Attaining Advanced proficiency and beyond has been a principal goal for second language learners, practitioners, and researchers. Achieving this level in writing requires producing connected discourse of paragraph-level length and nurturing the ability to arrange various linguistic units to form a unified and cohesive whole. This ability, known as…

In the ever-changing digital era, the surge of online informal language learning platforms has revolutionized the way we learn new languages. This dissertation delves into the critical role of interactional feedback (IF) in synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC), a cornerstone for optimizing these digital learning spaces. Anchored in…

Achieving proficiency in core foundational oral language (OL), reading, and writing skills remains difficult for students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) and foundational OL difficulty (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2022). Despite evidence linking OL skills in grammar (morphosyntax, syntax) and vocabulary (semantics) to…

"How can teachers help students improve their second language (L2) speaking accuracy?" This is a question that most L2 educators ask themselves every day. Although L2 writing is a popular topic among Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers, the consideration that L2 writing has the potential to act as a scaffold for L2 speaking…

Purpose: The purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study was to determine whether English learners who participated in transitional kindergarten perform equally or better than English learners who did not participate in transitional kindergarten in the areas of oral language, written language, and overall language as measured by the…

Analysis of second language (L2) learners' language development can allow valid and reliable assessment of the learners' L2 linguistic knowledge, which can enable the teachers and researchers to choose appropriate teaching or experimental materials (Bardovi-Harlig & Bofman, 1989; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1997). However, most language development…

This study was an investigation into the aural and written receptive knowledge of the English semantics of English lexis that is loanwords in the Japanese language and the predictive strength of the variables of semantic distance, concreteness/abstractness, polysemy, phonological distance, number of syllables, number of phonemes, number of…

This study fills the existing gap in the research, which indicates that few researchers have examined multilingual writers' preference between audio and written feedback, and the impact of feedback format on their revision process. However, this dissertation has five interrelated purposes: 1. To understand the expectations of multilingual writers…

This study aimed to investigate the effect of written cues on the second- language (L2) language perception, processing, and word learning, especially when the person's first language (L1) belongs to a different rhythmic type of language than L2. The first objective was to examine whether late bilinguals as L2 learners can benefit more from…

In the field of Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA), written corrective feedback (WCF) has been shown to play a facilitative role in improving written accuracy (e.g., Ashwell, 2000; Ferris & Roberts, 2001; Ferris, 2006; Sheen, 2007; Bitchener, 2008; Liu & Brown, 2015). However, studies that examine the effects of different types…

The triad dimensions of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) has been widely used for assessing second language performance and development. Unlike accuracy and fluency, the construct of Chinese syntactic complexity has not been comprehensibly conceptualized or operationalized. Moreover, not tailored to the typological differences such as the…

This study compares second-year Japanese university students' strategies to write kanji by hand with their strategies to produce the kanji characters on a computer, taking into account factors such as accuracy in writing, the amount of kanji used, the complexity of the kanji used, as well as how the characters used compare with the sequence…

This dissertation study seeks to understand how teachers who work in an ASL/English bilingual educational program for preschool children conceptualize and utilize phonological instruction of American Sign Language (ASL). While instruction that promotes phonological awareness of spoken English is thought to provide educational benefits to young…

It is generally believed that study abroad (SA) is the most efficient and successful way to acquire proficiency in a second language (L2). SA is a crucial component of students' second language acquisition (SLA) process, for it puts them in situations in which they can use the language on a daily basis and interact with native speakers. More than…

The present study investigated the efficacy of early English immersion in the Shi Da Fu Elementary School in Xi'an, China. Three hundred and fifty one students were tested in Grades 1-6. There were two main purposes that motivated this longitudinal and cross-sectional study. The first goal was to compare the L1 and L2 language and literacy…