A growing body of evidence demonstrates that individual differences in declarative memory may be an important predictor of second language (L2) abilities. However, the evidence comes from studies using different declarative memory tasks that vary in their reliance on verbal abilities and task demands, which preclude estimating the size of the…

Researchers in second language (L2) and education domain use different statistical methods to assess their constructs of interest. Many L2 constructs emerge from elements/parts, i.e., the elements "define" and "form" the construct and not the other way around. These constructs are referred to as emergent variables (also called…

Research has indicated that lexical richness is an important indicator of second language (L2) proficiency. However, most research has examined written, cross-sectional English L2 corpora and does not necessarily indicate how spoken lexical use develops over time or whether observed trends are stable across L2s. This study adds to previous…

Concerns have recently been raised about the validity of scales used in the L2 motivational self system tradition, particularly in relation to sufficient discriminant validity among some of its scales. These concerns highlight the need to systematically examine the validity of scales used in this tradition. In this study, we therefore compiled a…

The congruency effect--that is, faster and more accurate processing of congruent multiword units, has been demonstrated in multiple studies. It is still unclear, however, what its underlying mechanism is, and how congruency may interact with other factors. Using an acceptability judgement task, this study examined the congruency effect in…

Personality has been identified as a possible antecedent to emotions experienced in the foreign language (FL) classroom. However, contrasting results and differing personality models have resulted in ambiguous findings. This study set out to delve deeper into the role of personality as a predictor of FL emotions through a series of increasingly…

This study investigated whether structural priming, as a reflection of error-driven learning mechanisms, could facilitate second language (L2) learning of the dative alternation in Mandarin. We sought evidence of learning from both priming and acceptability judgment data. Participants were 25 native speakers and 41 classroom learners (CLs). After…

There has been increasing interest in the effects of note taking in second language (L2) research. However, no meta-analysis has been conducted to examine the relationship between note taking and learning through exposure to L2 input. We retrieved 28 effect sizes from 21 studies (N = 1992) to explore the overall effects of note taking as well as…

This study examines the effects of task complexity on second language (L2) pronunciation accuracy and global pronunciation measures in pronunciation-unfocused tasks and assesses the relationship between acoustic and listener-based pronunciation measures. Eighty-two Catalan/Spanish learners of English performed simple and complex versions of a…

Second language (L2) research on input manipulation has focused mainly on increasing the salience of target structures, but presentation formats of L2 input can be another important aspect for manipulation. This study compared the horizontal, vertical, and adjacent formats for presenting the characters, pinyin, and English meaning of L2 Chinese…

The current study set out to examine to what degree age of acquisition (AOA), defined as a learner's first intensive exposure to a second language (L2) environment, mediates the final state of postpubertal, spoken vocabulary attainment. In Study 1, spontaneous speech samples were elicited from experienced Japanese users of English (n = 41) using…

This study examined how linguistic complexity features contribute to second language (L2) processing effort by analyzing the Dutch English-L2 learners' eye movements from GECO and MECO, two eye-tracking corpora. Processing effort was operationalized as reading rate, mean fixation duration, regression rate, skipping rate, and mean saccade…

Research on mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) has revealed that high rates of attrition among users can undermine the potential benefits of this learning method. To explore this issue, we surveyed 3,670 adult MALL users based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and also conducted an in-depth analysis of their…

An important issue in second-language acquisition concerns the role of explicit information (EI) and how it is affected by individual differences. The present study explored this question through a partial replication and extension of Fernández (2008: Experiment 2), which investigated the effects of EI in processing instruction (PI) for the…

The present study investigates bilinguals' capacity to rapidly establish memory traces for novel word forms in a second language (L2), as a function of L2 linguistic proficiency. A group of Chinese-English bilinguals with various English proficiency levels were presented with a reading-aloud task, consisting of 16 pseudowords and 16 English words…