This study proposed a set of measures for assessing noun phrase (NP) complexity in second language (L2) Chinese writing and compared the predictive power of these measures for L2 Chinese writing quality to that of a set of syntactic complexity measures based on the topic-comment unit (TC-unit). Our data consisted of 101 narratives written by…

Motivational interactions during multiple language learning have been largely neglected in language motivation research. To fill this gap, we investigate longitudinal relations between Swiss German students' value beliefs in English, French, and German in upper secondary schools and whether there are differences in motivational development between…

The present study investigated the effects of 2 forms of text-based second language (L2) vocabulary glosses, namely dynamic and nondynamic glosses on EFL learners' vocabulary knowledge. Dynamic glosses were operationalized as a set of incrementally ordered mediating annotations designed to help learners identify the correct word definition while…

This article reports two intervention studies testing the effects of plurilingual teaching on grammatical development among primary-school students learning English as a foreign language (FL). In a pre-posttest control-group design, more than 200 9-10-year old majority language German and minority language students received plurilingual FL…

Although English and German are both Germanic languages, due to various historical changes, many of their cognates are no longer easily recognizable. This study examined whether knowledge of language history can be beneficial to learners when learning English-German cognates. Thirty-five English-speaking second language (L2) learners of…

While an elicited imitation test (EIT) has been widely used as a measure of oral proficiency in second language acquisition (SLA) research, it is still unclear the extent to which memory capacity impacts EIT performance. In light of this gap, the present study sought to clarify the nature of elicited imitation by examining the relative…

This article reports the results of the first longitudinal study that systematically investigates the acquisition of verb agreement by hearing learners of a sign language. During a 2-year period, 14 novel learners of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) with a spoken language background performed an elicitation task 15 times. Seven deaf native…

This study examined how mode of input affects the learning of pronunciation and form-meaning connection of second language (L2) words. Seventy-five Japanese learners of English were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions (reading while listening, reading only, listening only), studied 40 low-frequency words while viewing their corresponding…

This study investigated the effects of temporal distribution of practice on the learning and retention of Mandarin tonal word production. Eighty native English-speaking adults with no prior knowledge of a tonal language participated in this study. They were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions varying in intersession interval (ISI)…

This study aimed to examine how second language (L2) readers process and comprehend paired sentences based on the causal and semantic relatedness of the sentences. Causal relatedness refers to the cause-and-effect relations between the events described, whereas semantic relatedness refers to the similarity of meaning conveyed by the sentences. In…

We examined the role of modality in learning second language (L2) grammar and forming implicit (unconscious) and explicit (conscious) knowledge. To this end, we isolated the effects of the physical medium of input (i.e., aural or visual) from those of the presentation method (i.e., word-by-word or simultaneous). We also explored the role of test…

Cognitive psychology research has shown that interleaving, wherein learners practice multiple skills or concepts at once, facilitates learning more than does blocking, wherein learners practice only one skill or concept at a time. Despite the advantage of interleaving over blocking observed across a number of domains, limited attention has been…

Current quantitative methods in second language (L2) acquisition have proven useful in examining how phraseological unit production changes over time. However, these methods are limited in that they do not allow for the analysis of individual differences in those changes. This study demonstrates the potential for Latent Curve Modeling, a type of…

It has been noted that Chinese shows both satellite- and verb-framed properties (Beavers, Levin, & Tham, 2010; Slobin, 2004), a fact that offers the opportunity to explore the typological influence of learners' dominant language because they can choose either option to describe the same motion events and be grammatically correct. This study…

Research on multilingual acquisition has investigated various combinations of languages to identify the factors determining how learners express motion. Our research examines the semantics of motion expression in learners whose first language (L1) exhibits more variation than their foreign language (L2/L3). The present study compares upward motion…