Characteristics of vocabulary lists as well as study and test translation direction may affect the ease of learning second language (L2) vocabulary. We examined immediate and delayed test performance of first language (L1) English speakers learning a fixed set of L2 vocabulary placed on lists formed by crossing semantic relatedness (unrelated vs.…

Sonbul and Schmitt (2013) showed that exposure to second language (L2) collocations in reading texts can produce gains in explicit knowledge, but they found no evidence of gains in implicit knowledge. This study is a conceptual replication and extension of Sonbul and Schmitt's research. Sixty-two advanced English as a second language (ESL)…

Research has shown that novel words can be learned through the mechanism of statistical or cross-situational word learning (CSWL). So far, CSWL studies using adult populations have focused on the presentation of spoken words. However, words can also be learned through their written form. This study compared auditory and orthographic presentations…

Second language acquisition (SLA) research offers valuable insight on how languages are learned and how they coexist and influence each other. Sign language learners offer unique perspectives on SLA, allowing researchers to test theories that are otherwise constrained by access to only one modality. Current literature on sign language learning…

When introducing new words in a second language (L2), presenting vocabulary with concurrent gestures might facilitate learners' recollection of new words. Previous research has suggested that this gestural advantage might hold only for gestures that overlap with the semantics of the words. Dual coding theory predicts that learners should learn…

Since its first adoption as a computational model for language learning, evidence has accumulated that Rescorla-Wagner error-correction learning (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) captures several aspects of language processing. Whereas previous studies have provided general support for the Rescorla-Wagner rule by using it to explain the behavior of…

Research on anxiety and motivation in second language (L2) learning is proliferating. However, these two individual differences are commonly measured by self-report questionnaires, the psychometric properties of which have been questioned. Building on previous works on study quality, this methodological synthesis systematically describes and…

This study aimed to investigate which word-related variables play a role in Dutch-speaking children's L2 word learning through out-of-school exposure prior to classroom instruction in the foreign language. We used different measures to investigate the role of frequency, concreteness, cognateness, and age of acquisition (AoA) in receptive…

We investigated the potential influence of implicit learning mechanisms on L2 morphosyntactic attainment by examining the relationship between age of onset (AoO), two cognitive abilities hypothesized to underlie implicit learning (phonological short-term memory and implicit statistical learning), and performance on an auditory grammaticality…

In this study, we examined the effect of previewing unfamiliar vocabulary on the real-time reading behavior of first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers. University students with English as their L1 or L2 read passages with embedded pseudowords. In a within-participant manipulation, definitions of the pseudowords were either previewed…

This study investigated how students' self-reported individual differences predicted second language (L2) spoken discussion task output, an objective behavioral outcome, in the Japanese university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. Although numerous psychological theories are used as a rationale for task-based language teaching (TBLT),…

We investigated the role of cue weighting, second language (L2) proficiency, and L2 daily exposure in L2 learning of suprasegmentals different from the first language (L1), using eye-tracking. Spanish monolinguals, English-Spanish learners, and Mandarin--Spanish learners saw a paroxytone and an oxytone verb (e.g., "FIRma-firMÓ"…

This study examined the relationship of linguistic complexity, captured using a set of lexical richness, syntactic complexity, and discoursal complexity indices, to second language (L2) learners' perception of text difficulty, captured using L2 raters' comparative judgment on text comprehensibility and reading speed. Testing materials were 180…

Obtaining quick and reliable evidence regarding the proficiency of learners is a perennial issue in second language (L2) learning research. In this study, we examined naturalistic utterance recall as a measure of L2 learning proficiency that can be easily extracted from videos and automatically scored using the video's captions. In our recall…

This article proposes a structural model of English language learners' self-efficacy beliefs, attitudes toward learning pronunciation skills, and choice of pronunciation learning strategies. Participants' responses (N = 704) to two self-reported questionnaires--Strategies for Pronunciation Improvement (SPI) inventory and Learner Attitudes for…