Studies have documented the significance of scaffolding as a sociocultural theory driven type of assistance for the development of English as foreign language (EFL) learners' language skills in general; however, the comparative efficacy of various cognitive and/or metacognitive scaffolding procedures for EFL learners' listening comprehension…

Research has shown that learning a known-and-unknown word combination leads to greater learning than learning an unknown word alone (Kasahara, 2010, 2011). These studies found that attaching a known adjective to an unknown noun can help learners remember the unknown noun. Kasahara (2015) found that a known verb can serve as an effective cue to…

Underdeveloped reading comprehension skills can limit academic success; a particular challenge for English language learners (ELLs). The current study investigated whether a web-based text structure strategy, delivered via the Intelligent Tutoring of Structure Strategy (ITSS) program to adult Chinese ELLs, improved students' use of reading…

This study is a conceptual replication of Ellis' 'Measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language: A psychometric study', published in "Studies in Second Language Acquisition" (2005), aiming to establish the importance of including belief statements (hypothesized to increase processing demands) in the design of Elicited…

This article discusses, from a sociocognitive perspective, the integration of usage-based linguistics (UBL) models in favor of conversation analysis (CA) for second language acquisition (SLA). On this basis, it presents a pedagogical approach, viz. role-based interaction analysis (RBIA) for foreign language learning (FLL), by scaffolding, tracking…

This study explores whether middle-school students can exploit explicitly addressed crosslinguistic lexical similarities between German and English to learn vocabulary more efficiently. Across six weeks, 260 Swiss German learners of English as a foreign language (17 classes) completed three vocabulary learning tests (T1, T2 and T3). Additionally,…

This study explored second language (L2) competence in discontinuous discursive formulaic sequences, namely Chinese correlative connectives (CCCs; e.g. yinwei . . . suy 'because . . . so'), in relation to the determinants of formulaic sequence acquisition by scrutinizing L2 Chinese learners' performance on two controlled tasks. Mixed-effects…

We investigated the effectiveness of two different teaching methods based on two different theoretical views of how languages are learned in oral proficiency after three years of L2 French instruction. The first method is commonly used in the Netherlands and is in line with structure-based (SB) principles, viewing language as a set of grammar…

This article reports a classroom-based study of the effects of two types of corrective feedback (CF) on the acquisition of 3rd person "-s." One hundred and nine Chinese university students completed three communicative tasks: One group received implicit CF consisting of a single corrective move (implicit recasts), a second group received…

This article reports on two studies, testing how three different types of input (skewed first, skewed random and balanced) affect second language (L2) learning of English present counterfactual (IF-Is) and past counterfactual (IF-IIs) conditionals, two constructions differing in complexity. The experiment included a proficiency test, a pretest, a…

This study investigates the effects of input-based and output-based instructions on the acquisition of second language (L2) request modifiers. Four intact classes were randomly assigned to textual enhancement (TE), input flooding (IF), output-based instruction (OI), and control (CO) groups. The TE group watched some captioned videos on requests…

Macaro has stated that the choice between a monolingual, immersive, target language-only pedagogy versus a non-immersive, multilingual pedagogy is 'probably the most fundamental question facing second language acquisition (SLA) researchers, language teachers, and policymakers'. Recognizing that prior empirical work on monolingual versus…

This study employs eye-tracking to investigate how first (L1) and second language (L2) glosses affect lexical uptake and reading behaviors in L2 learners of English. The study also explores the relationship between lexical uptake and reading behaviors as a function of gloss type. To investigate this, 81 Korean university students were asked to…

This study investigates whether gesture-enhanced recasts lead to better production of the English regular past tense. Fifty-nine low-intermediate ESL students at a US university took part in communicative activities in class, during which they received, respectively, no feedback, verbal recasts, or gesture-enhanced recasts, the latter being a…

Many international students in American universities are required to take writing courses in English as a second language (ESL) before participating in a mainstream first-year composition (FYC) course. Given that the goal of ESL writing course is to prepare students for FYC course, the connection between ESL and FYC courses is significant. This…