This special issue contains reports of research on a variety of variables that are hypothesized to have an impact on how practice affects language learning. This includes spacing of practice opportunities, the provision of feedback, training working memory, and oral versus written input. Each study is complex and clearly contextualized within the…

By tradition, L2 motivation research has a monolingual bias--the motivational systems of a learner's different languages conceptualized as separate entities rather than as cognitively interconnected. At a time when multilingualism has become a new world order (Douglas Fir Group, 2016) and where there is evidence of powerful identity experiences…

This study investigates relations between second language (L2) lexical input and output in terms of word information properties (i.e., lexical salience; Ellis, 2006a). The data for this study come from a longitudinal corpus of naturalistic spoken data between L2 learners and first language (L1) interlocutors collected over a year's time. The…

Vygotsky's work on the acquisition of foreign language words has been criticized for lacking a formal view of language as a system and for taking little interest in questions such as the route and rate of language acquisition. We argue that word meanings really do not constitute a formal system, either in the way they develop, or in the way they…

Research on interactional feedback has typically focused on feedback learners receive from native speakers (i.e., NS-learner contexts). However, for many second language (L2) learners, the majority of their opportunities to engage in interaction occur with other learners (i.e., learner-learner contexts). The literature has suggested that feedback…

Information gap tasks have played a key role in applied linguistics (Pica, 2005). For example, extensive research has been conducted using information gap tasks to elicit second language data. Yet, despite their prominent role in research and pedagogy, there is still much to be investigated with regard to what information gap tasks offer research…

In this study we explore a student's affective responses to classroom foreign language learning. In 2 meetings each week throughout an 8-week Portuguese course for beginners, the first author described her language learning experiences to the second author. Sessions were transcribed and then coded and analyzed. A theoretical model grounded in the…