Adults learning a new language tend to judge unconventional utterances more leniently than fluent speakers do; ratings on acceptable utterances, however, tend to align more closely with fluent speakers. This asymmetry raises a question as to whether unconventional utterances can be statistically preempted by conventional utterances for adult…

This study investigated adult learners' experiences with the language of their new living environment. Migrants and refugees' personal goals for language learning in their specific life situations were captured in in-depth interviews conducted as part of ethnographically oriented field studies in Finland and Germany. Interpretative…

This article explores how teachers and learners in a Dutch as Second Language (L2) classroom in the Netherlands make sense of themselves, one another, and thereby of the diversity encountered in the class, through practices of categorisation and positioning regarding nationality, place, and culture. Categories raised during class gain meaning in…

This paper explores the relationship between additional language (L2) literacy development and drama plays based on the experiences of adult refugees from Ukraine in Iceland. This inquiry is guided by the following questions: What are the learners' experiences and perceptions of drama classes in relation to their literacy development in Icelandic…

This study is the first to explore microdevelopment in sociolinguistic evaluative judgments of standard German and Austro-Bavarian dialect by adult second language learners of German by using dense time serial measurements. Intensive longitudinal data (10 observations per participant) were collected from four learners at approximately weekly…

This study aimed to identify associations and predictors of willingness to communicate (WTC) of adult foreign language (FL) learners and whether they are contingent upon the FL being learned. To this end, our research investigated learner variables associated with WTC in adult FL learners of English and of French in an under-researched field of…

Motivation undoubtedly plays an important role in learning a second language in that the whole process presupposes motivation to some extent. In the context of Syrian refugees, understanding the factors motivating learners is the very first step in the language learning process in that the refugees must first be integrated into the education…

Identifying students' reasons for learning a language is useful for every teacher who aims to help students achieve their goals. In addition, understanding how their language learning motivation is maintained through the class and to what extent this continues away from the classroom are equally important, especially in noncompulsory adult ESOL.…

Many second language pedagogy experts recommend that curricular and instructional planning should begin with needs analysis. Few, however, recommend assessing students' strengths, and those that do seem not to consider learners' strengths to be integral to planning or instruction. Teacher preparation programs and materials that foreground needs…

Evidence from usage-based studies of second language (L2) acquisition reveals that a main source of L2 learners' developing grammars is the L2 input to which learners are regularly exposed. What learners develop from their extended engagement in the sequences of actions comprising the input is not an acontextual system of grammatical units but…

The production-oriented approach (POA) is a nascent language-teaching approach that considers the aptitudes of Chinese learners. This study compared POA with task-based language teaching (TBLT) and presentation-practice-production (PPP) theoretically and empirically. A four-quadrant model and a theoretical comparison table are proposed to clarify…

This paper presents an investigation into the integration of virtual reality (VR) tours in online English lessons tailored for adult learners. The study utilised a design-based research approach to evaluate the effectiveness of VR tours in this context. It specifically examined the responses of adult learners to this instructional strategy by…

Although second language (L2) learners often have difficulty with learning the L2 pronunciation, the literature has reported a mix of more successful and less successful learners. Many factors could contribute to individual variation in L2 speech sound learning. This dissertation examines a few factors that are hypothesized to influence L2…

Eighteen internationally trained professionals were paired-up with nine English language instructors for this project. Even though the focus was on extensive listening practice, the learners created spoken messages to send a response to their instructors every week. The schedule and deadlines established helped participants to be organized and…

This study reports on the development of "Parlure Games" and explores its pedagogical affordances. "Parlure Games" is a multi-dialectal listening and decolonial conversation tool created to address the absence of variable speech (including speech markers associated with native speaker status, regional dialect, age, and race)…