Second-language (L2) knowledge of English is an essential communication tool in the contemporary era of globalization in many research and business fields. Among the important tasks in English education is the measurement of student proficiency. While various tests purport to measure proficiency in learning English, repeated preparation and…

This study used event-related potential (ERP) and retrieval practice effect paradigm to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the retrieval practice effect in a third language (L3) vocabulary learning. Thirty-five Chinese (First Language, L1)-English (Second Language, L2) bilinguals without prior knowledge of French (L3) studied 120…

Through signs and symbols, language serves as a means of expressing ideas and sentiments. These signs and symbols are used to encode and decode the information. The world has many different languages in use. As their first language, a baby learns their mother tongue. From birth, he or she is exposed to this language. Any additional language that…

This article delves into the ongoing debate surrounding the role of age in second language acquisition, examining developments over the past three decades and highlighting contentious issues. We argue that the commonly held belief in age's pivotal role is frequently contradicted by empirical evidence. Additionally, we examine the agerelated debate…

Previous research showed that short-term second language training modulates children's brain responses to language processing. However, little is known about whether short-term training from language-immersion apps would have the same effect on young children's neural processing of a newly learnt language. We examined the auditory event-related…

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…

The present study uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine nonlocal agreement processing between native (L1) English speakers and Chinese-English second language (L2) learners, whose L1 lacks number agreement. We manipulated number marking with determiners ("the" vs. "that"/"these") to see how…

Memory is inherently context-dependent: internal and environmental cues become bound to learnt information, and the later absence of these cues can impair recall. Here, we developed an approach to leverage context-dependence to optimise learning of challenging, interference-prone material. While navigating through desktop virtual reality (VR)…

The burgeoning field of third language (L3) acquisition has increasingly focused on intermediate stages of language development, aiming to establish the groundwork for comprehensive models of L3 learning that encompass the entire developmental sequence. This article underscores the importance of a robust epistemological foundation, advocating for…

Lexical tones are widely believed to be a formidable learning challenge for adult speakers of nontonal languages. While difficulties--as well as rapid improvements--are well documented for beginning second language (L2) learners, research with more advanced learners is needed to understand how tone perception difficulties impact word recognition…

Recent years have seen an expansion in the research related to structural brain adaptations related to the acquisition and processing of additional languages. However, the accumulating evidence remains to a great extent inconsistent, with a large variety of cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar effects reported in various studies. Here we propose…

Efficient Chinese character reading requires rapid access to orthographic representations of radical form and position. This study identified the temporal sequence of radical form, radical position and lexicality processing in adult first language (L1) and intermediate second language (L2) Chinese readers. Event-related potential responses in a…

This study mainly examined the role of the combination of three senses (i.e., auditory, visual, and tactile) and five senses (i.e., auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory) in the correlation between electrophysiological and electrodermal responses underlying second language (L2) sentence comprehension. Forty subjects did two…

Novel word learning and consolidation was studied in inexperienced language learners, to conceptually replicate and extend a similar study in experienced learners by Bakker, Takashima, Van Hell, Janzen, and McQueen (2015). Participants learned definitions for novel words on Day 1 and for another set of novel words on Day 2. Brain potentials…

There is substantial behavioral evidence for a phenomenon commonly called "the testing effect", i.e. superior memory performance after repeated testing compared to re-study of to-be-learned materials. However, considerably less is known about the underlying neuro-cognitive processes that are involved in the initial testing phase, and…