attempt to establish the vocabulary learning strategies used by Chinese university learners of English in Beijing and the relationship between their strategies and outcomes in learning English. Findings reveal that two metacognitive strategies emerged as positive predictors of vocabulary test scores and that visual repetition of new…

Investigation of the attitudes of 1,252 children in grades 4 through 12 toward studying Hebrew at their private Jewish school in South Africa measured attitudes toward language learning, traditional orientations, nationalist orientations, motivation, and self-rated proficiency. Results showed that attitudes decreased in positive value over the 9…

Analyzes the mental organizations of two sets of fuzzy lexical items by 70 native speakers (NSs) of English and 185 learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). Findings suggest that a discernible approximative pattern exists in the acquisition of ESL semantics, with the differentiation of certain words acquired before the differentiation of…

This cross sectional study used verbal protocol analysis to compare the temporal distribution of formulation processes of Spanish English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) writers composing first and second language (L1, L2) argumentative texts. Studied three groups at different levels of second language proficiency. Results showed the same total…

A systematic and explicit approach to evaluation of pronunciation is proposed. Generalizability theory was applied in order to comprise all relevant factors in one psychomotor model. French and German pronunciation tests (in Appendix) were devised and evaluated. Common pronunciation problems for native Dutch speakers were incorporated. (Author/LMO)

Examines the word-final, voiceless, stop-sibilant clusters formed by the attachment of -z morphemes to verbs and nouns in the speech production of Japanese learners of English. Reduction is the favored production strategy, but epenthesis is also used. Noun attachments are subject to less error than are verb attachments. (Author/LMO)

First language studies show boys superior to girls in listening vocabulary, though girls are otherwise superior in language ability. A second language study used two sets of Chinese college students (n=285 and 205). Ten tests for proficiency in English and two listening vocabulary tests (described in text) yielded similar results. (Author/LMO)

Discusses a study of grades six, eight, and ten students in the Netherlands to whom grade-appropriate measures of reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge were administered in their native language, Dutch, as well as in English. The aim was to explore relative contributions to native language and foreign language reading comprehension of a…

Examines whether differences exist in the provision and use of negative feedback, according to the age of the learners and the context of the interaction. Data were collected from 20 classrooms (20 adult and 10 child English-as-Second-Language classes) and 32 native speaker-nonnative speaker dyads (16 adult and 16 child). (Author/VWL)